Every year, millions of Americans face a hard deadline to secure health coverage during open enrollment season. It’s a short window with a lot of activity. For health plans and state exchanges, too often recruiting pipelines can’t keep pace, training programs don’t stick, and quality erodes the moment inexperienced associates hit the phones.

One state health insurance marketplace found itself in such a state. It has since become a trusted partner of TTEC, who helped the organization process 1.9 million healthcare coverage applications during the most recent annual open enrollment period (OEP).

The problem

The marketplace connects consumers with coverage options, financial assistance, and enrollment support. Licensed and non-licensed associates must understand plan options, eligibility rules, and subsidy calculations well enough to guide consumers through consequential decisions about their health care.

The work-at-home operation supports inbound voice through a public 800 number, with dedicated chat teams and limited outbound verification. During lower-volume periods, the workforce consists of approximately 275 full-time equivalent (FTE) associates. During open enrollment, however, that number increases by 100% to 550 FTE. And because FTE reflects productive hours rather than headcount, the real workforce is closer to 700 associates during the busy open enrollment period. 

The workforce must also meet strict language requirements: approximately 80% English-speaking support and 20% in other languages, including Spanish, Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Laotian, Farsi, Armenian, Cambodian, Hmong, Russian, and Tagalog. 

The core challenge was that during a seasonal ramp, newly trained associates could represent approximately 60% of the active phone workforce, which adds onboarding costs as well as quality and compliance risks.

The client needed a partner with integrated recruiting, training, workforce management, and quality execution capabilities that could scale up rapidly, maintain performance, and scale back down efficiently — all within a compressed enrollment window.

Our solution

TTEC built an integrated seasonal workforce model designed to ramp quickly, absorb large numbers of new associates, preserve performance standards, and scale down efficiently after open enrollment closed.

The most significant improvement came from a fundamental redesign of how we recruit and select candidates for this program.

The previous approach relied on a conventional talent acquisition handoff: source candidates, screen them, onboard them, and hope attrition stays manageable. However, training attrition above 17% triggered TTEC-funded replacement classes, which compressed an already tight timeline and added cost when new hires didn’t work out.  

The goal was to streamline the hiring and training to find the right candidates from the start.

We rewrote the job description from scratch to accurately reflect the pace, expectations, and demands of the role. We then introduced AI-assisted screening into the hiring funnel to identify stronger candidates before human review and onboarding — filtering for the communication skills, reliability, and customer-service orientation the program requires.

The most distinctive change was the introduction of a realistic job preview video. We created a recorded preview featuring the operations leader, training manager, and operational managers — the actual people candidates would work with. The preview gave candidates an honest look at the call-after-call environment, attendance expectations, workload, and the realities of serving consumers navigating health insurance decisions. Candidates were asked to confirm their continued interest only after watching it.

The effect was deliberate: unsuitable candidates self-selected out before onboarding and training began, improving candidate fit and reducing downstream attrition. We also integrated operations leaders directly into the recruiting process, rather than leaving candidate selection entirely with the talent acquisition team. 

Once hired, associates complete three weeks of training followed by one week of nesting before moving to production. Weekly reporting gives the client executive-level visibility across metrics like staffing levels, language coverage, chat provisioning, quality assurance, training attrition, and schedule adherence. 

We didn’t stop once associates hit the production floor. TTEC introduced a hybrid trainer-to-supervisor model in which trainers remain with their assigned class after graduation and transition into supervisory roles, creating greater continuity from training through production.

Results

Our model produced results to meet the needs of the busy open enrollment season. We doubled the workforce to meet the client’s growing open enrollment demand within the short four-month timeline.

Over 14 hiring waves, we achieved 108% of Day 1 hire targets, exceeding the goal by 44 hires. The multilingual results were particularly strong. Excluding English, the talent acquisition team delivered achieved 167% of its hiring targets. Spanish reached 165% of goal, Korean 183%, Mandarin 300%, and both Tagalog and Laotian reached 133%.

Even with the increased staff, we outperformed training attrition goals by 5%. Financially, that saved the client over $367K in training resources by eliminating a training class and avoiding any new class triggers. 

The strength of the relationship has extended beyond the program itself. When another state program needed a surge-support vendor, the client recommended TTEC based on its experience with our ability to scale. That referral — from a client to a peer agency — reflects the kind of confidence that comes from consistent execution under pressure.