In this episode
Mack McGee, Chief Marketing Officer at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, explains how the company built the operating model behind its recognition at Forrester’s CX Forum West as the top insurer in Total Experience — two years running. McGee’s argument is that total experience is not a marketing message but a promise-keeping problem: the organization states a promise, and every downstream function either fulfills it or breaks it. He walks through what CareFirst actually changed to make that true — an experience scorecard built from operational measures rather than sentiment scores, a service-center technology overhaul that fixed the employee experience and the member experience in the same move, an internal platform called Difference Makers that makes non-customer-facing teams visible in the outcome, and a recurring “Defect Day” that separates potholes worth patching from roads that need rebuilding. The conversation closes on where a regulated healthcare brand can let AI act on its behalf, and where a member still needs a human name on the other end of the phone.
Key takeaways
- Total experience is the promise, not the touchpoint. McGee defines it as what the organization is promising and how well it is fulfilling that promise to the people it serves — a definition that necessarily pulls in partners, providers, and internal teams marketing has never owned.
- There is no experience agenda separate from the company’s agenda. The brands celebrated for experience are celebrated because the experience they created facilitated what the business was trying to accomplish, not because experience ran as its own initiative.
- NPS is sentiment, and sentiment alone stalls out. CareFirst’s momentum shift came from getting beyond NPS as the assessment of experience and building a scorecard from measures already being tracked across the organization, now discussed through an experience lens.
- The scorecard works because people can see their own work in it. Operational measures let employees across the company recognize that what they do shows up in the member’s experience — which McGee credits as a major motivational shift, backed by executive leadership buy-in.
- ID card timeliness is a defining experience moment. How quickly a physical card arrives after enrollment sounds trivial at the scale of millions of members, but it sets how people feel about onboarding and about renewing into another year.
- Fixing the employee experience fixed the member experience. Service reps were clicking between 12 to 14 screens to answer a single question and still earning high ratings; overhauling the service-center technology improved resolution speed for members and the job itself for employees.
- Health insurance hands people the parts, not the showroom. McGee’s IKEA analogy: the industry drops members at the end of the store where the boxes are and asks them to assemble the furniture, then calls the glossary of terms “member support.”
- Employee engagement data is a leading indicator for customer experience. If employees are struggling with their own tools, connectivity, or onboarding, that shows up in whoever they serve — so the employee survey reads as a member-experience signal.
- Defect Day makes both fixes legitimate. Surfacing defects openly let CareFirst patch the immediate potholes while routing the deeper structural problems onto the investment roadmap, instead of letting quick patches close the conversation.
- Experience strategy is engagement strategy in the AI era. Whether a member opens the CareFirst app or asks Claude Health or ChatGPT instead depends on everything the brand did before that moment — so AI should absorb basic queries to clear space for the higher-touch human interactions people still ask for by name.
Chapters
- 00:01:28 — Mack McGee’s role at CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
- 00:01:57 — What “total experience” means, and why it’s an operating principle
- 00:02:34 — The promise the organization makes, and who touches it
- 00:03:54 — Why brand trust is earned in operations, not advertising
- 00:05:19 — The IKEA problem: handing members parts instead of a showroom
- 00:06:35 — Difference Makers: making internal teams visible in the outcome
- 00:07:44 — Making clarity survive every handoff after marketing
- 00:08:18 — 12 to 14 screens: rebuilding the service center
- 00:10:23 — Keeping aligned when teams answer to different metrics
- 00:11:07 — Getting beyond NPS
- 00:11:39 — No experience agenda separate from the company’s agenda
- 00:12:24 — ID card timeliness and the operational scorecard
- 00:13:25 — Employee-side leading indicators for member experience
- 00:16:36 — Defect Day: patching potholes vs. rebuilding the road
- 00:18:20 — Where AI can act for the brand in a regulated category
- 00:20:09 — Experience strategy as engagement strategy
- 00:22:42 — A year from now, and staying agile
Why “total experience” is a promise-keeping problem, not a marketing message
McGee anchors the definition in CareFirst’s mission — access, affordability, equity, and outcomes — and then reframes it operationally: what is the promise the organization is making, and how well is it fulfilling that promise to the people it serves? He points out that healthcare is intensely personal and yet touched by a very large number of people and partners, across how care is purchased, consumed, delivered, and financed. That makes total experience a coordination problem across the whole chain rather than a campaign the marketing function can run on its own.
Why brand trust comes from operations, not advertising
Forrester found brand trust to be a CareFirst differentiator even among people who aren’t customers. McGee’s read is that trust of that kind comes from behavior, not messaging, which means marketing has to gain influence over parts of the experience that don’t report to it. He describes mapping what he calls the conveyor belt of healthcare — the product decisions made up front, the purchase, the enrollment, the moments of truth along the way — and treating each of those as an experience decision already being made whether or not anyone calls it one.
The IKEA problem in health insurance
McGee’s sharpest illustration of the category’s failure mode: dropping someone at the end of an IKEA store where the boxes and parts are, telling them to build the furniture, and never walking them through the showroom. Health insurers, he says, have long handed members a glossary of the keywords and terms the industry uses and called that member support. For anyone who doesn’t live and breathe health insurance, it’s a daunting task — and the industry’s own research shows the dominant member fear is having overpaid relative to what they actually need.
Why the service center was the highest-leverage fix
Most member materials point people to the number on the back of the card, so McGee treated the phone as the first thing to solve regardless of where self-service goes next. Service reps were clicking between 12 and 14 screens to answer one question and members were still rating those calls highly — evidence that the constraint was the tooling, not the people. CareFirst overhauled the technology defining the service center, which improved the member interaction and the employee’s day in the same investment. McGee describes that dual payoff as what makes total experience useful as a frame: it captures the extrapolation of how these things play into each other.
Getting beyond NPS: the experience scorecard
The unlock, in McGee’s account, was refusing to let experience run as a separate agenda. He built an experience scorecard from measures that were already being tracked, reported, and discussed across the organization, and moved the conversation about them under an experience lens. Sentiment measures stayed in the mix; operational ones joined them. ID card timeliness — how long after enrollment the physical card arrives — is his example of a measure that sounds basic and turns out to define how a member feels about the relationship. The organizational effect was that people could see their own work in the scorecard, and see that it mattered.
Reading the employee side as a leading indicator
Asked whether an employee-side metric can predict a customer-side problem, McGee points to the employee engagement survey as a direct lens into member experience: address what employees are struggling with, and they serve their stakeholder better. He generalizes it — if employees are fighting their own IT and connectivity, that will show up in whoever the company serves. The same logic runs through onboarding and training, and through the provider relationship: a provider who can’t get what they need means a member who can’t get care in the time they need it, which makes provider experience a member-experience issue.
Defect Day: patching potholes without ignoring the road
For years CareFirst ran what it called a Defect Day, built to celebrate identifying where things were breaking rather than hiding it. McGee frames the value as holding both time horizons legitimate at once: some defects are potholes that need patching immediately, and some are evidence that the structure of the road needs rebuilding and belongs on the investment roadmap. He describes it as eye-opening for people who had no idea how a decision they made showed up for someone else further down the line.
Where AI acts, and where a human stays in the seat
McGee’s caution is specific to a regulated category where a confidently wrong clear answer carries real consequences, but his optimism is about what AI clears room for. He observes that what people find compelling about AI is the real-time conversational interaction — the very thing the industry has been bad at. His framing: an experience strategy is also an engagement strategy, and whether a member opens the CareFirst app or asks a general AI assistant instead depends on everything the brand did before that moment. In focus groups, members still want to call, to have the name of someone they spoke to, to get confirmation, and to get an estimate before an appointment. So the near-term role for AI is absorbing basic queries and tasks and sourcing reliable answers out of material that was never written in human-friendly language — clearing space for the higher-touch human interactions people actively ask for.
FAQ
What does CareFirst mean by “total experience”? Mack McGee defines it as the promise the organization is making and how well it fulfills that promise to the people it serves — spanning brand, customer, employee, and partner experience rather than treating them as separate functions.
Why did CareFirst move beyond NPS? McGee describes NPS as a useful measure that is ultimately sentiment. The shift came from building an experience scorecard out of operational measures already tracked across the organization and discussing them through an experience lens, alongside the sentiment measures.
What is an example of an operational experience measure? ID card timeliness — how quickly a member’s physical card arrives after enrollment. McGee calls it a defining moment in how people feel about onboarding and about renewing, despite sounding basic at the scale of millions of members.
Can employee metrics predict customer experience problems? Yes. CareFirst treats its employee engagement survey as a lens into member experience, on the logic that employees struggling with their own tools, IT, or onboarding will pass that friction on to whoever they serve.
What was CareFirst’s “Defect Day”? A recurring practice of surfacing defects openly, distinguishing the ones that could be patched immediately from the deeper root-cause problems that became part of the investment roadmap.
Where does Mack McGee draw the line on AI in a regulated category? He sees AI absorbing basic queries and tasks so that human capacity is freed for higher-touch interactions. Members still want to call, get a name, get confirmation, and get a cost estimate — interactions he doesn’t expect AI to solve for some time..
About Mack McGee
With more than 20 years of experience in marketing and storytelling, Mack excels at connecting people and communicating impact in creative and meaningful ways. He also brings extensive fundraising experience, evidenced by his success in helping the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation raise nearly $5 million as chair of their annual Passion for Food and Wine event.
Mack McGee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackmcgee/
Resources
CareFirst: https://www.carefirst.com
Forrester: https://www.forrester.com
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Transcript
I’d like to welcome Mack McGee, CMO at CareFirst, which was recently recognized at Forrester’s CX Forum West as the top insurer in total experience. Mack, welcome to the show.
[00:01:28] Mack McGee: Greg, thanks for having me.
[00:01:29] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to diving in here. Before we do, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at CareFirst?
[00:01:35] Mack McGee: Awesome. Yeah. So, I’ve been with CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield for six years now in, in the role of chief marketing officer, and have the great fortune of telling everyone what a main job is to protect and promote the brand, and oversee that, through working with a great team around brand and advertising, communications, our digital products and assets, as well as our experience team, which is, a lot of what we’re here to talk about today.
[00:01:57] Greg Kihlström: So I wanna start by talking about what, what we mean when we say the total experience. And so first of all, congratulations for being recognized as the top insurer in total experience from Forrester.
[00:02:09] Greg Kihlström: And I wanna talk about what this means to CareFirst, your customers, and, and your employees. So, you know, most companies can state a brand promise. far fewer can actually guarantee a customer or employee actually lives it. How does CareFirst define c- total experience, and what made you treat it as an operating principle rather than a marketing message, especially in a category where people often brace for the opposite?
[00:02:34] Mack McGee: Yeah, it’s a, a great question. I, I think for us, when we think about total experience, we talk a lot about the mission of the organization, right? And CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield exists on the idea of helping drive access, affordability, equity, and outcomes in healthcare. But i- inside of that mission, Greg, I’d say, you know, what we’re really doing is we’re helping people at one of their most vulnerable moments potentially, right? Dealing with a healthcare matter and, and the financial implications that can come with navigating that. And, and you talk about that as kind of where we meet members. And so I look at total experience really as what is the promise the organization is making, right? And how well are we fulfilling that promise to the people we serve? And there’s a lot of people that go in around that. healthcare, while insanely personal, has a lot of people that touch it,
[00:03:19] Mack McGee: in terms of what people ultimately experience. And so when we think about that, really thinking about all of the partners that play into that, both in how healthcare is purchased and, and consumed, as well as all the people that play into the process after that in terms of how that care is delivered, where that care is delivered, how that care is financed and paid for. and so really thinking about what is that promise up front? For us, that’s a lot of the mission around access, affordability, equity, and outcomes. And then looking at how are we doing at driving on those things through the different strategies, and efforts that we’re deploying, and how well are we delivering on that on behalf of those we serve.
[00:03:54] Greg Kihlström: So Forrester, the way that, the total experience is, is calculated from a number of different components, and Forrester highlighted that brand trust is a differentiator for, for CareFirst, even among people who aren’t customers. And certainly in healthcare, there’s a lot of, lot of people involved in, you know, delivering that, that care and, and everything. Trust l- like that tends to come from how a company behaves, not, just what it advertises. Which operational moments do you think actually earn it, and how do you get influence over the parts of the experience that don’t report to marketing?
[00:04:32] Mack McGee: Yeah, I think first and foremost is really, you know, understanding that total experience really is all of that, right?
[00:04:38] Mack McGee: And so when, when you, when you lay out that landscape, it’s, it’s not about experience for experience sake. people draw on a lot of different examples from brands, and other consumer brands that people interact with maybe more frequently-
[00:04:52] Mack McGee: … for inspiration. But I think it’s really kind of laying out that process for us, right? Sometimes I’ll call it, like, the conveyor belt of, of healthcare, and it’s like we design a product up front. We make a lot of decisions when we do that, right, in terms of that product might be more affordable, and it comes with other considerations as a result of it. That product might be more expensive, and it comes with another set of considerations. But all of that is an experience decision you’re making at that punt, at that point for what you’re setting folks out to do.
[00:05:19] Mack McGee: and then from there, really starting to look at how are we delivering on that along the way? So someone purchases, right? Is that an individual choice? Are they buying as part of an organization? What does that experience look like inside of that? How do you enroll those people into the process? What do they feel? What do they see? How well do they understand what’s available to them in that? We’ve spent a lot of time, traditionally, I would say, going back, you look at our space, I tell everyone we sell in basically giving you a glossary of the keywords and terms we use-
[00:05:49] Mack McGee: … that people don’t understand.
[00:05:50] Mack McGee: and, and, and we would say, “Well, that’s supporting members.” That’s actually not supporting members, right? I, I tell everybody, if you, if you got dropped in an IKEA store at the end of the IKEA store where all the boxes and parts are, and you were told to basically build the furniture that way instead of walking through the showroom first, that’s a, a lot of sometimes what we subject people to. It’s like- Here’s an explanation of the benefits that are covered in these products, here’s what your network is. And if you don’t live and breathe health insurance every day, that’s a daunting task. And so thinking about these moments of truth that happen along the way in that experience, and how people play into that, and the different ways that our organization shows up is something we spend a lot of time on. And so internally, the organization has a brand platform known as Difference Makers, and it really allows us to bring forward
[00:06:35] Mack McGee: and celebrate the different parts of the company that show up along the way, and play into the role. Because you can find yourself lost. You can for- forget that I’m serving Greg, the person, the member, at the end of the day in, in the processes and systems of what we’re doing.
[00:06:51] Mack McGee: Bringing that forward, championing that platform, and having that executive leadership buy-in and support across the company has really been a big part of what’s made us successful.
[00:06:59] Greg Kihlström: Well, and I, I think that’s exactly what, you know, Forrester found in, in their research is, you know, when, when we talk about operationalizing all of this and, and to touch on what you, what you just talked about, people associate CareFirst with giving clear answers in an industry that, again, you highlighted is, is often anything but. And, and, you know, getting a marketer to write, something clearly and, and write and edit and, and make it perfect for that f- initial touchpoint is, is one thing. But getting a claims rep, a nurse, a chatbot, you know, and many, many other, other things in the process to give the same clear answer is, is really difficult. What did you have to change so that clarity is able to
[00:07:44] Greg Kihlström: kinda survive each of those handoffs and not just the ones maybe, you know, at, at the beginning or the ones that marketing controls?
[00:07:53] Mack McGee: Yeah, I think it was really, like, thinking about where we were meeting people, right?
[00:07:56] Mack McGee: And so to, to your point, we spent a lot of time in the product education space, and it was thinking about the different situations people are buying for, right? And I think some of the most stressful decisions, for folks is po- what I talk about, people buying for we instead of just me. Both are independently stressful, no matter where we may meet you. but there’s different scenarios baked into that, and you wanna make the right decision.
[00:08:18] Mack McGee: but all the studies will show you people’s biggest fear in health insurance is that they’ve overpaid relative to what they need, and as they consume. And so we’ve spent a lot of time in how we educate there and, and meet folks. the other part of that was looking at the tools that we provide people that are helping our members. and so, you know, in an age now where digital tools and production and assets are really critical in the terms of what we do and just making things easier, we focused in on a couple things a few years ago that I really credit the broader organization, for leaning into. And so number one was: Who’s on the phones? Like, who answers a call when somebody comes in? You know, we can talk about automation and self-serve, and that’s great, but, like, the reality is today, if you read most materials from, from folks in our space, we tell you to call a number on the back
[00:09:03] Mack McGee: of the card.
[00:09:04] Mack McGee: And so we’ve gotta solve that first, ’cause that’s where we’re pointing people for resolution. Now, whether we want that interaction to continue there, that’s a great conversation and one we’re having now, but we needed to make that a better experience. And so we leaned in and really worked on enabling our service teams’ tools. And we were watching, you know. If I … I, I tell everybody, it’s like if I had gotten put in that seat and asked to do that job, these folks were doing amazing work, but they were clicking between 12, 14 screens-
[00:09:29] Mack McGee: … to try and answer a question that Greg the member called in for, right? And so it’s like, who can be successful in that if, if that’s what’s happening? And, and, and folks were still giving us really high ratings at the end of these calls when they actually talked to a service rep. And so we said, “Let’s go invest there.” And so we invested in overhauling the technology that defined service center, for us, to make that experience not just better for the member, but better for the employees that were showing up every day to do their job. And I think that’s what’s beautiful about the total experience is it, it looks at the extrapolation of how these things play in. And so here you have this benefit that, yes, we wanted a better member experience by answering questions faster, but we also wanted a better employee experience. And so we’ve done that, and we’ve seen a lot of great work from that, and really great impact
[00:10:15] Mack McGee: in what’s been just a, a wonderful part of our culture of a service team that prides itself on really trying to be simple, clear, and human in their interactions.
[00:10:23] Greg Kihlström: [gentle music] One challenge that I think a lot of organizations face, and I know I’ve seen this when I, when I work with, with enterprises as well, is it, you know, it’s, it’s one thing to talk about seamless handoffs and even, even to operationalize them to an extent, but those teams are often answering to different goals, different metrics, different leaders, you know, so on and so forth. How does CareFirst approach this, you know, keeping things aligned when, you know, there are going to be different departments and, and roles of course always, but, you know, how do you keep things aligned when, you know, sometimes there’s, there’s different views on, on what a c- a customer should experience?
[00:11:07] Mack McGee: Yeah, I think the, the, the big, momentum shift for us was getting beyond just NPS as an assessment of experience.
[00:11:14] Mack McGee: and I had some great conversations, several years ago around the idea that, you know, so NPS is, is a wonderful measure, and it, it can give you a lot of interesting insight, but it’s sentiment at the end of the day.
[00:11:25] Mack McGee: And I think what’s an important distinction there, and marketing, and experience leaders across the country that I’ve talked to are, are wrestling with this, is there is no experience agenda for a company that is separate of the company’s agenda, right?
[00:11:39] Mack McGee: At the end of the day, when you listen and you hear all of the great talks with, with folks and brands that are celebrated for what they do, it is because the experience they had created facilitated what the business was trying to accomplish. And so, you know, I, I tell everybody what we got into early was the idea that we were gonna create an experience scorecard that was made up of measures from across the organization that honestly were being measured and reported on and discussed, but we were gonna have that conversation through an experience lens going forward and what the impact was, right? And so one simple example, right? And this is gonna sound really basic for a lot, but- ID card, timeliness. You know, so from the time somebody enrolls to that ID card showing up on time. This is a very simple-sounding
[00:12:24] Mack McGee: measure. People would sit out there and go, “You all are huge. You serve millions of members.” It is a defining moment of how people feel about that experience as to whether that physical card shows up, and so … and whether it shows up in, in the time that they’re expecting. And so we, we measure that now. We, we monitor it, we celebrate it, we track it down if it, if it, changes, because we know it’s a big part of that onboarding experience and how people feel as they develop that relationship, even if they’re renewing into their next year with us. And so taking measures that aren’t just sentiment based, which we still monitor those as well, and they’re a part of our experience scorecard, but also just core operational measures of the company.
[00:13:03] Mack McGee: It allowed people to see their work in the scorecard, and it allowed people to see that their work matters as it relates to experience, and I think that was a major shift we made. And credit, we had a, a great, great group from our executive leadership team that bought into this concept, and it’s really been something that we celebrate, but really can rally around as an organization, and I think that really motivates people to see how they impact the work.
[00:13:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, and along those lines with, with measurement and, you know, certainly the, the Forrester Total Experience Index is, is a helpful measure there. You mentioned some other things just now as well. Are there, let’s say, leading indicators, or are there, is there maybe an employee side metric that can reliably predict something on, on the customer side that needs some attention?
[00:13:50] Mack McGee: Yeah, I think, you know, we, we can’t miss the opportunity to look across the different data points you can collect. So our employee-
[00:13:55] Mack McGee: … engagement survey, while very intentional for CareFirst, is a great lens into what’s happening with our member experience as well.
[00:14:02] Mack McGee: If our employees are having certain challenges or there are certain opportunities to address there, and we address those, inevitably at the end of the day, they are serving the stakeholder they serve better, right?
[00:14:12] Mack McGee: And I think you’ve got to adopt that philosophy, that that’s another great data point for us, in doing that. And so I think for us, it’s really been running down all the different places that you can kind of look under those rocks and see what are, what are the different data points telling you, and then how is that showing up, right? You know, for companies where if your company, employees are having a hard time with your IT, right, their own, you know, technology and connectivity. That’s going to show up in whoever you serve. Like-
[00:14:39] Mack McGee: … it doesn’t matter, right? And so you’ve got to run these things down and take that look at that lens to go, “Okay, how is that impacting things, and how do we bring that experience, view to it, in order to make sure that we’re addressing that?” No different than onboarding, right? Onboarding and training and how you expose people to the different parts of your business. it gives them a sense, right? You, talk to folks that are in restaurant and hospitality, and particularly those, like, leading from the top, you hear a lot of great stories of they started working in the mechanics of everything that happens-
[00:15:09] Mack McGee: … across, and it’s because that gives them such a better perspective of how it runs. And I go back to that, like, conveyor belt of at the end of the day, we build products, and then we adjudicate claims against those products.
[00:15:19] Mack McGee: And there’s a lot of things that happen in between. But, like, the underlying conveyor belt is right there. Our ability to really kind of dive in along the way to those other interactions and see how that plays out, right? If a, if a provider’s trying to work with one of our members and they’re having a hard time getting what they need, that means that member can’t get the care they need in the time they need it. That’s not a good experience, and so we need to address that provider experience aspect. And so those are the key pieces I think for us, is just continuing to pull apart the different aspects of what happens on this different continuum of relationship with our members, to see how we can make a positive impact.
[00:15:53] Greg Kihlström: Well, and I, and I think with the … You know, we’re, we’re dealing with a lot of things when we’re, when we’re talking about healthcare, and, you know, there, there’s certainly a need for speed to delivery and, and to fix challenges that come up, but there’s also kind of a temptation to, you know, fix a symptom, patch, patch a symptom as opposed to underl- you know, seeing is there a s- underlying systemic issue or gap or, or things like that. How do you find the right balance there of, you know, keep, keeping that, that conveyor belt moving, you know, let’s say, but also taking the time and focus to be able to figure out, like, is there something deeper going on that, that needs, that needs, you know, addressing?
[00:16:36] Mack McGee: Yeah, I think it’s, a- a- again, I credit culturally, how you approach these things, right? We, um-
[00:16:40] Mack McGee: … for many years, ran what we called a Defect Day.
[00:16:44] Mack McGee: And the idea was to kind of celebrate the ability to identify where were these things happening, right? The, the proverbial potholes in the road, if you will. and to your point, some of it was, all right, is there something wrong with the overall, like, structure of this road, and those are longer problems, that root cause problem solving. Sometimes it was like, how do we patch that, right? And, and you’ve got to, you’ve got to recognize the opportunity, to do both, and I think Defect Day was a great example of bringing the most basic things forward, that could be solved that made things easier for people, as well as identifying some of the things that we had to do much deeper dives on well beyond Defect Day, but became part of the roadmap of the things that we needed to invest in, to show up. Because again, people making decisions and then not understanding how that may show up.
[00:17:28] Mack McGee: You get into environments and, and meetings and opportunities like a Defect Day concept, and I, I tell you, it’s an eye-opening experience for folks that may have had no idea how that actually was impacting someone else down the line.
[00:17:40] Greg Kihlström: Well, and I think it, it, to your point, it takes both, right? It’s, it’s, you’ve got to … I, I think what, what I often see is just the, the defects get, get patched, and then everybody kind of moves on with their work or lives or, or whatever. So I mean, the fact that you would be able to address both … Again, sometimes a patch needs to happen immediately because it’s just, it’s a big, you know, to use the analogy, it’s a big pothole on the road, and, and it needs to get solved. But to also continually keep in mind that the underlying infrastructure should also … You know, there, there needs to be time for that as well. So, so I think that balance is, is key is, is what you’re saying.
[00:18:19] Mack McGee: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:20] Greg Kihlström: And, you know, so just thinking a little bit about the, the future, and certainly there’s, there’s a lot of, a lot of factors here in, in play, you know, talking about the future of healthcare here. You know, when someone says AI is gonna improve the ex- experience, that can mean a lot of different things, from a tool that helps an employee answer a question faster, a system that answers the customer on its own, and many, many other things. In a regulated space where a wrong clear answer has some real consequences, where are you… You know, wh- where is the thought process be- behind, you know, willing to, being willing to let automation act on the brand’s behalf? And where is a human, you know, still needed to stay in their seat?
[00:19:07] Mack McGee: Absolutely. yeah, I think there’s a lot of great opportunity. and I think, I think if anything, what you look at, with AI that I think really has caught, caught by storm more than anything is just the very human-level interaction, right? And, and it’s, uh-
[00:19:22] Mack McGee: … it’s funny to me. we talk about this as disrupting the very thing that I also think is, like, what’s most addicting about it to people is the real time-
[00:19:31] Mack McGee: … conversational elements you can have with, with so much of this. And so I think you have to look at that and go, “Okay, so that’s really what people are craving.” in our space, we’ve, we’ve gotta approach it carefully. but I also think it’s a, it’s a way for folks to engage more broadly, and I think if, if anyone’s monitoring and measuring what you’re hearing develop in the AI landscape, AI is as good as, as, as much as you put into it, right? And I tell people that all the time of, like, that’s really, for us, looking at, I think to deliver a better experience for us long term, when you zoom all the way out, it’s this idea, your experience strategy is also very much an engagement strategy.
[00:20:09] Mack McGee: And so my ability to convince Greg the member that if he’s not feeling well one day, he should open up his CareFirst app, and there’s a lot of great things that he can help with, depends on all of those other things I’ve done before that as to whether he thinks that’s better or he wants to open up, you know, Claude Health or ChatGPT and, and ask it.
[00:20:27] Mack McGee: And so, so for us, I think, as we move down the path, people have very human-oriented questions they wanna ask around their healthcare experience, and I think AI can enable a lot of that by sourcing from a lot of complex material that inevitably is not written in a consumer human-friendly way today. and I think people should expect that from us, that they should be able to interact and get reliable question sourcing from that data, in a, in a very short order in our experience strategy, so that they feel confident. ’cause I’ll tell you, in, in our focus groups and things we do, you still have a lot of people that for a lot of problems, they, they wanna be able to call in and talk to someone. They wanna have a name of someone they talked to. They wanna know that they got confirmation of something. They’re headed to an appointment. They wanna have a range of an estimate of what it’s gonna cost, or they just got care delivery services
[00:21:12] Mack McGee: done, and they wanna know what to… And so there’s a, there’s a lot of interaction I don’t see AI solving for for a while.
[00:21:18] Mack McGee: What I hope we can look at in this is there’s a lot of other basic queries and basic tasks people wanna get done or check in on that, that we should be able to leverage this technology set to help solve for, to clear space for people to have higher level touch and interactions with people that want that. And, and I think that’s really where we should expect our evolution. That’s where I’m most optimistic and bullish in our strategy. and going from there, you go further out down the line and you get into ultimately how is healthcare delivered to that N of one, that individual, and they can buy a product they feel like was designed for them, for their needs. and I think there’s some opportunities you can get into, but that’s further down the road. but I think that’s really where we’re looking to lean into that experience right now and
[00:22:03] Mack McGee: build opportunities for better engagement that creates more trust, even more trust than we’re even seeing in, in some really positive results the last two years, in the Forrester study, and really continue to lean into that opportunity and how that trust ultimately, ultimately plays out in a moment that matters down the line that has high implication cost on the outcomes of someone’s health and high implications in cost in terms of true dollars of delivering that care, and our right to sit in that moment with a member and serve them I think will be tested.
[00:22:33] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, I love that way of framing it. That’s great. Well, Mack, thanks so much for joining today and sharing your insights. I got two last questions for you as we wrap up-
[00:22:42] Greg Kihlström: … here. first one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:22:49] Mack McGee: Hopefully a third year of us being recognized [laughs] in the, uh-
[00:22:53] Mack McGee: … number one spot of the Forrester study. So I tell everybody, that’s the pressure of finishing number one, not just for one year, but two years now. But, you know, I appreciate what the study represents. I appreciate how it looks at both our customers and our non-customers and, and our right to win. And so, that would be a great accomplishment.
[00:23:08] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. Well, hey, let’s, let’s chat in a year and, and, I can congratulate you again. [laughs]
[00:23:13] Mack McGee: All right, Greg. Thanks for having me.
[00:23:15] Greg Kihlström: Wonderful. Yeah. And the very last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:23:22] Mack McGee: Yeah. I think for me, I love just kicking around to all the different parts of the business. I, I think, you know, I tell everybody it’s one thing I’ve probably enjoyed the most. For six years consistently in joining this organization, I get the opportunity to work in a lot of different spaces, and places inside of the business, and it allows me to bring those pieces back, to the main function that I’m asked to deliver on. and I just, I try not to take it for granted. I get to sit with super smart people, whether that’s understanding technology, whether that’s understanding the legal and public policy aspect of things, even down into the product design of what we do. and j- just the ability to continue to move throughout that and really see how it can show up and impact things, is a great opportunity that I try not to, try not to under-appreciate.
