The challenge
Every year TTEC ramps thousands of licensed healthcare sales agents who assist members during open enrollment, answering questions and walking them through their plan options. However, in a sales environment, there is always an opportunity to improve sales conversion rates and get new agents up to speed more quickly. We set out to refresh our approach to helping agents succeed with new coaching strategies and leadership training, a revamped certification process and more, to enable them to hit the ground running.
“I feel that coaching sessions are more efficient, consistent, and encourage continuous improvement.”
–Senior Team Leader
Our solution
Not one to be satisfied with the status quo, we identified opportunities for improvement and innovation. The operations team, including managers, team leads, trainers, and agents, shared pain points and ideas for better aligning people, processes, and technology. The improvements included:
Sales Effectiveness Team (SET) certification program – TTEC built a blended, interactive digital learning program with patent-pending artificial intelligence technology, composed of asynchronous self-paced learning modules. The certification is made up of seven, gamified courses to provide TTEC employees with actionable feedback so that employees can practice what they have learned, receive immediate feedback, and obtain situation-specific coaching tips to improve future conversations for optimal performance.
Real-time coaching – Traditional coaching models lack immediate feedback. We leveraged our proprietary award-winning RealPlay BOT, which uses an AI-powered engine to provide asynchronous practice, consistent feedback, and personalized coaching, in developing 4 unique Coaching BOTs and a Product Knowledge BOT to rapidly train newly assigned leaders by supplying interactive training that lets them practice and identify process gaps efficiently and effectively.
Ask the right questions for increased member satisfaction – Instead of just describing the plan options, TTEC agents were trained to ask probing questions to determine the best plan for the member’s needs.
Comprehensive leadership training – Team leaders received thorough and consistent leadership training. Sales agents, for example, completed the Consultative Sales Call Flow course and used the Consultative Sales Call Flow RealPlay Coaching BOT to practice completing a successful call flow interaction.
Standardized certification – We developed a standardized licensing/certification process to enable agents to quickly complete their sales process certification, real-time coaching certification, and account specific certifications.
“I’m looking forward to the last couple of weeks of the enrollment season and confident this team will be helping our consumers thrive”
– Director of National Consumer Sales
The results
Within a year of implementing these innovations, TTEC grew its pool of licensed healthcare sales agents by 76% to over 3,000 licensed agents year-over-year and the improvements yielded $554K through increased conversions. Attrition also decreased 8.2%. Next steps include applying the coaching model to other programs and accounts across TTEC as we continue to elevate and enhance our performance.
