Open Enrollment Seasonal Training Ramp-Up

Case Study

An agent of the Office of Personnel Management administering the enrollment and billing functions for voluntary benefits offered to Federal Employees including dental, vision, and long-term care insurance.

CHALLENGES

The client manages enrollment and premium billing functions for several key voluntary benefits held by Federal Employees. Annually, the client prepares for a significant increase in volume to support both benefit program changes and open enrollment. The organization hires and onboards as many as 2000 seasonal agents annually.

ZELUS APPROACH

Zelus has partnered with the organization since 2016 to deploy a 20-38 person team (depending on need) of learning delivery experts to train and ramp the seasonal agents.

ANNUAL RESULTS

  • Hire and certify instructors annually to ensure they are well equipped to deliver a fast-paced curriculum with consistency and high retention of agents across the program.
  • In 2020, certified trainers in remote learning technologies to support virtual learning during open enrollment.

QUALITY MONITORING AND IMPROVEMENT RAPID RESPONSE

Special enrollment period. Preparation and reality didn’t match so the Zelus team engaged in a rapid response initiative to shift the team to align more closely with customer expectations.

  • Evaluated call center interactions between the call center and the customer to identify root causes through quality monitoring.
  • Identified a significant gap in the ability to articulate the empathy the agents did feel.
  • Developed a remediation session for all agents that leveraged actual customer interactions, reinforced prior learning and outlined techniques to delivery empathy to the callers.
  • Created a safe environment to practice the delivery of empathy and a model that addresses possible answers to commonly expressed customer issues.