The Difference Card is a disruptor in the health insurance industry. As a third-party administrator, they help their clients lower employee healthcare costs while maintaining an exceptional level of benefits.
The company provides FSAs, HRA products and other types of flexible benefits. They also offer products that help employers save money on their complete health insurance offering. Their platform helps companies maintain benefits at roughly a 20 percent lower price point than their current spend or their renewal rate.
The company had a mobile app provided by an outside vendor that was no longer meeting their needs. It presented significant issues that negatively impacted the user experience, resulting in a high number of calls to the Difference Card support team.
“We probably received more calls than most do,” said Dan Masciopinto, CTO at the Difference Card. “We had different usernames and passwords for our mobile app than we did for our member portal. You can imagine the confusion that causes for members on a day-to-day basis.”
The company decided it was time to bring development and control of their mobile app in-house, but didn’t have the skill set necessary to complete the work.
“Historically, I’ve liked having a team in-house to work with, but my team is relatively small here,” Masciopinto said. “We hired somebody to take on this project, and that didn’t work out.”
The Difference Card team struggled to get the new app to market. “It became evident to me that hiring for this kind of solution wasn’t going to be the best path. I was reticent to look for a development partner to solve that problem, but I had references from people I knew personally who had worked with Taazaa before and had a great experience.”
Masciopinto’s reservations about outsourcing the work eased after some early successes. “I worked very hard with the team to make sure there was a laser focus on the key bits that needed to be tackled in order to get to a successful launch. The team very quickly grasped the concepts and organized the work.”
Masciopinto says the Taazaa team immediately turned around work that met the requirements. “We had a couple of wins early that helped build confidence on both sides of the equation.”
The previous developer’s work had significant issues and had been rejected by the Google Play and Apple App stores. The app was built using React Native for the front-end and .NET for the back-end, with a SQL Server database hosted on Azure.
Taazaa focused on resolving issues in the existing code and modifying it to comply with Apple’s and Google’s app store requirements. The team also cleaned up the code, made necessary modifications, and added new features to enhance its functionality.
Taazaa’s team integrated the mobile app with the Difference Card web portal. They implemented new tools like Clarity and Firebase to improve monitoring and analytics.
“The team brought many more ideas and solutions to the table than I would have expected,” Masciopinto said. “They were proactively bringing me ideas for improvement and identifying issues we needed to be aware of. The Clarity solution is an example.”
“I tell my team, ‘Don’t be an order taker. Be a solution provider.’ I was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that the team lived up to that mantra of being solution providers.”
Taazaa began the project in July, and the new mobile app was ready to launch by the end of October. In preparation, the Difference Card ramped up their call center team, expecting a large volume of calls on the launch date.
“Right out of the gate, there were far fewer calls that came in once we launched than we used to get,” Masciopinto said. “We expect that experience is going to have a ripple effect in a positive way.”
He expects the lack of complaints from frustrated employees will give clients a more positive view of the Difference Card, strengthening the relationship and improving the chances of the client renewing their business.
“We don’t have those results in yet,” Masciopinto said, “but we expect this will have an overall positive experience on our members’ and our clients’ view of the Difference Card.”
Masciopinto has also noticed a lower crash rate than with the previous app. He can now track login activity on a much more granular level, giving the Difference Card team a better view of the app’s performance and positioning them to address issues quickly. “We can help members research issues more effectively because we’ve added tools that give us a very specific view into what kind of issue a member might be having.”
The improvements to the app aligned it with Apple App Store and Google Play Store requirements, and both stores accepted for inclusion.
Most importantly, Difference Card members can now log into the web portal and mobile app using the same username and password. “That was the problem we were trying to solve, and now they’re unified. But there’s also the opportunity for us to expand functionality on the app.”
Masciopinto said they are already rolling out a new feature, and he can see opportunities for improvements across the organization. “There are areas where the Taazaa team can help with quality. We’ve done a lot of work on the member experience, but we also have the HR experience and our broker partner experience.”
“We are looking to replicate the same success that we had with the mobile app across those areas as well. I’m excited to keep tackling projects as we go and looking forward to working with the Taazaa team.”
The team brought many more ideas and solutions to the table than I would have expected. They were proactively bringing me ideas for improvement and identifying issues we needed to be aware of.
