The Quality Police

While all good insurance executives say they want to be customer-centric, Carol Mudd, project consultant at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida (Jacksonville, FL) makes sure that customer-centricity actually happens.

Mudd, who has also been named to the 2003 board of examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, is BCBS-FL's team lead for customer-centric metrics.

As a member of the Baldrige board of examiners, Mudd helps evaluate organizations for the award, created by law in 1987. It is the highest recognition for performance excellence a US organization can receive.

"The Baldridge organization does try to match your industry expertise" to the organizations that the examiners evaluate," Mudd explains. "I have health insurance expertise," and as a result helped examine healthcare and insurance companies for the award.

At BCBS-FL, Mudd has been directly involved in the carrier's steadily improving customer satisfaction scores. "I translate what the customers want to different areas of the company and help them understand what their work will mean to the customer," she says. And her work, increasingly, involves IT. "The days are long gone when you can manage an insurance company's data with paper," she says. "Technology plays an increasing role. Data is to us like steel and concrete is to a contractor."