Open Enrollment Seasonal Training Ramp-Up

Open Enrollment Seasonal Training Ramp-Up

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.

 

Instructional Design Restructure

Instructional Design Restructure

Instructional Design Restructure

Case Study

A regional health care company that offers a broad spectrum of group and network-based health care products to over 3.6 million members.

CHALLENGES

The Instructional Design Team was under performing. The training material was outdated. The material lacked industry standard best practices and adult learning techniques and was often incomplete. The training resulted in contact center agents not being ready for their role.

ZELUS APPROACH

Zelus used their extensive knowledge of the health care industry, contact centers and instructional design skills to complete a needs analysis of all the contact center teams; and reviewed all the training material in the department. From the needs analysis Zelus re-imaged and updated all training material for new hire classes, gap training classes, new system training and the company’s product training.

RESULTS

  • Redesigned the training material for all lines of business, including Medicare and Medicare Advantage; over 750 documents.
  • Increased speed to market for new and revised material. The Zelus team worked 3x faster than the industry standard across the entire engagement.
  • Incorporated robust hands-on exercises in training that spanned multiple systems.
  • Built assessments to predict the capability of the trainee to do the job.
  • Established the use of state of the art web-based training as a best practice for delivering awareness training to agents.
  • Implemented a training approach that resulted in floor-ready trainees that met quality and productivity goals.
  • Launched new contact channels, more than 10 software applications, and Healthcare Reform and Medicare Products.

 

Call Center Optimization & Technical Implementation

Call Center Optimization & Technical Implementation

Call Center Optimization & Technical Implementation

Case Study

A nationally recognized and trusted consumer brand committed to helping members create and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

CHALLENGES

The company was preparing for a significant product change anticipating that membership would increase substantially. The contact center had long lacked the focus and attention required to infuse the brand experience across inbound calls, emails, and online chats. The contact center was preparing for a significant ramp up in volume while it lacked technology solutions to support its agents.

ZELUS APPROACH

  • Developed a road map to achieve short-term launch efficiencies and long-term operational vision for the contact center. Created an operational launch plan to handle a large customer increase without creating excessive costs.
  • Based on organizational decision to build a proprietary CRM system, the client used Zelus’ extensive contact center expertise and skilled staff to define business and functional requirements, manage prioritization, lead UAT efforts, train staff, and provide application deployment and launch support.
  • Developed comprehensive blended learning, virtual and classroom program with eLearnings at its core; resulting in a quick, accurate, and consistent training for over 400 agents.
  • Created RFI requests for contact center voice, chat and knowledge management solutions defining best practice needs within each channel. Key member of the selection process for all three solutions.
  • Created operational improvements to shift the nature of contact center contacts from largely administrative to a more value-added support model.
  • Comprehensively reviewed all content in organizational content management system to align to new system launches and reflect the brand

RESULTS

Since the effort started, the contact center:

  • Reduced contacts per member by 29%
  • Reduced cost per contact by more than 35%
  • Delivered more than $20M in savings to the organization
  • Achieved a 4-point gain in first contact resolution
  • Supported at 25% membership increase while improving performance

 

Call Center Reorganization

Call Center Reorganization

Call Center Reorganization

Case Study

A regional health care company that offers a broad spectrum of group and network-based health care products to over 2.8 million customers.

CHALLENGES

The executive team was concerned about the level of service provided by multiple call centers across the organization.  Preliminary evaluations showed that the level of service was inconsistent and hurting their image in the marketplace.

ZELUS APPROACH

A detailed needs analysis by the Zelus team revealed that performance standards differed from call center to call center as did level of training between these groups.

It was also discovered that each group had different practices for handling exceptions and executing work that was not metrically measured but important to service level.

RESULTS

  • Consolidation of smaller call centers into a larger central team to improve key performance metrics by increasing the staff pool available.
  • Revised set of organizational effectiveness measures aimed at ensuring all aspects of the customer experience are viewed with equal importance.
  • Development of a comprehensive training curriculum for the call center that focuses on functional knowledge and expertise while creating a career path for representatives.
  • The team also executed a comprehensive and aggressive re-training plan addressing individual and department deficiencies without sacrificing overall performance
  • Execution of a rigorous quality program that monitored individual quality across three dimensions.
  • Creation of area specific performance standard expectations for each distinct work product including development of reporting automation, exception handling, and guidelines for non-measurable work in the department.
  • Development of a corresponding self-funding incentive plan and roll-out strategy to support the quality and performance measures.

 

Process Improvement and Implementation

Process Improvement and Implementation

Process Improvement and Implementation

Case Study

A large regional health insurer servicing over 3 million members was not meeting key performance targets.

CHALLENGES

The insurer was not meeting its key performance targets in the customer service, claims, and correspondence areas including:

  • Inquiry Timeliness
  • Inquiry Accuracy
  • Average Speed to Answer
  • Abandonment Rate
  • Claims Timeliness
  • Claims Accuracy

ZELUS APPROACH

Zelus worked with the insurer to determine the root cause of the issues and implemented customized solutions including:

  • Designed and implemented workflow improvements resulting in removing 4 days from the claims cycle.
  • Designed and implemented a comprehensive skills assessment for all areas.
  • Developed a comprehensive Customer Service Training Program.
  • Developed a comprehensive Claims Training Program.
  • Developed a comprehensive Correspondence Training Program.
  • Assisted struggling trainers by delivering components of the training as needed, often with little to no notice.
  • Evaluated team leader and manager capabilities via Zelus-developed calibration process and developed coaching program that upgraded leadership skills significantly.

RESULTS

  • Improved performance score results by 17% in six months.
  • Improved performance score results by an additional 23% in the next 12 months.
  • Performance score improvement earned the client significant incentive dollars.
  • Improvements led to national recognition for the insurer.