Set Up for Customer Service Success: Delivering an Employee-Focused Experience During Annual Enrollment and Beyond

With the arrival of annual enrollment season, employee benefits are top of mind for employers and employees alike. At bswift, we enable employers to achieve their benefits strategies while delivering a personalized and streamlined benefits journey to their employees. Our customer service experience is a huge part of how we’re able to make this happen – we offer a proven blend of technology, expertise and compassionate service to support employees as they choose and use their benefits. This helps them make the right benefits decisions, and in turn, maximize their overall well-being.

So how do we set ourselves up for customer service success? Here’s a peek behind the curtain at the steps we take to deliver an employee-focused experience.

Creating a seamless omnichannel experience

We all have different communication styles and learning preferences, and we want each employee to feel comfortable as they go through their benefits enrollment journey. To enable this, we provide employees with an omnichannel service experience, empowering them to seek assistance however they prefer – via our self-service portal, online chat, email or by speaking with a member of our service team.

Not only is it important for employees to have access to a variety of support options, but their experience should stay consistent across each channel – meaning, if an employee seeks assistance via chat and later calls our service center, their experience should feel like a continuation of their online interaction.

A service experience grounded in compassion

Our latest study found that 82% of businesses feel they have taken a more empathetic approach to employee communication since the onset of the pandemic, but 73% of employees still feel they need more empathy.* Employees make serious and emotional decisions about their benefits, as they affect the wellbeing of themselves and their families. These decisions can feel even more weighty during the ongoing pandemic, with the topic of wellness top of mind for many.

Our service team recognizes this and strives to put empathy first in every service interaction. By approaching each conversation with compassion, employees feel valued and supported as they make important benefits decisions.

Technology and processes to deliver personalized service

One service experience does not fit all – a key goal for any service delivery team should be to closely tailor the experience to each customer. At bswift, we want employees seeking support to feel like they’re interacting with an extension of their own HR and benefits staff.

To achieve this, we consider the employee journey before our team even interacts with them. One way we do this is through our workforce management systems and processes which allow us to work closely with our customers to understand the demographics and historical call arrival of their employee base. Leveraging forecasting and scheduling software, we predict calls in both volume and timing and align the right bswift service representative with the right place and time to optimize the service experience.

Our team also studies each customer’s workplace culture and incorporate its elements into their assigned service team’s training and ongoing learning. This way, the service each team delivers is grounded in the customer’s values, providing employees with a personalized benefits and enrollment experience from start to finish.

Equipped with the right resources to guarantee efficiency

We recently found that 81% of employees want their employee support to be more efficient.* Easing and simplifying the employee journey is beneficial for both employee and employer. To ensure an efficient benefits support experience at bswift, our service teams are backed by tools and processes that equip them with the knowledge they need.

Having an effective content management process and system in place at bswift ensures our service team has the most up-to-date information to offer employees. From resolving simple inquires related to login assistance, to helping them navigate complex services like COBRA, our team has exactly what they need at their fingertips to jump right in.

We also keep a supportive performance management wrapper around each service team. This guarantees they always have all the tools, technology, management support and development they need to efficiently deliver their best service to each employee.

Through all this, it’s essential to keep one eye on the bigger picture. Establishing clear communication processes between service and client teams keeps the two aligned, guaranteeing a streamlined service experience for each customer and their employees.

Delivering for customers today and in the future

Service delivery doesn’t end once an employee’s inquiry has been resolved. It’s essential to not only review each interaction for accuracy, but also take the employee’s feedback into account and determine whether it was a positive experience for both the employee and service representative alike. This allows our service team to know where to intervene in our process to create a smooth, obstacle-free experience for both sides.

At bswift, each team member is trained on their customer’s health and benefits administration needs and understands how to leverage the right tools to successfully perform their role. However, training is never a “one-and-done” experience, as our customers’ benefits strategies evolve over time. Our service team is constantly learning through both formal training sessions and informal reinforcement to deliver for customers today and into the future. We apply direct customer and employee survey feedback and our own internal quality management protocols to drive a continuous improvement mindset across all we do.

We bring our heart to every service interaction to make it easier for employees to choose and use the right benefits for their unique needs. When they feel cared for, confident about their benefits decisions and closer to improving their overall well-being, that’s when we know we’ve delivered a truly employee-focused service experience.

 

Learn more about Brian on LinkedIn! For more annual enrollment resources from bswift, check out the following:

• Infographic: 7 Essential Things Today’s Employees Need from HR
• Article: Boosting Benefits Engagement: Communication Tips for AE 2022 and Beyond
• HRO Today: Delivering for the Whole Employee
• HRO Today: Empowering Employees Through Annual Enrollment and Beyond

* Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of bswift, March 2021