The Challenge
New York State was launching their state health insurance exchange – the ObamaCare exchange, but the site was not tested enough for launch and we knew it was going to crash (and it did).
The Strategy
Katherine suspected the NY Health Exchange (NYStateofHealth.NY.gov) might have a bumpy launch.
While we were hired to provide social media promotion, we convinced the client to let us launch a social media customer support/crisis plan instead so that we could service NYers while the site was down.
We launched social media customer support across 4 handles:
- Google+
- YouTube
We also set up social media monitoring for the larger conversation around health in New York at the start of the campaign. We also integrated:
- Hootsuite
- Brandwatch
- Desk.com
That data allowed us to generate FAQs for the site, capture reviews and stamp out rumors that would have generated negative press.
Katherine wrote the social media protocol for the customer service team and the brand’s voice that should be used on the handles.
She also pulled together and trained a social media customer support team in less than 3 weeks. The effort was powered by a team of Ketchumites she trained who manned the handles for three months mirroring the call center’s hours (8am-8pm M-F and 8am-1 pm on Saturday).
The social media support and crisis plan was first put to the test when the health exchange was opened, as the site quickly was overwhelmed with traffic and crashed.
We worked to provide what information we could on the social media handles during that server crash, future crashes and planned server outages.
Based on our work directly with exchange customers and with the data for social media monitoring, we were able to alert the developer team to bugs and glitches that were reported on the social handles and were able to get them prioritized in the development queue.
The Results
As expected, the site crashed when it launched. However, the social media strategy worked.
The NY Exchange was one of the top enrolled health exchanges in the nation. By the end of the year Katherine transitioned the social media customer support role to an internal team that she helped recruit and train.