Delivering Exceptional Member Service: Personalized, Empathetic Support with Tech Integration
The importance of quality service delivery
As technology reaches new heights, so does the expectation of the service that surrounds it. Consumers only want to see what matters to them – in fact, 73% of people expect better personalization as technology advances. Beyond wanting responses that fit them as a specific individual, 64% of people also expect real-time responses and interactions deployed across multiple channels. Consumers want services that meet them where they are, whether on a phone call or through a chat.
These rising expectations aren’t unreasonable. They’re simply asking for empathetic, personalized support – in a world where they know it’s possible. And they don’t only want it when shopping online or booking their next trip; they’re also expecting it within their professional lives, such as when they need to manage their benefits. We understand that, and that idea is what drives our quest to deliver exceptional service and empathetic support to every individual.
What does great service mean to you?
You can describe great service with any number of adjectives. Service is great because it’s fast and easy, consistent, personalized, or empathetic. You probably thought of a few other words that describe good service to you. Maybe it is simply one of those things you know when you see it—or experience it? It can be hard to pinpoint what makes service good because it can be a whole host of things.
To pin down what makes our service delivery at Businessolver great, we asked some of the people delivering it daily to see what common threads appeared.
Member advocates’ views on service
Rome Clark, a member advocate, spoke to the importance of quality support when we spoke with her.
“Good service to me means being there when the members need you the most,” she said. “Offering them clear, efficient, and empathetic support. For me, it’s all about making sure that every member feels valued and heard, and leaves feeling confident with all the choices they’re making.”
The confidence our member advocates can instill in a stressed or concerned member is invaluable. I’m sure you can recall a moment when a customer service representative eased your worries and made you feel that everything might be all right. It’s a great feeling and something you won’t forget the next time you call in.
In that instance, it might feel like that person is partnering with you—like they’re truly invested in your issue. Esteban Ibarra, a senior member advocate, spoke to us and described what he wanted members to feel when they called in.
“I want them to feel important,” he said. “I want them to know that I’ve got their back. I want to make sure I’m not only solving their problem but giving them peace of mind. And I’m also looking to see and identify potential things they may call back about and nip those in the bud right there.”
That partnership and proactivity are commendable and speak to the standard Ibarra and our advocates hold themselves to.
When asked what brings him the most joy in working as a member advocate, Ibarra said he receives the most joy when he knows he’s crossed the threshold from good to great service.
“When you hear that audible smile from the member and you know they’ve had a memorable experience as opposed to just a standard customer service experience, he said. “I think that’s what brings me the most joy on a daily basis.”
This type of service is what you can expect from our on-shore, in-house member advocate support. Our comprehensive training and monitoring program for member advocates ensures they get the training and opportunities they need to develop their careers while also ensuring your members get the support they need.
Combining exceptional member advocates with powerful technology
Excellent member advocates are crucial to our service delivery, and they deserve technology that matches their level of excellence. By augmenting our member services with our ever-evolving technology, we can continually deliver new levels of delight.
Building on previous enhancements from 2022 which gave our member advocates access to Sofia to find answers to employees’ questions more efficiently and accurately, we recently expanded the areas Sofia can pull information, allowing our member advocates more resources to provide the most personalized response.
With the help of that enhancement, we’ve reduced the time a caller is put on hold by 30% year-over-year in a massive win-win. Member advocates can now get the personalized answers they need in a flash without needing to go on hold to track them down. In turn, members get more of their valuable time back, and member advocates can easily resolve issues and get back to helping the next person.
Speaking of time savers, our fully automated note-taking technology, or auto-summarization, is another game changer released in 2023. Members can focus on the call at hand and not have to worry about writing each and everything down – the system summarizes the call, next steps, and the outcome. Beyond being able to focus on the member fully, this has reduced the time it takes for a member advocate to wrap up their call after it’s over by 60%.
In 2024, we have taken this investment further by bringing these summaries and the sentiment behind them together in an intelligent dashboard for our teams and our clients to better understand why employees are calling in, the trends taking place around a benefit program and how our team of advocates support.
But not everyone wants to call in, so we’ve also invested in improvements to employee self-service to help members get answers more efficiently.
- Promotions: Sofia, our virtual benefits assistant, promotes important benefits and programs to the employee upon logging in to ensure they are taking advantage of all the offerings provided.
- Greater contextualization: Employees often need the most support while enrolling in benefits. Our user experience (UX) researchers determined areas within the enrollment where more context would prove beneficial and then equipped SofiaSM with the knowledge to educate employees in those moments to drive greater understanding.
- Site search enhancements: Greater access wouldn’t be worth much if Sofia couldn’t make sense of it all for our members. Sofia can aggregate information from multiple sources, such as plan documents, member data, and conversation history, to support members more conversationally and even get them to a specific page in their benefit guide!
Let’s go back to our earlier question, ‘what does great service mean to you?’ We think Ibarra summarized it best, it’s when you had an experience that made you smile. And with these investments in people and technology, we feel pretty good about producing smiles throughout the annual enrollment season.
