Evolent launched an initiative to reduce Customer Service (CS) man-hours by driving patient and provider traffic to existing portals. I was asked to partner with a new CS manager to identify ways to discourage unnecessary call-ins. While the initial plan focused on removing phone numbers and promoting portal use, my evaluation revealed that the portals themselves were ineffective and largely unusable.
MY ROLE
• Designed and implemented a research plan spanning all 13 B2B client accounts
• Coordinated with leaders across the company to align strategy and goals
• Led end user and stakeholder interviews, usability tests, and collaborative playback sessions
• Initiated and completed site visits and in-person interviews for provider offices
MY APPROACH
I conducted qualitative analysis of recorded customer service calls from three business lines — Medicare Advantage, ACA exchange, and Medicaid. This uncovered pain points driving call volume and allowed me to identify some “quick win” fixes addressing surface issues. However, the research revealed fundamental usability problems within the portals.
My insights reached executive leadership and shaped a strategic shift toward chatbot support, saving over $1M in management and development costs and improving member satisfaction by reducing friction in claims and authorizations workflows.
After reviewing and extracting data from several hours of calls, I audited the portals themselves. I suspected that the call drivers weren't simply usability issues, but a systemic mismatch between portal capabilities and health plan member and provider needs. To test this, I obtained access to all 26 portals (the first person ever in the company to do so) and combined qualitative analysis of live calls with portal audits.
I then designed and conducted benchmark usability tests with members on portals from all three lines of business on both desktop and mobile sites. Finally, I visited provider offices in person to interview them about their portal experience.
Provider office managers often missed scheduled remote interviews, and as a provider myself, I knew the best way to reach them was to show up in person and wait. That effort paid off. What I learned was striking: their most basic and pressing questions weren't answered online, making call-ins a frustrating necessity. While Evolent aimed to reduce calls volume, providers had no functional alternative and were being forced to waste time on the phone.
Some of the calls related to familiar scenarios. One man had been stuck in a rehab facility for two extra days because he couldn’t get a walker without insurance approval. He called Customer Service trying to reach his care coordinator, whose contact information had been lost in the shuffle. The representative couldn’t provide contact details or connect him.
As a result, our client (the health plan) paid for at least three unnecessary inpatient days, not because of medical complexity, but because critical contact information wasn’t available on the member portal or even in internal CS tools.
My research revealed that without a significant overhaul, the "hide the phone numbers" strategy would not only fail, but would also further frustrate users and potentially damage client relationships.
These are some of my most critical findings:
Leadership expected that portals would need minor upgrades. However, my research uncovered that the company portal template had been all but forgotten, and even what they thought were standard features had not been implemented across all markets. The Product Owner, development team, and market liasons for each client had instead worked in silos and modified each portal according to the client’s requests, which meant that upgrades and changes were not rolled out uniformly. To bring them up to modern usability standards with a common feature set would require an expensive overhaul.
My findings led Evolent to abandon a planned portal upgrade campaign in favor of a chatbot solution, ultimately saving over $1 million in implementation and communication costs. The research artifacts I created were shared with C-suite leaders and directly influenced the shift in strategy.
This project sharpened my ability to lead complex research efforts across business lines and global stakeholders, including executive audiences. It reinforced the importance of connecting design insights to business priorities, and taught me how to frame user experience findings in terms of cost, scalability, and long-term impact.
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