Depending on which states your contact center serves, open enrollment surges could last from mid-October to late February. Most enrollment closes by January 31st but there are always people who call after the deadline or who have follow-up questions about their new plan.
Customers can be overwhelmed by the amount of information they need to sift through to decide their healthcare coverage. They likely will have questions for call center agents. Here is how to properly prepare for open enrollment with Ringba.
Prepare Your Call Center Early
Before any kind of campaign, especially one with that result in high volume, it’s extremely important to prepare your call center agents for Open Enrollment as early as possible. Everything from training agents to better handle calls to adjusting your agent’s schedule to ensure someone is always available to take a call.
If you’re a pay per call marketer, it’s important to communicate and coordinate with your buyers. Find out their scheduling so you can adjust your hours of operation and update your caps. It’s a fantastic opportunity to build an even stronger relationship with your buyers while you deliver them more calls.
Optimize Self-Service
Don’t waste calling agents’ time and energy. Implement self-service options for customer interactions, like clearly identified in-network providers. This will remove an unnecessary burden on agents while keeping customers happy.
For pay per callers, this means revisiting your IVRs and looking at your routing plans to ensure that you’re maximizing the value of every call.
Revisit Routing Plans and Update Concurrency
During open enrollment, call centers typically have the biggest total staff on board and new staff joining their teams. One of the most important issues for call centers during open enrollment is getting their staffing levels right. For Pay Per Callers, this means asking your buyers how many agents they’ll have available so you can update your concurrency in Ringba and optimize your routing plans.
Offer Call-Back or Voicemail Option
Call-backs the most cost-efficient and customer-friendly solution for deflecting calls during surges. During busy periods, offer callers the chance to receive a call-back and leave a voicemail instead of waiting on hold.
Train Agents
Even the highest quality agents will need training and time to get up-to-speed and effectively handle their work during peak times.
You can help them by:
- Review call recordings.
- Pairing new agents up with experienced ones.
- Ensure your technology won’t buckle under the influx of calls.
