Overview

    FitLyfe has been encountering a growing number of prospective customers over the last year that have had a variety of issues with their current health and wellness program vendor-partners. These vendor-partners have primarily been in the large carrier space, which through their sheer size has resulted in very rigid product offerings that don’t readily, if even at all, meet the customer’s programmatic goals.

    This has been compounded by limited reporting capabilities and large fees for any requested needs that are determined to fall outside the scope of the contract design. In short, each of these customers have reported a scenario in which what was explained to them in the sales phase didn’t match the actual delivery.

    They subsequently found that in order to have a functioning health and wellness program they essentially had to morph their overall design to accommodate the vendor’s technical delivery capabilities. Plus, their set-budgets left them with few to no options for expensive, customized fees charged by the vendor to make the programs work for them. The ultimate outcome of their partner’s performance was low participation and engagement rates, lack of true partnership, and an unsustainable fee structure to course-correct the partner’s capabilities.

    These customers gave the vendor-partners several attempts to improve their performances; and after months to years of promises to do better, nothing changed with respect to service delivery and member engagement. After this long arc of hold the status quo, customers began to think more critically about their decisions to remain with the partners.

    Customer Concerns and Barriers

    Even with the subpar service they have received, these customers have reported concerns over transitioning to a new vendor-partner for a variety of reasons. Concerns have related to contractual obligations, loss of historic data, and the administrative drain placed on the organization to support a transition.

    FitLyfe’s Philosophy and Response

    FitLyfe has a truly customer and member centric point of view. Our position is that it actually does harm to our business if we were to force a customer to accommodate our capabilities. After all, isn’t your health and wellness technology partner here to serve you? We believe our market sector is heading for change; and we’re leading the way.

    Since inception, we have engineered our technology to the maximum level of flexibility, constantly injected smart automation to reduce your administrative burdens in managing your health and wellness programs, and promoted a “customer first” approach to providing excellence in customer service. We’re not here to push back; rather, we’re here to help in every aspect. Your success is ours; and we believe the future of our business depends on that key element.

    Through our experience in analyzing and onboarding these complex customer cases, we have developed a series of best practices to eliminate barriers to transition and ultimately drive success. With regards to contract obligations, we have helped customers view their legal options and either address those directly with the vendor or, giving more leverage, through their broker.

    Each of these customers has agreed that the cost of inaction has been greater than making a commitment to move forward in a new carrier direction. The subsequent efficiencies and increased engagement rates they have experienced have proven a key rationale for having made the tough, yet successful decision to change partners.

    The thought of losing historic participation data looms as a large barrier in anyone’s decision process. In that regard, FitLyfe has had tremendous success in extracting and mapping data histories from large carriers. In doing so, we have also had considerable breakthroughs in greatly reducing or totally eliminating high data extract fees from the incumbent. A little known secret in the industry is that no matter how the data is configured in a system it takes one person about five to 10 minutes to pull it out.

    Paying tens of thousands of dollars for this effort is ludicrous and should not be a decision factor to remain with an ineffective partner. FitLyfe has been able to represent the customer’s needs in this area by applying our technical expertise and demonstrating the lack of justification around these extreme fees. As to the administrative burden and “lift” of change that is typically placed on a customer, FitLyfe has developed a smoothly orchestrated approach that relies on technological automation and comprehensive account support to ensure that you aren’t distracted from your daily duties by being pulled into a major onboarding project.

    Results

    After having made the move to FitLyfe, our customers have been very satisfied with the ensuing results. The fear and dread of transitioning to a new vendor-partner was nowhere near as bad as assumed. FitLyfe lived up to its commitments of making the process easy and painless. And, we have the references to prove it.

    If you are dissatisfied with your current health and wellness partner and might be interested in speaking to a FitLyfe representative, please call us at 1-800-692-4415.