GuideWell is a not-for-profit mutual holding organization, which is the parent company to a family of organizations focused on transforming healthcare. GuideWell serves 38.5 million people across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, including more than 6 million individuals in Florida.

In her role as GuideWell’s executive vice president, Medicare and chief innovation and experience officer, Camille Harrison leads efforts to deliver members a seamless, personalized experience. Camille's professional journey began on the front lines of customer service 30 years ago when she started as a call center agent in New Jersey. Working alongside her mentor, Patrick (Pat) Geraghty, CEO of GuideWell Mutual Holding Company, paired with her exceptional dedication and expertise, enabled her to rise into leadership positions, eventually earning her place on GuideWell’s executive leadership team.

Recognizing that providing exceptional customer experience requires a tailored approach, Camille realized that a one-size-fits-all solution would not suffice. To bridge the gaps in their customers’ health journey, Camille enlisted Oliver Wyman to gain valuable insights into their Medicare customers' feedback, particularly in areas where they fell short of their own expectations. This valuable knowledge empowered Camille and her teams to make informed decisions and implement targeted improvements to enhance the overall customer experience for Medicare members.

Watch the video to discover how we assisted in measuring success. Plus, explore GuideWell’s approach to mergers and acquisitions, the influence of artificial intelligence, the role and challenges of an aging population in healthcare, and the importance of mentorship.

Camille Harrison: Don't apologize for having an opinion because there's enough room for all of us. There is no competition. There's so much room for all of us.

Deirdre Baggot: My name is Deirdre Baggot. I'm a partner in Health and Life Sciences at Oliver Wyman. And with me today is my dear friend and colleague, Camille Harrison. Camille is Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Experience Officer at GuideWell. Welcome.

Camille: Thank you.

Deirdre: Take me back to where it started.

Camille: The irony of us meeting here today is that two days ago, I celebrated my 30 year anniversary in this industry, and I started on the night-shift in customer service. And here I am 30 years later sitting here with you talking about this career journey. And it's interesting because I started in customer service talking to seniors. So I was the customer service representative for seniors, and here I am now responsible for the P&L of our business for our senior market. And so it's really exciting. It's actually really humbling, this opportunity to really make a difference.

Deirdre: Can you talk about not being afraid to challenge the status quo? Share an example in your career.

Camille: I'm fortunate that I work inside of a company who doesn't like the status quo. So it's not that complicated a task to accomplish. But I will say in a high performing organization that's been incredibly successful for a really long time, it's difficult sometimes to say we have to do something different. And when you think about our experience journey, we started out with very little insights about our customer eight years ago, right? Very little specific detail. And now in the moment that is happening, we can get insights about what's happening and have the opportunity to intervene, but then you reach a point where you plateau, you figure out all of the low hanging fruit, you fix all of those things. And now what? And so now we're on this journey of saying we were in a journey operating model where we looked at the journeys, a customer experiences in our healthcare system, and we tried to design experiences that would be frictionless. Again, we plateaued in that way and we started to go more functional again. And so now we said we have to lift our head up and say, okay, what are the very specific moments that matter to our customers in their journey? And those very complicated situations inside and outside of our four walls. And now we have these moments that matter that our customers told us matter. So we identified the top 10 moments that matter, we prioritize the top three and we're going after those. And that means we have to coordinate with hospital systems, providers, pharmaceutical, everywhere. So that when we think about how is a customer experiencing a particular task that spans beyond our organization, and the ability to be able to go deep with our partners and help them understand how the customer is experiencing their experience has been incredibly powerful.

Deirdre: So let's get into your role, as Executive Vice President for Medicare in one of the most competitive markets in the country, right? Tell us how you think about growth and then maybe mergers and acquisitions as part of your growth strategy.

Camille: I actually appreciate how our organization thinks about M&A inside our organization because the customer is at the center of every decision that we make, and it's really about the proximity to what we're trying to accomplish to create a frictionless experience for our customers. And so we ask ourselves, do we need to own it to create that experience? Do we need to partner? Can we have a strategic partnership that gets us there? Do need a minority or majority ownership? Do we need to buy it outright? And in order to reach that north star of an affordable, frictionless experience, where does this asset fit in that continuum? And that helps us determine how we want to approach that opportunity, because ultimately that's what we want. That's our responsibility to our customers to make sure that it's easy. Because at the end of the day, healthcare is complicated. It's scary. And more times than not, when they reach out to us, it's probably the scariest time of their life. And we've got to be prepared for that. And we can't allow partnerships or vendor relationships to get in the way of our ability to create that end-to-end experience for our customers. We're not there yet, but we've come a long way in trying to make sure that they feel cared for in that healthcare journey.

Deirdre: Baby Boomers aging into Medicare every day. Why is it so personal to you the commitment that you make to seniors?

Camille: Because you think about seniors, especially because some of them are very vulnerable, but in general, customers when they buy insurance, they're buying a promise. All they get is an ID card in exchange for signing up until they need something. And so it's important that when they need something that we're there not only that we're there, but that we can help them anticipate what they're going to need. So every part of that journey, some of the research that we've done over the years have helped us understand that when someone signs up and you send them a ton of information, they don’t read it. We know though, when they make that first doctor's appointment, there's certain things that they need to be prepared with. Sending them that information just in time makes it a more relevant experience. And so we spend time constantly talking to customers present and past to understand what worked and what didn't work for them. And we use that information to get better about the experiences that we create for them, knowing that, again, healthcare is scary and it's personal, and we've got to understand what you need when you need it, and be there when you need it. Deidre Baggot: Talk about the timeline and your experience in working with Oliver Wyman.

Camille: I will. It is been interesting. When you sign up to be in a relationship like this one, you have to be prepared to look at yourself in the mirror and admire your warts because you're going to be told the truth about what's working and what's not. And that was important at the juncture we were, because as I indicated, our CX experience has been one for the books. We are really proud of the journey that we've taken in customer experience, but the reality is it doesn't always show up in every survey. And in our case, we got the surprise around our CAHPS performance and to our dismay because when you look at every other metric, we were performing very well with that same population. And so we had to dig deep and go, what's happening? Why can't we figure this out? And so the partnership that we had was important because you helped us take a step back and stop reading our own headlines to really understand what's underneath the feedback that we were getting in that survey. Part of it is the methodology, no question, but some of it has to do with how we were approaching the responses and the improvements for our customer and how they were perceiving that. So really trying to get in and understand because when you look at the root cause analysis around NPS results or after call satisfaction and CAHPS, all of the root cause data was saying the same issues were prevalent, but it was how we were going about solving for that. That was the gap, and that was what you guys helped us identify more than anything, it was about getting organized around that work. It was a full-on campaign for our organization to understand. Everyone played a role in our ability to move those results and creating a governance model that allowed us to manage that, to communicate that, to have a campaign, a structured campaign around it so that people understood what is my individual role in improving this specific line item and this specific plan to achieve that result. Also, the discipline around measuring the efficacy of what we implement and whether or not it actually worked quickly and being able to quickly adjust, recognizing that we need a czar inside our organization who woke up every single day worried about CAHPS, worried about that work plan, worried about the results in each of those line items. And it helped the organization rally around it, creating a reward program that allowed people to celebrate their contribution to the improvements. And frankly, when we started this journey, we thought it would impact the next year results. It turned out we started in, I guess November and CAHPS kicked-off in March and we're like, no, the things we're doing are great, but they're only going to impact us in the subsequent year. And it turned out it had an immediate impact on the CAHPS results that we got for this year. So we're really grateful for that partnership and it's grown and continues to grow because we see the value in that outside and perspective, that honest broker who can help us understand what we're doing that works and the things that don't.

Deirdre: It's been our honor to support you. Talk a little bit about the path forward. I had love to get your thoughts on Generative AI. We've had a lot of discussion around the customer. Tell us what you're thinking about the future of customer experience as it relates to Gen AI.

Camille: It's exciting when you think about some of the things that we used to do years past around robotics, trying to figure out the routine nature of things that people do. To have a robot do that, to serve up the more complicated work, the same premise exists with Generative AI just on a higher level, when you think about the opportunity to use the mindshare of the talent of our organization on those things that are most complex, that require human intervention, that require human compassion, you save those for your talent and all of the routine mundane activity, those things that take them away from being able to do that, we've found every opportunity we can to do that. And the cool part of it is are their ideas from the employees doing the work, right? So they're thinking about their work differently. How can I remove redundancy and allow myself the opportunity to be creative and innovative to improve the work that I deliver for the organization? But we took it beyond that and we're thinking about the relationship between our providers and their members, their patient, and when they have that interaction and the doctors, you're in the doctor's office and you're trying to have a moment and they turn to the computer and start typing now that's recorded. And then we go voice to text and create those notes for them. When you get those instructions, when you leave the doctor's office and you go, well, what am I doing with this? Now, they get more personalized instructions that are relevant to them in all of the notes that are in their record that makes it more real for them and more applicable when they leave that office. So you have this opportunity to have more engagement when they leave the office. We always talk about that last mile. That's where people fall apart in the healthcare ecosystem because you get from what point A to point B, but then that next step, you are left alone to figure out how to accomplish it. We're leveraging that capability to be able to help people do that more meaningful and more real time.

Deirdre: How important has mentorship and allyship been to your professional success?

Camille: Incredibly important. And my story as it relates to my relationship with Pat and him being my sponsor, and I didn't even know for many years of my career. And so him seeing me, and when I say that, I mean truly seeing me has made the world of difference in my career in terms of his ability to seek and seek out opportunities for me to stretch myself beyond even what I thought possible for myself. And so it's been incredibly important, one to my confidence, but certainly to my ability to achieve higher levels of performance. And it's interesting because my life lessons, like my grandma used to say to me, close mouths don't get fed. But she also told me not to brag, right? And that being self-promotion. So when you think about what happens to women in our career is there's this unconscious message sent to us that says, speak when spoken to, put your head down and work hard. Wait for someone to acknowledge your strengths and capabilities and give you the opportunity. But what I've learned in my career and certainly working with Pat is that you have to articulate what you want. You have to speak into existence what you want, and you've got to work hard for it. And you've got to be present and proud when you actually have those accomplishments and you don't turn away or shy away from it because people are watching, especially young professionals who are trying to figure their way out in corporate America. But when you do have that opportunity and someone does pour into you, you have an obligation, a responsibility to reach back and pour into as many people as you possibly can because there's enough room for all of us. There is no competition. There's so much room for all of us to do good that as long as you embrace that, There's so much room for all of us to do good that as long as you embrace that, great things happen. Deirdre Baggot? Any advice you would have for females in healthcare?

Camille: Yes, oh my gosh, so much. But what I think I would narrow it down to is be fierce and fearless. Be comfortable in your own skin. It took me way too long to get comfortable in my own skin, but when you do, it's so liberating and it's a gift that you give to the people that you work with because you're giving your authentic self every single time. And the power of being able to bring every single part of yourself to work is amazing. And what you can do and contribute is also amazing. So I would say just don't apologize for having an opinion, a contrarian opinion in many respects, because women have a different point of view. Women make the majority of decisions in their family, especially in healthcare. So when you are at that healthcare executive table, it's your responsibility to represent the interests of the women that are around you and women that you represent as far as insurance goes.

Deirdre: It's been such an incredible pleasure to have this time with you. Your story is inspiring and it's been terrific fun for our team to work alongside of your team over the last several months. So thank you.

Camille: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

This transcript was edited for clarity

GuideWell is a not-for-profit mutual holding organization, which is the parent company to a family of organizations focused on transforming healthcare. GuideWell serves 38.5 million people across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, including more than 6 million individuals in Florida.

In her role as GuideWell’s executive vice president, Medicare and chief innovation and experience officer, Camille Harrison leads efforts to deliver members a seamless, personalized experience. Camille's professional journey began on the front lines of customer service 30 years ago when she started as a call center agent in New Jersey. Working alongside her mentor, Patrick (Pat) Geraghty, CEO of GuideWell Mutual Holding Company, paired with her exceptional dedication and expertise, enabled her to rise into leadership positions, eventually earning her place on GuideWell’s executive leadership team.

Recognizing that providing exceptional customer experience requires a tailored approach, Camille realized that a one-size-fits-all solution would not suffice. To bridge the gaps in their customers’ health journey, Camille enlisted Oliver Wyman to gain valuable insights into their Medicare customers' feedback, particularly in areas where they fell short of their own expectations. This valuable knowledge empowered Camille and her teams to make informed decisions and implement targeted improvements to enhance the overall customer experience for Medicare members.

Watch the video to discover how we assisted in measuring success. Plus, explore GuideWell’s approach to mergers and acquisitions, the influence of artificial intelligence, the role and challenges of an aging population in healthcare, and the importance of mentorship.

Camille Harrison: Don't apologize for having an opinion because there's enough room for all of us. There is no competition. There's so much room for all of us.

Deirdre Baggot: My name is Deirdre Baggot. I'm a partner in Health and Life Sciences at Oliver Wyman. And with me today is my dear friend and colleague, Camille Harrison. Camille is Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Experience Officer at GuideWell. Welcome.

Camille: Thank you.

Deirdre: Take me back to where it started.

Camille: The irony of us meeting here today is that two days ago, I celebrated my 30 year anniversary in this industry, and I started on the night-shift in customer service. And here I am 30 years later sitting here with you talking about this career journey. And it's interesting because I started in customer service talking to seniors. So I was the customer service representative for seniors, and here I am now responsible for the P&L of our business for our senior market. And so it's really exciting. It's actually really humbling, this opportunity to really make a difference.

Deirdre: Can you talk about not being afraid to challenge the status quo? Share an example in your career.

Camille: I'm fortunate that I work inside of a company who doesn't like the status quo. So it's not that complicated a task to accomplish. But I will say in a high performing organization that's been incredibly successful for a really long time, it's difficult sometimes to say we have to do something different. And when you think about our experience journey, we started out with very little insights about our customer eight years ago, right? Very little specific detail. And now in the moment that is happening, we can get insights about what's happening and have the opportunity to intervene, but then you reach a point where you plateau, you figure out all of the low hanging fruit, you fix all of those things. And now what? And so now we're on this journey of saying we were in a journey operating model where we looked at the journeys, a customer experiences in our healthcare system, and we tried to design experiences that would be frictionless. Again, we plateaued in that way and we started to go more functional again. And so now we said we have to lift our head up and say, okay, what are the very specific moments that matter to our customers in their journey? And those very complicated situations inside and outside of our four walls. And now we have these moments that matter that our customers told us matter. So we identified the top 10 moments that matter, we prioritize the top three and we're going after those. And that means we have to coordinate with hospital systems, providers, pharmaceutical, everywhere. So that when we think about how is a customer experiencing a particular task that spans beyond our organization, and the ability to be able to go deep with our partners and help them understand how the customer is experiencing their experience has been incredibly powerful.

Deirdre: So let's get into your role, as Executive Vice President for Medicare in one of the most competitive markets in the country, right? Tell us how you think about growth and then maybe mergers and acquisitions as part of your growth strategy.

Camille: I actually appreciate how our organization thinks about M&A inside our organization because the customer is at the center of every decision that we make, and it's really about the proximity to what we're trying to accomplish to create a frictionless experience for our customers. And so we ask ourselves, do we need to own it to create that experience? Do we need to partner? Can we have a strategic partnership that gets us there? Do need a minority or majority ownership? Do we need to buy it outright? And in order to reach that north star of an affordable, frictionless experience, where does this asset fit in that continuum? And that helps us determine how we want to approach that opportunity, because ultimately that's what we want. That's our responsibility to our customers to make sure that it's easy. Because at the end of the day, healthcare is complicated. It's scary. And more times than not, when they reach out to us, it's probably the scariest time of their life. And we've got to be prepared for that. And we can't allow partnerships or vendor relationships to get in the way of our ability to create that end-to-end experience for our customers. We're not there yet, but we've come a long way in trying to make sure that they feel cared for in that healthcare journey.

Deirdre: Baby Boomers aging into Medicare every day. Why is it so personal to you the commitment that you make to seniors?

Camille: Because you think about seniors, especially because some of them are very vulnerable, but in general, customers when they buy insurance, they're buying a promise. All they get is an ID card in exchange for signing up until they need something. And so it's important that when they need something that we're there not only that we're there, but that we can help them anticipate what they're going to need. So every part of that journey, some of the research that we've done over the years have helped us understand that when someone signs up and you send them a ton of information, they don’t read it. We know though, when they make that first doctor's appointment, there's certain things that they need to be prepared with. Sending them that information just in time makes it a more relevant experience. And so we spend time constantly talking to customers present and past to understand what worked and what didn't work for them. And we use that information to get better about the experiences that we create for them, knowing that, again, healthcare is scary and it's personal, and we've got to understand what you need when you need it, and be there when you need it. Deidre Baggot: Talk about the timeline and your experience in working with Oliver Wyman.

Camille: I will. It is been interesting. When you sign up to be in a relationship like this one, you have to be prepared to look at yourself in the mirror and admire your warts because you're going to be told the truth about what's working and what's not. And that was important at the juncture we were, because as I indicated, our CX experience has been one for the books. We are really proud of the journey that we've taken in customer experience, but the reality is it doesn't always show up in every survey. And in our case, we got the surprise around our CAHPS performance and to our dismay because when you look at every other metric, we were performing very well with that same population. And so we had to dig deep and go, what's happening? Why can't we figure this out? And so the partnership that we had was important because you helped us take a step back and stop reading our own headlines to really understand what's underneath the feedback that we were getting in that survey. Part of it is the methodology, no question, but some of it has to do with how we were approaching the responses and the improvements for our customer and how they were perceiving that. So really trying to get in and understand because when you look at the root cause analysis around NPS results or after call satisfaction and CAHPS, all of the root cause data was saying the same issues were prevalent, but it was how we were going about solving for that. That was the gap, and that was what you guys helped us identify more than anything, it was about getting organized around that work. It was a full-on campaign for our organization to understand. Everyone played a role in our ability to move those results and creating a governance model that allowed us to manage that, to communicate that, to have a campaign, a structured campaign around it so that people understood what is my individual role in improving this specific line item and this specific plan to achieve that result. Also, the discipline around measuring the efficacy of what we implement and whether or not it actually worked quickly and being able to quickly adjust, recognizing that we need a czar inside our organization who woke up every single day worried about CAHPS, worried about that work plan, worried about the results in each of those line items. And it helped the organization rally around it, creating a reward program that allowed people to celebrate their contribution to the improvements. And frankly, when we started this journey, we thought it would impact the next year results. It turned out we started in, I guess November and CAHPS kicked-off in March and we're like, no, the things we're doing are great, but they're only going to impact us in the subsequent year. And it turned out it had an immediate impact on the CAHPS results that we got for this year. So we're really grateful for that partnership and it's grown and continues to grow because we see the value in that outside and perspective, that honest broker who can help us understand what we're doing that works and the things that don't.

Deirdre: It's been our honor to support you. Talk a little bit about the path forward. I had love to get your thoughts on Generative AI. We've had a lot of discussion around the customer. Tell us what you're thinking about the future of customer experience as it relates to Gen AI.

Camille: It's exciting when you think about some of the things that we used to do years past around robotics, trying to figure out the routine nature of things that people do. To have a robot do that, to serve up the more complicated work, the same premise exists with Generative AI just on a higher level, when you think about the opportunity to use the mindshare of the talent of our organization on those things that are most complex, that require human intervention, that require human compassion, you save those for your talent and all of the routine mundane activity, those things that take them away from being able to do that, we've found every opportunity we can to do that. And the cool part of it is are their ideas from the employees doing the work, right? So they're thinking about their work differently. How can I remove redundancy and allow myself the opportunity to be creative and innovative to improve the work that I deliver for the organization? But we took it beyond that and we're thinking about the relationship between our providers and their members, their patient, and when they have that interaction and the doctors, you're in the doctor's office and you're trying to have a moment and they turn to the computer and start typing now that's recorded. And then we go voice to text and create those notes for them. When you get those instructions, when you leave the doctor's office and you go, well, what am I doing with this? Now, they get more personalized instructions that are relevant to them in all of the notes that are in their record that makes it more real for them and more applicable when they leave that office. So you have this opportunity to have more engagement when they leave the office. We always talk about that last mile. That's where people fall apart in the healthcare ecosystem because you get from what point A to point B, but then that next step, you are left alone to figure out how to accomplish it. We're leveraging that capability to be able to help people do that more meaningful and more real time.

Deirdre: How important has mentorship and allyship been to your professional success?

Camille: Incredibly important. And my story as it relates to my relationship with Pat and him being my sponsor, and I didn't even know for many years of my career. And so him seeing me, and when I say that, I mean truly seeing me has made the world of difference in my career in terms of his ability to seek and seek out opportunities for me to stretch myself beyond even what I thought possible for myself. And so it's been incredibly important, one to my confidence, but certainly to my ability to achieve higher levels of performance. And it's interesting because my life lessons, like my grandma used to say to me, close mouths don't get fed. But she also told me not to brag, right? And that being self-promotion. So when you think about what happens to women in our career is there's this unconscious message sent to us that says, speak when spoken to, put your head down and work hard. Wait for someone to acknowledge your strengths and capabilities and give you the opportunity. But what I've learned in my career and certainly working with Pat is that you have to articulate what you want. You have to speak into existence what you want, and you've got to work hard for it. And you've got to be present and proud when you actually have those accomplishments and you don't turn away or shy away from it because people are watching, especially young professionals who are trying to figure their way out in corporate America. But when you do have that opportunity and someone does pour into you, you have an obligation, a responsibility to reach back and pour into as many people as you possibly can because there's enough room for all of us. There is no competition. There's so much room for all of us to do good that as long as you embrace that, There's so much room for all of us to do good that as long as you embrace that, great things happen. Deirdre Baggot? Any advice you would have for females in healthcare?

Camille: Yes, oh my gosh, so much. But what I think I would narrow it down to is be fierce and fearless. Be comfortable in your own skin. It took me way too long to get comfortable in my own skin, but when you do, it's so liberating and it's a gift that you give to the people that you work with because you're giving your authentic self every single time. And the power of being able to bring every single part of yourself to work is amazing. And what you can do and contribute is also amazing. So I would say just don't apologize for having an opinion, a contrarian opinion in many respects, because women have a different point of view. Women make the majority of decisions in their family, especially in healthcare. So when you are at that healthcare executive table, it's your responsibility to represent the interests of the women that are around you and women that you represent as far as insurance goes.

Deirdre: It's been such an incredible pleasure to have this time with you. Your story is inspiring and it's been terrific fun for our team to work alongside of your team over the last several months. So thank you.

Camille: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

This transcript was edited for clarity