Achmea Healthcare is the leading Dutch Health Insurer with a full portfolio of insurance services. Its director, Fred Lingg, embarked the company on an experience journey in 2000. He and his management team realized that health insurance was a very low-interest service (until one becomes ill) while the industry was becoming more and more competitive. So Lingg changed Achmea’s paradigm from sickness insurer to health provider, from low-interest price competition to high-interest experience staging.

Realizing that prevention is better than curing, Achmea’s mission changed to helping people become conscious of how to manage their own health better. Achmea Health considered the needs of customers for health offerings from birth to death and designed unique experiences to fulfill those needs profitably. Achmea Healthcare developed special benefits to members; health centers were acquired; a magazine and website introduced; private clinics instituted; and offerings created in such new areas as re-integration to work after illness.
All the new experience offerings raised revenues and became profitable. Further, Achmea discovered that taking care of the health situation of their clients lessened the amount of money it had to pay to hospitals, doctors, and physiotherapists.
Interestingly, success in the marketplace influenced and accelerated the transformation of the organization. Now, Achmea’s staff focuses on the experience of people and not on the rules of delivering care. When health problems do occur, they focus on the needs and desires of their clients and do everything possible to help them regain their health. “It is a matter of empathy and compassion, people first than rules”, says Lingg. This is a major shift in the behavior of the staff of Achmea, which previously were mere administrators and not people dedicated to care about others.
But, in fitting with the trends noted above, these experiences are not the scripted ones of, say, a movie or ride, but rather involve real choices of Achmea’s clients in facing difficult situations, authentic conversations and circumstances, and meaningful experiences.