Rajesh Subramaniam has always been the "numbers guy." He leveraged his early aptitude into professional success, currently as CEO of ResultsCX.
The discussion delves into the challenges and advancements in customer experience within the healthcare sector. Emphasizing the industry's shift towards a more consumer-centric model, we explore critical topics such as customer retention, the integration of omnichannel strategies, and balancing digital and personal customer interactions. This episode provides a comprehensive examination of the methods employed to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, showcasing the pivotal role of companies like Results CX in guiding the healthcare industry's future.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
Rajesh Subramaniam has always been the "numbers guy." He leveraged his early aptitude into professional success, currently as CEO of ResultsCX.
The discussion delves into the challenges and advancements in customer experience within the healthcare sector. Emphasizing the industry's shift towards a more consumer-centric model, we explore critical topics such as customer retention, the integration of omnichannel strategies, and balancing digital and personal customer interactions. This episode provides a comprehensive examination of the methods employed to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, showcasing the pivotal role of companies like Results CX in guiding the healthcare industry's future.
Host David E. Williams is president of healthcare strategy consulting firm Health Business Group. Produced by Dafna Williams.
0:00:10 - David Williams
Advanced data analytics and AI are finally enabling healthcare organizations to personalize treatment plans, predict health trends and reduce gaps in care. If done right, that means lower costs, better care and improved outcomes. Today's guest is Rajesh Subramaniam, ceo of Results CX, which strives to use this approach to transform healthcare, making it more accessible, efficient and effective. Hi everyone, I'm David Williams, president of Strategy Consulting from Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz podcast, a weekly show where I interview top healthcare leaders about their lives and careers. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave a review. Rajesh, welcome to the Health Biz podcast.
0:00:52 - Rajesh Subramaniam
It's good to be here, David. Thanks and really appreciate you having me on the show.
0:00:56 - David Williams
Absolutely. Let's start from the beginning, and that is your beginning, and I'd love to hear about your childhood, what that was like and any childhood influences that have stuck with you throughout your career.
0:01:06 - Rajesh Subramaniam
No childhood was came from very humble beginnings. Unfortunately lost my father very early in my growing up years, so my mom has been the rock who's raised both my sister and I, and she was a school teacher and and, yeah, I've always had the strappings of trying to break the shackles and move up and improve my own quality of life. And you know that's. You know that Rolling Stone gathers its own moss, and that's what I did.
0:01:42 - David Williams
Sounds good. And what did you do in terms of education, which is often part of that type of a story?
0:01:47 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah. So education, I studied accounting and commerce. I always had a natural affinity with numbers because you know numbers tell you there's no subjectivity in when numbers add up. So and that ingrained a little bit of a logical mind in the way I go about dealing with my life. Can be exasperating for a lot of people because you know there's so many shades of gray that one misses out when you're looking at things in a binary world.
0:02:19 - David Williams
So yeah, so I see on your LinkedIn it says you know you call yourself the numbers guy, and what I wonder is that it sounds like that is something you embrace, but did you give yourself that name, or did someone start calling you that and you just decided to keep it for yourself as your moniker?
0:02:35 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah. So somebody said yeah, you'll get it, You're the numbers guy. Yeah, no, you'll get it, You'll get the numbers guy. So in any discussions, be it on strategy capital allocation, be it you know, new markets to enter, be it you know this is throughout my career, you know whether I was, you know, as an M&A consultant, whether I was, you know, in the private equity world, venture world, hey, okay, you're the numbers guy, what do?
0:03:02 - David Williams
you think of this, so you know it always came back to.
0:03:05 - Rajesh Subramaniam
You know all these socialism is discussed, and when it has to make sense, you're the numbers guy, doesn't?
0:03:10 - David Williams
make sense. And then they just talk with me. That sounds good. Well, I'll have to have the letters guy on the show at some point as well, but we'll, we'll stick with you for the moment. So early career I saw you had. It was a company initially. I think I was going to ask you how I pronounce it, because it says I see, I see I now, given what you said, maybe that's Roman numerals and I'm supposed to just give it as a number. But what was that?
0:03:31 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah, yeah, so I see, I see, was the actually the industry credit and investment corporation of India. So so that's the acronym for ICICI. It started as an institution to invest in infrastructure and development finance projects in India to improve the quality of, you know, access to power, roads, infrastructure and help companies build capacity to for to drive the consumption driven demand in India in the early years. And from being a development financial institution it morphed itself into a wider universal bank. So that's why what was industrial credit and investment corporation of India became ICICI and it became a universal bank. So it was not just the monoline direct DFI institution but it was more of a universal bank. So that's, that's ICICI for you.
0:04:23 - David Williams
That sounds good. You know, sometimes the organizations start with using initials and then they either change what the initials mean or they get rid of it, and completely, because I think MCI was originally a microwave communications incorporated and then eventually just MCI. You know, that's just gonna, that's gonna do more than microwave communications. So that's yeah well, it MCI exactly. So then I saw you were at First Source and then Walden and then back to First Source. So talk about that journey a little bit if you would.
0:04:49 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah, so I see, I see I was in charge of curating and setting up the BPO project as a part of the International Business Group which was led by the then joint managing director and chief operating officer of the bank, and we're a small team and I say the beauty of what I say is it's a pretty entrepreneurial organization. Everything needs to get done in 90 days and once you get to a go, no go decision, and if it's a go, the whole organization supports you. It's like an entrepreneurial journey and you get projects kicked off and off the ground. So so BPO was one of the more strategic projects which was identified by, I say, to create a pretty viable and valuable third party business, and I was in charge of that project and hence, you know, it was ICICI One Source. When we started, I was the first employer of the company, I was head of corporate development and strategy and the CEO and I, you know, we built it up to its IPO in 2007 and we created a company which was worth about a billion dollars in 2008 and, yeah, and given ICICI had sold down its stake, the right to use their name went away, you know, once their ownership threshold fell below 51%. So that's when we re-christened ourselves as first source and as we were scaling and ICICI's ambitions in international markets were scaling, we didn't want the ability of not being able to work with international banks because they perceived ICICI as competition to them. So it all came back to say that it made sense and Co-Town Miners. With our IPO, the branding of first source took off significantly and that's how the name first source was. So I was in CFO.
When I left first source, I believed that I played my journey of seeing a company right from a business plan with some money in the bank to go in and create a business and we did that. And then I wanted to get back into the venture world and use the experiences of how to build a company and try and help the fledging technology community in India that time and time to get to the next level. So, and that's how I joined Walden and Walden was actually among the earliest Silicon Valley VCs in India, along with Draper Fisher, juen and you know they've been in India for a while and there were some common connects that connected us to the chairman and we kept in touch for six months. He offered me the role of a general partner in the fund that they were investing in. I took the role, became a VC, made some investments and then first source got into deep trouble.
I mean, the whole management team that I created the company had pretty much left at the company. It just got into a hole which it wasn't able to extricate itself out of. There was a lot of noise at the board level, at the shareholder level and at the operating level. So then the early members of the board that remained in the organization got me back to help turn around the business and it was a great challenge. As a venture capitalist I was having fun, but I didn't enjoy the thought that I was putting the control of my destiny in someone else's hand. I want control of my own destiny, so maybe I'm not cut out for venture investing. And I came back to the operating world.
0:08:18 - David Williams
Turn around the business with market cap was Is this next thing that we're talking about now?
0:08:25 - Rajesh Subramaniam
No, I say first source, so turn around the source from $55 million. To when I left, it was close to about a billion dollars in market cap. God board, and that's when I set up next thing, which led to the next chapter of where I am.
0:08:39 - David Williams
Got it. And what is next thing? And what was next?
0:08:43 - Rajesh Subramaniam
thing is is the art of predicting future outcomes with external stimuli. That's what it means. So, if you look at the meaning of next thing, that's what it means. So, basically, the whole BPO industry was ripe for disruption. I had seen it up close, yeah, that the level of digital interventions that one could bring in was almost like the difference between back to the future one and back to the future two. So, yeah, clearly saw that you know the art of what can happen in industries that were digitally naive, which were pretty lot of them, and that's why the thesis of next thing was to create a next generation business process outsourcing organization that goes into traditional businesses and enables a level of disruptions that drives superior outcomes while reducing costs to sell.
0:09:35 - David Williams
Great, okay, and then results CX. So what's the reason to found the company? I understand you have like a personal drive and a vision, but what was the big unmet need in the market that caused you to go in that direction? Absolutely so I didn't found the company.
0:09:51 - Rajesh Subramaniam
The company has been in existence for more than 30 years, but we acquired the company because we really liked the work they did and the impact they made for their customers and their customers' customers. So they were pretty big in healthcare. Healthcare pair Again, it's an industry which was is relatively digitally naive compared to some of the other more digitally native industries like consumer tech or even financial services. Put the regulatory on will look around that industry and we fundamentally believe that the whole healthcare industry in America has got so many inefficiencies you know be it on the provider side, be it on the payer side.
Now what happens is when there are two big 800 pound gorillas that are trying to solve their problem, which is the provider and the payer, you know people ignore and forget about the member.
I mean, you know, if there's a patient at the end of it needs the care the patient needs to figure out how are they going to go through the process? Because it's traumatic. I mean, when you're sick and you've gone through a process and you filed a claim, you need to get the claim paid, you need to put your copay out. Sometimes you can't meet the copay obligations. How do you? So there's a lot of trauma that goes in. So the focus we fundamentally believe was there was going to be a pivot to the member experience because the way Obamacare was metamorphosizing and the rules and regulations were changing, the focus and the balance of power between payer and provider was going to be moving more towards the member. And that's why results CX, with the customer franchise they had and the impact they were making, was the right platform for us to enter and drive change that we believe will improve the experiences of the member.
0:11:33 - David Williams
That's interesting. You know, healthcare of course, is different in a few ways. One is the third party payments, which also makes that end. You know, user, a customer, not necessarily the one that's making the payment. And there's also the kind of the paternalistic view of medicine where you've got the doctor and the patient. So I think it's a good insight to have. I think about other industries that are, you know what is like as bad as healthcare, and there isn't much. But one I sometimes think about is like the utility industry. You know we talk about people. The customer would be a rate payer. You know it's not a user of electricity, it's just someone who pays the bill.
0:12:10 - Rajesh Subramaniam
And then why is it so? Because most of them have been sellers market. I mean, imagine, can you be without your electricity? So you know you are, you are. So it's a sellers market where and then regulations come and then smart metering comes in. Then there is a level of variability. Then there are new age players that come in that create the equivalent of you know MVNOs, where they're able to trade power and buy capacity and they focus on customer experience. They're able to win away from traditional utilities to new utilities and that's the game which is happening. Never take customers for granted, because there will be an inflection point, either through an external stimuli, which could be regulatory stimuli, could be technology stimuli, which allows somebody to come and eat your lunch if you're not taking care of your customers.
0:12:59 - David Williams
I think one of the things that happens as well is that you know a given person that's a patient, they're also a rate payer, and they're also someone who has a wonderful experience when they go to the Apple store somewhere else. So they know what it's like to be a consumer, to be treated properly, absolutely. Very well said. So what is this concept of CX and how do you think about the challenges of supplying a proper CX in today's environment?
0:13:25 - Rajesh Subramaniam
CX is customer experience. So if you take a look at the evolution of CX, it started as call centers and call centers were associated with tele sales. The first initial wave was acquiring. You get hit with 100 calls saying you want to buy a credit card, you want to mortgage, you want to insurance, you want to fly ticket, and then the DNC regulations came in and from there the call centers went into a customer service, basically using this channel, so that people knew that they didn't have to use a post box to go in and find ways of how they can handle their grievances. So it started as a call center which was more outbound, moved into inbound customer service and then it moved into being a contact center which is using multiple channels of interaction.
So it's not just you're talking to someone, you're helping someone through messaging, through email, you're using web chat, you're using other low cost channels to engage in a customer, and then you know which kind of work could be done in different locations.
So can I move work to Philippines, to India, to Guatemala, to Vietnam, where I can get a lower cost and yet where customer service is a little innate compared to the geographies where you can get that same experience, but the problem with those geographies is they don't have the ability to solve for complex claims, complex calls, because it's not native to their living. So if an Amazon contact center or a Netflix contact center in Philippines will have the same kind of results as in America, or probably lower, because people consume Netflix and Amazon in Philippines the same way they do it in America. So that's in affiliation, there's a homogeneity in the consumption which allows them to identify with the pain points or why somebody is trying to get their problem solved. And then, but you take that to health care. American health care is very different from what somebody is used to in Philippines or India so that's why you have to figure out what is the right kind of business.
You put in with geographies to ensure you get the customer experience and then moving the contact center to customer experience, which is where you're not looking at a way for somebody to call in and solve them. You're trying to ensure that you can sell more into them. You start looking at segmentation strategies. I call customers in three buckets. Customers is a promoter, because they love the brand. They stay with the brand. In respect to what then? They are passive. They don't care. As long as it works, my credit card works. I don't care whether I'm with the Capital One or a JB Morgan or an AmEx or a Bank of America, it doesn't care.
My card works or I'm a detractor. Whatever you do, I'm going to be unhappy. I'm just that kind, I'm made that way. So the question is the customer experience looks to more people across buckets. It looks to make the detractors passive, make the passive into promoters and that cycle it comes in with using data insights, using what makes somebody happy. Why is somebody coming in? What is the problems I can solve? Using AI to predict what is the conversation going to be? Making sure the person that's solving the problem has all the tools in place so that somebody who comes in with a problem, you solve it and they go out happy and they are happy with the brand.
Somebody who comes in, not too, happy becomes unhappier after the conversation, the chance is that the customer is going to lose. That customer is very high.
0:16:59 - David Williams
Sometimes I get these surveys after having a customer experience interaction and I don't always want to fill them out because sometimes, when I'm filling it out, I feel like that the individual on the other side may well have been trying and that they were not equipped with the right sort of a tool to be successful. I don't want to evaluate them and say they did a bad job. Is that fair of me?
0:17:22 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah, no, I think that is one plus even a very well trained agent, the algorithms. Today, I mean, even I lose patience if I have to answer 15 questions at the end of a conversation. I don't have time because my job is done. But if that 15 questions can be brought on to three questions, which gives the same outcome as 15 questions, yeah, can you imagine? And that's where the CX algorithm and AI comes in. That's where generative AI comes in and that's how it accelerates the ability to enable a meaningful conversation with someone. And when they close the conversation, they are able to drive the insights, which enables then the customer to then figure out targeted marketing strategies, product development strategies, which then drives the lifetime value of that unique customer.
0:18:13 - David Williams
Got it All right Now. Now I'm actually starting to understand the answers to the next couple of questions I have. So one question is I noticed that you emphasize shifting the focus away from operational excellence and to focus on powering business outcomes. So what does that mean in practice?
0:18:31 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah, actually they are two sides of the same coin, David. I mean operational excellence is a table stick. If you don't have a very strong operating set of parameters which can be measured day in and day out, and day in and day out, you will struggle with driving outcomes.
So they are not either, or it's the foundational element to be able to drive outcomes, because if I don't have operational excellence, I don't have a baseline to understand what is the data that is going through my swim lanes that I can make sense of. So you need a very well oiled machinery. Once that happens, you have the data insights to then say that what can I drive as outcomes, which is going beyond the call of duty for which I am engaged with my client? That's when you start moving away from having conversations in the cafeteria to the boardroom, because at that point in time you're saying I have insight into this customer. This customer is likely to leave your network because these three things were not taken care of.
You solve for these three things. You're going to ensure that this customer is going to stay with you when the next enrollment cycle happens, when the next renewal cycle happens on the credit card. Whatever happens in the next, they're not going to refile, they're not going to stay with you if you offer the rate, whatever it is. So driving that outcome and predicting the outcomes ensure an higher lifetime value and higher retention, and today you have the tools to do that without increasing the cost for the customer. You can drive, you can be at the same cost, you can be at a lower cost and it allows you to take a gain share. You're telling the customer don't worry about your budget, you spend what you can afford, but if I drive a superior outcome, I'll need to give me a percentage of the benefit you make, which then is a creative to your budget and it pays for the investments I'm making to drive that outcome for you.
0:20:19 - David Williams
Got it. I saw this term also digitally influenced customer journey and I'm wondering if you could explain that one a little bit.
0:20:29 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Yeah, it's a lot of fancy words there to dump it down. It's very simple, if I am. Usually people usually don't like to call into a contact center. They like to use the app, get it done, solve for it. So that's digitally. You're on the website. Whatever it is, you're solving for it, or you follow the IVR and at the IVR gives you options and you go through it. You know your account balance. You want to transfer money. You have a reconciliation problem. You don't know whether a payment is it. You want to stop payment. Whatever it is, it gets solved. So that's all digitally.
But when it becomes a little more complex and you're not able to solve for it through the digital channel, you need somebody that is trained, that picks up the thread and is able to solve for it. Now how does the transition happen between what can be automated, what can be done which improves the NPS? Because some people don't. I mean, you take a look at my 18 year old. She doesn't want to talk to someone. She won't solve all the problems. But you take a look at a 70 year old. They want to talk to someone. They might be. They might be digitally savvy. So A you need the right kind of segmentation to understand which customers you're solving for and if the ideal mode of solving problems is to start with the digital channel and then ensure that the escalations happen, you are quick to pick it up and get somebody to solve.
0:21:47 - David Williams
Got it Okay. Now you mentioned healthcare is a big part of what you're doing, so I'm interested in kind of healthcare customers. But broadly, what characterizes a customer of Result CX? What's the kind of profile of customers?
0:22:01 - Rajesh Subramaniam
It's everybody. So we work for people who are self-insured, people who come on to the enrollment cycle and they buy their healthcare policies every year. We work for Medicare Advantage, medicare Plus. We work for that group of people which are more of the senior generation. So we have across all our peer network. We have experience across probably I don't know what the terminology for 18-year-old I mean Gen Z, gen Y, millennials. I mean we work across a spectrum of everybody, from somebody who's right into the employment network pressure up to people who are on the retirement side of the fence Got it Okay.
0:22:42 - David Williams
We're here pretty much at the beginning of 2024 and I'm wondering, as you look ahead for your annual planning or whatever the cycle is, what do you think about as kind of the major forces that are going to drive your success in this year?
0:22:57 - Rajesh Subramaniam
No, I think the major drivers for our success is clients making the the requirement for driving superior customer experiences front and center. Because sometimes, when your industry enables you to make a little more money and you're competing with a group of people that gives you an unfair advantage, that you can make a little money you take the customer for granted. It's a seller's market now, but changes are coming and if you do not re-engineer your internal systems, process flows, or if you don't wake up to smelling the coffee you know three to five years, something can absolutely go wrong. So and it is people like us who keep giving ideas what is the art of the possible? What should we be doing?
So we are, in certain industry verticals we are nibbling, nibbling, nibbling. In some industry verticals it's gone straight to the boardroom, it's being driven as a charter and it's moving down. So there's a different cadence in different businesses which are highly competitive. You will see the adoption by the end. In businesses where it is still, you know, there is a differential return on investment for the same dollar for the same effort. It's those conversations are lesser, but I think the key to success is ensuring that you know we keep at it, so that we become consultants for our customers, and we're not just service providers.
0:24:27 - David Williams
Got it, rajesh. I have a final question for you, which is about whether you have any time to read any books and, if so, if there's any that you would recommend to our audience.
0:24:37 - Rajesh Subramaniam
Honestly, david, my reading habit ever since I started traveling and working 15-18 hours a day, my reading habit is to quick snippets, blobs and tartunes.
So you know my favorites are you know I keep going back to my collection of Calvin and Hobbes asterisks I mean there are just so many lessons and fun stuff out there but absolutely so for me, I love reading about. You know, the latest trends. You know I'm a keen follower of some of the professors in some of the universities, that is, on everything from ESG to valuation principles, to everything that keeps me connected to the hottest topics which are right now, which boards and investors are trying to solve for. And also, you know, given traditional theories of how you value businesses, how you price risk, you know a lot of this has gone out of the window post-COVID with all the stimulus and the money coming in. Now, in the new realities and realms, how do you protect a company? How do you measure, manage risk and how do you ensure that there's a right level of governance that delivers adequate safety to the customers, the employees and shareholders?
0:25:47 - David Williams
Well. Rajesh Subramaniam, CEO of Results CX. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Health Biz podcast. Thank you, Pleasure being here, David. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to the Health Biz podcast with me, David Williams, president of Health Business Group. I conduct in-depth interviews with leaders in healthcare, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services in healthcare, check out our website, healthbusinessgroupcom.