Self-services in focus

Digitalization in several stages

BKK Linde delegates customer concerns digitally

Video is in german only.

BKK Linde (Betriebskrankenkasse Linde) is a certified statutory health insurance fund which welcomes members throughout Germany. BBK was founded in 1952 for the employees of the company Linde AG and its group operations. It has been open to those seeking health insurance coverage throughout Germany since 2007. As a health insurance fund, BKK Linde operates independently within the umbrella organization of the BKK.

BKK Linde is an independently-managed statutory body under public law. It is based in Wiesbaden and represented at a total of nine locations throughout Germany. BKK Linde currently has 240 employees who take care of everything relating to the health and wellbeing of its approximately 138 thousand insured customers.

To further complement the range of services it offers, BKK Linde cooperates with chosen partners in the health care sector. The health care network of BKK Linde allows for a service offering that extends beyond the statutory framework.

In the digital age in particular, customer requirements are changing more quickly than ever before – and BKK Linde wants to respond to these requirements with its range of services. In the digital world, customers no longer perceive any differences to exist between the individual channels of communication at the private level and those pertaining to their insurer. They expect to be able to complete all standard tasks online. Bearing this in mind, as a first step, BKK Linde has enabled its customers to send in sick notes and invoices, all written correspondence, as well as requests for health insurance membership certificates and the electronic health card online.

EASY ApiOmat is the technological cornerstone for being able to realize these customer requirements. EASY ApiOmat was chosen because it provides a flexible basis for the current and future requirements referred to above. Regardless of the device which is used to map the respective customer request on the frontend, with the EASY ApiOmat, multi-experience for supporting all frontend channels can be implemented just as quickly as the backend connection between the different systems. The adaptive integration of legacy IT with NewTech as well as IT governance are also a matter of course for EASY ApiOmat and therefore come as standard.

BKK Linde initially responded to these challenges when it launched its service app in 2015. Due to the positive customer response, BKK Linde initiated and implemented additional follow-up projects. With the EASY ApiOmat, BKK Linde has also been able to respond adequately to the social challenge of 2020 –- the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Project information

Digitalization in several stages – self-services in focus

With the service app from BKK Linde, insured customers can now make customer data available on all channels in compliance with the data protection requirements. Insured customers can themselves decide when and where they provide the data.

With the service app, among other benefits, the customers of BKK Linde now have the advantage of being able to request the patient receipt; in Germany, the patient receipt documents the services that are provided during the medical or psychotherapy treatment. This is important, as the members of the statutory health insurance fund don’t necessarily know which services the doctor is billing or the associated costs. The solution from BKK Linde: Once requested via the app, the ApiOmat initializes a service from the managed service provider in the IT market for statutory health insurers. If successful, the service issues the patient receipt – and the service app automatically notifies the customer accordingly via push notification.

The service app from BKK Linde naturally offers the customer additional functions. Invoices for professional dental cleaning, for instance, can be easily transferred via the app. BKK Linde offers its insured customers a free professional dental cleaning service once a year. Once transmitted, the remittance from BKK Linde takes place promptly.

The development approach: Agile and quick – rapidly achieving the goal

In the knowledge that not every customer has a smartphone, BKK Linde also offers a wide range of self-services via web forms. With the digital family questionnaire, BKK Linde has already successfully implemented the next stage of its digitalization strategy with ApiOmat on a customer-focused basis. Additional sophisticated business processes, such as the “reimbursement of foreign invoices” and the “clarification of continued insurance” have also been implemented. BKK Linde customers can now access more than 20 self-service forms. The protection of sensitive data takes the highest priority. In this respect, all the self-service forms are linked directly to the EASY ApiOmat without a content management system for the intermediate storage of data.

It sounds clear and straightforward, and that’s exactly what it was. The BKK Linde team consisted of a total of 6 frontend and backend developers. During the development period, the agile development approach that was chosen was particularly appreciated. In this respect, the EASY ApiOmat makes it easy for developers to follow the motto of “throwing away three times is better than holding on to trash just once”. Obtaining rapid feedback on the acceptance of the self-services poses no problem with EASY ApiOmat. Meanwhile, the changes that have been made can be reintroduced into the self-service products, and the overall product can be improved just as quickly.

Working from home means accepting orders digitally, without direct contact with the employee

At BKK Linde: from the decision to the practical application in just 5 days.

BKK Linde responded to the outbreak of the pandemic in mid-March by asking all of its employees to work from home. A sensible decision with far-reaching practical consequences: This decision mainly affects people whose main tasks involve dealing with customer inquiries. Previously, the customer service advisor handled customer inquiries in person, by phone or by post. How and using which means did BKK Linde implement this digital step?

0 Insured Customers

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EASY ApiOmat enables us to provide this excellent digital user experience quickly and efficiently, while fulfilling the exacting requirements surrounding the protection of social security data at the same time.“

Robert Leubner
Head of Marketing, BKK Linde

Bonjour – digital routing of customer inquiries

Before the coronavirus, there was no reason to give much thought to a digital inbox. The coronavirus changed things, however. In this context, BKK Linde unhesitatingly replaced the paper-based inbox and direct customer contacts with digital processes – and automatically delegated all requests to the responsible customer service advisors. As BKK Linde was already well-positioned digitally with EASY ApiOmat, it was possible to implement this idea quickly.

The main task of a digital inbox is offering customers a “virtual letter box”. The two particular challenges:

Firstly, it is also necessary to automate the downstream processing steps so that the customer inquiries reach the customer service advisor. After all, the advisors are sitting at their computers at home.

Secondly, the information sent over with the customer inquiry requires protection under data protection law.

The digital mail service was made available on both the website of BKK Linde and in its service app. The straightforward integration of a web-based form for sending documents on a website would have made little difference – the challenge here is in distributing the customer inquiries to the customer service advisors in their homes.

The solution

Using a HTTPS connection, the documents that are “posted” through the digital letterbox are sent directly from the website of BKK Linde to the EASY ApiOmat-Backend via a VPN connection.

Once received, the documents run through a rules-based process – which is precisely where the system extracts the information required to forward the documents to the correct customer service advisor. The EASY ApiOmat-backend sorts and classifies by employer sector as well as by claim, insurance and benefits management – and sends the customer inquiries on their way to the customer service advisor.

This also applies to the documents BKK Linde still receives by mail; these must not be forgotten, either. However, one manual step is required here: One employee – alone in an empty office – scans the documents, and the rest is done by the aforementioned process, as all the other employees are working from home.

Mission accomplished

In the following 3 months, almost 30,000 inquiries were processed, forwarded and completed – across several locations, to the full satisfaction of the customers and with the best protection against the coronavirus for everyone involved. And note: implemented in five days.

All in all, BKK Linde successfully puts its customers at the heart of its digital services. The customers’ requirements are also consistently at the forefront during the planning of new digital offerings, regardless of how quickly these may change – after all, because BKK Linde has used EASY ApiOmat from the very start for its technical infrastructure, new digital services only take a few days to introduce. Customer feedback on the new services is also taken into account quickly, and improves the services product. BKK Linde is therefore a shining example of successful, customer-oriented digitalization.

ApiOmat on premises Installation
TypeScript SDK
Bitmarck connection
File server connection for archiving
PDF generator
MYSQL connector
SOAP connector
Role based ACLs

Self-Services and Service Apps help BKK Linde

Service apps and self-service at Bkk Linde

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