That time I sent Lil B lyrics to 2 million health enrollment customers

In the summer of 2018, I was given a unique technical challenge from one of our nation's largest health insurance providers: Customer retention and re-enrollment was difficult.

They faced a problem, because if you get your insurance through the health exchange, they may or may not keep you as a customer, so it's critical that they update your life events, know if you got married, had kids, etc. Is health insurance in the United States convoluted? Absolutely. We know this, because I got involved, and I am a person who should never be involved in this process, as I shall demonstrate.

When I met with this health insurance provider and their team, they were out of ideas. Calling their customers wasn't working, because when you see a number you don't know, you don't answer it. Like most people, you probably consider leaving a voicemail as a form of terrorism, so that doesn't work either. With those efforts falling short, they needed a custom SMS dashboard, with different components for different states, etc. They had a whole laundry list of stuff they wanted me to build, and I ended up meeting with them in Fort Worth, TX to talk it over.

Like most giant corporate structures that rely on groupthink, they gave me a list of buzzwords and "feelings" about the application I needed to build, rather than the actual use case, who would use it, specific functions, etc. This is fairly standard when I'm brought in to consult on a project. You have bad ideas, and you want to make me sit through a presentation to explain those bad ideas to me. It was very important to this health insurance company that customers "like using" this application.

This isn't a service that needed to be useful. This is a service that needed to perform a task, quickly, and then allow people to get on with their lives. Useful? Ahem. No.

This is what I like to call "the smoke detector theory of development": Make it functional, but also extremely annoying.

A smoke detector is important in your home or business, and for the most part, you assume it's just working, because that's what it does. It sits there. However, when a smoke detector is dying, it needs to annoy you into changing its batteries -- otherwise, you die in a fire. Dying in a fire is... (check notes)... bad. Smoke detector companies know this, so they invented a high pitched chirp that will absolutely drive you crazy. If you can live with that chirp for more than 30 minutes, you're insane.

(Sidebar... here's a great startup idea: Push notification enabled emails/texts for people who are hearing impaired. Smoke detectors only work if you can hear their batteries dying. I Google'd it. This service doesn't exist. This is my idea, and I can integrate it into smoke detectors like... tomorrow. If you know people at smoke detector companies, let me build this thing for them.)

So I built a portal, with a modular interface. Customers could be split into groups, and managed by different agents. Each message sent out smart fields with their names, state they lived in, and what plan they were on. The inbounds scrubbed all their personally identifiable information using a quick ML system, so it was GLBA privacy compliant. I did this entire project in 10 days. (**Casually dusts off shoulders.**)

But let's pretend people didn't reply to the first text. They just completely ignored it. Well, that's fine. Sending another text won't break any laws. As long as you offer an OPT-OUT, you're fine. How did their customers like it? Oh, well... they hated it.

Life lesson: Simply text "STOP" to any automated SMS you receive, and you'll be opted out of any list. "Stop fucking texting me mofo" is not a valid query, and you will remain on the list. Same goes for "Fuck off", and "Stop bitch". Syntax matters, boy and girls.

So what happened if you didn't reply with your availability or make a phone call to an agent? That's when "Operation Lil B" went to work. You may have heard of Bay Area rapper Lil B The Based God, known for his "RARE ART" and "BASED" brand. Thank You Based God. If you haven't heard of Lil B, you'll likely be confused as you begin receiving lyrics from his Genius page, randomly. You're having a quiet night, and then you get a text from a phone number you don't know, and it reads...

Hopped up in my car (Swag!) then I drop my roof (Swag!)

Wet like wonton soup. That's just how I do (Swag!)

The first thought going through your head probably isn't, "My health insurance provider probably needs to see if I had any qualifying, life-changing events before they renew my policy." That's because Lil B and health insurance have absolutely nothing to do with each other. If you didn't happen to respond within 28 minutes, our AI would automatically serve up more Lil B.

See me on set at 10 o'clock

Practicing my lines, swag to the tenth

Backstage pass, VIP pass

Iced out ring, Iced out chain

Ellen Degeneres, you're so generous

Then, something interesting happened. People started copying and pasting the lyrics they were getting into Google, and coming up with Lil B. They had no context for it. It was annoying.

Like that annoying chirp coming from your smoke detector, a steady stream of Lil B lyrics via text was enough to make people ask questions like,

"Who is this?"

"Do I know you?"

"Is this a joke?"

Using the power of Amazon Sagemaker, we were able to recognize that syntax, and reply with, "Yes [First Name], this is [Healthcare Provider Redacted] and we need to schedule a call about updating your insurance plan." To which they replied, "Oh, sure. Yeah, let's do that."

Could I have built a machine learning driven text system that allowed their customers to initiate responses to answers, and do it all via text? Sure. But that would have never worked, because people don't work that way. If people liked convenience, we would all be wearing sweatpants, all the time, and it would be agreed upon by society that this is the best way of doing things. The reality is, people use things that are annoying. In fact, "annoying but functional" is the model of success that allowed Internet Explorer to flourish.

"Functional but annoying" is a good rubric for essential products. Like a smoke detector, if you don't have health insurance, you may die in the worst case scenario you need it. It's the same reason gas leaks have that "gas leak smell" -- that scent isn't naturally part of the natural gas you pipe into your home. Natural gas is odorless, until gas companies add mercaptan, which is what gives gas leaks that classic "rotten eggs" smell. The annoyance of everything smelling like rotten eggs is what forces you to adjust the knob on your stovetop back into the off position. It's an annoyance that allows you to keep on living your life, without dying in a fire.

So did the Lil B method of health insurance re-enrollment work? Yes it did.

I recognize that my methods are unconventional, and that sending Lil B lyrics to your customers may not be right for every business. After all, you may work with children, which means you may want to consider Wu Tang lyrics, since Wu Tang is for the children. However, I do strongly encourage you to consider how creating something brutally annoying can help your bottom line, especially if you're an essential, life-saving services. If you work in senior care, and someone hasn't renewed their diabetes supplies, think about how Lil B would absolutely confuse the hell out of people over 60. When people are confused, they ask questions, and typically, they call the phone number responsible for sending those questions.

... and that's the story of the time I sent Lil B lyrics to 2 million Americans.