By NYS Customer Experience Team
NY State of Health (NYSOH) is reimagining how people access health insurance by focusing on what matters most: making enrollment easier, faster, and more responsive to the needs of the millions of New Yorkers it serves. More than 6.7 million New Yorkers (about one in three residents) now get their coverage through NYSOH. Since its founding, NYSOH has profoundly transformed the way individuals access insurance. The true success, however, lies in the continuous evolution of this experience, which is increasingly intuitive, equitable, and focused on the needs of the people it serves.
That evolution starts by listening—taking every story, complaint, and comment seriously because when New Yorkers speak up, they show the path forward. Each piece of feedback helps NYSOH understand what’s working well and where improvements are needed. Through this ongoing dialogue, the organization finds opportunities to reduce frustration, strengthen support, and create a more seamless experience for the people it serves.
Building on that foundation, NYSOH is advancing two major initiatives to reduce friction and deliver a faster, more convenient service: one, understanding the barriers that slow people down through an Administrative Burdens Audit, and two, making the enrollment process work better on phones and tablets through its Mobile-First Initiative. Together, these efforts represent a data-driven, user-first approach to transforming how government services show up in people’s lives.
Uncovering What Gets in the Way
In the upcoming months, NY State of Health will initiate a 10-month Administrative Burdens Audit to identify and eliminate barriers that hinder customers from accessing and retaining their health insurance. This initiative will begin with usability testing, inviting a diverse, representative group of New Yorkers to walk through the application process. Watching how people actually move through the system will surface key areas of confusion, unnecessary steps, and technical issues that can derail progress.
Alongside this, NYSOH will meet with frontline staff, navigators, and partner organizations to hear what they see and experience every day. These conversations will help uncover the operational hurdles like inconsistent procedures or unclear instructions that may not be visible in the technology but still impact customers in significant ways.
The audit will also take a close look at communications. Every email, letter, and system message will be reviewed to ensure it’s written in plain, clear, and actionable language that helps people take the next step without confusion. NYSOH will also use detailed personas representing real New Yorkers to test the system from different lived experiences. These personas will help ensure that the process works for everyone, not just the average user.
Live application sessions will offer another layer of insight, providing a closer look at where users feel confident and where they get stuck. By combining all of these perspectives—technical, operational, and human—NYSOH will be able to see the full picture and make targeted changes that have a real impact.
The goal of the audit is clear: to shorten application times, reduce documentation errors, increase successful first-time application rates, and lessen the number of calls to the help center. Each improvement is tracked and measured, and findings are shared as they emerge—allowing the team to course-correct and create a feedback loop that centers the customer at every stage.
Meeting People Where They Are
Recognizing that many New Yorkers access services primarily through mobile devices, NYSOH is also in the process of launching its Mobile-First Initiative to redesign the health insurance experience with phones and tablets in mind—not as a secondary option, but as the starting point. This means simplifying navigation so that essential information is always easy to find, even on small screens, and rethinking menus to reflect how people search for answers in the real world.
The redesigned experience will simplify navigation, rework menus to reflect how people naturally search for information, and ensure essential tools are accessible on even the smallest screens. Just as importantly, the mobile version will now offer full functionality—matching what’s available on a desktop. That means customers will be able to manage their accounts, check eligibility, compare plans, and understand their costs all from their phones. Built-in help prompts and timely notifications will also guide users through each step, lowering frustration and boosting confidence.
NYSOH will track success by measuring improvements such as shorter application times, higher completion rates on mobile, and fewer calls to the customer service center for mobile-related issues. These enhancements aim to simplify access to coverage for everyone, regardless of their device.
Putting Data to Work
NYSOH’s strategy is powered by a dual focus on human insight and data analytics. Advanced analytics tools track user behavior in real-time—showing where users pause, where they exit, and what features they interact with most. These quantitative signals are layered with qualitative feedback to reveal what users are doing and why.
Initial data showed that applications were taking an average of 45 minutes to complete, and in some categories, nearly 40% of document submissions contained errors that required follow-up. The aim now is to cut that time and error rate significantly, streamlining the experience while still ensuring that every applicant gets the help they need.
The Takeaway
The approach NYSOH is taking offers a practical path forward for any agency seeking to improve how it serves the public. It starts with watching real people use your system—not just reading survey results or tracking completion rates, but seeing where users get stuck and what frustrates them. These live observations reveal more than any metric can on its own.
It also means asking the people who support the system—frontline staff, navigators, local partners—where the process breaks down or becomes overly complex. Their insights often point to quick wins or deeper issues worth solving. Agencies should also evaluate all public-facing communications from a customer’s perspective: Is the message clear? Does it use plain language? Does it help someone take the next step?
Mobile design must be treated as a core element of service delivery, not an afterthought. For many customers, the mobile version is the experience. Ensuring feature parity, simplicity, and clear guidance on mobile helps build equity in every interaction.
Finally, improvements must be iterative. NYSOH’s phased, 10-month audit and continuous analytics allow for learning along the way, rather than waiting until the end. When changes are made based on real-time feedback, trust grows, and the system becomes more responsive and effective.
NYSOH demonstrates that by leading with empathy and respecting New Yorkers' time and experiences throughout the process, and by supporting actions with data, we can create public services that genuinely meet the needs of the people they are designed to serve. These efforts are more than upgrades—they’re a shift in how government shows up for New Yorkers, and how we can approach our work more effectively and efficiently. And that shift is exactly what the New York Experience is all about.