A Major Health Insurance Company Builds Unified, Cross-Functional Teams Across Sales and Customer Service to Support Major Customer Accounts

OVERVIEW

A major southeastern U.S. health insurance company is on a mission to improve the health and well-being of citizens in their state and to be the model for transforming the health system through an unwavering commitment to quality, affordability, and exceptional experience. To reach those goals, they must reach more customers, provide them excellent customer experiences and deepen their relationships with more services. 

OBJECTIVES

• Build a unified cohesive “pod” – cross-functional teams that pull from sales, customer service and support functions to support major accounts
• Improve internal teamwork and collaboration
• Reduce silos and blame
• Improve internal and external service interactions

CHALLENGE

When the company reorganized part of its sales and customer service organizations into a new “pod” structure to support its largest, most strategic clients, the goals were to provide an excellent and cohesive customer experience, deepen internal and external partnerships, and boost sales. However, it was a challenge to get these cross-functional teams to work together as a cohesive, mutually supportive unit aligned behind shared objectives. People struggled to find their roles within the pods and to understand and support the roles of others. Team members continued to operate within silos when the organization needed them working shoulder-to-shoulder to advance excellent client engagements and mutually beneficial wins.

SOLUTION

After experiencing an Integrity Service® workshop firsthand, a buying committee member recommended the program to help assist the teams in overcoming their challenges so they could realize the original goals of the reorganization. She built enthusiasm and buy-in for the solution through meetings and one-on-one discussions, gaining the support to pilot the program with two of the pods.

The change effort kicked off with pre-work for the teams followed by a half-day Integrity Service workshop facilitated by an Integrity Solutions master trainer. Over the next 7 weeks, the teams met with their managers and an Integrity Solutions facilitator in small groups for an hour to discuss the practical application of the Integrity Service skills and the impact those skills were having internally and externally. Each of these Zoom meetings focused on a particular subset of the skills, with prep work sent in advance. As opposed to the typical “role play” exercises found in other programs, these “real play” exercises allowed participants to work through actual issues and get immediate, tangible value from the experience.

IMPACT

The pod leaders and organizational development partners report that the Integrity Service implementation has already created value for the organization, including improving teamwork, collaboration and morale as well as enhancing sales success. 

The project leaders highlight the phased learning and “real play” approach as key to the initiative’s impact. The weekly calls saw high engagement from participants and managers alike, and all found these calls to be extremely valuable.

Now that the Integrity Service skills are integral to the way the company does business, their teams are aligned behind a shared mindset that has bridged service and selling and is enabling them to deliver greater value to their customers. They attribute a number of positive results since the implementation to the new skills and attitudes developed through this initiative, including:

• increased customer retention
• expanded lines of coverage with existing accounts
• increased new business as a result of greater collaboration and creativity
• improved internal and external relationships

The company is in process of expanding Integrity Service to the other major accounts teams. 

TESTIMONIALS

“Our customer service team has gone from siloed to unstoppable! Our people are excited to use the skills and tools from the program which have breathed new life into the team. Integrity Service has become an integral part of how we do business” – Client Success Lead

“We’re already seeing an impact in terms of building our business. It’s amazing and speaks volumes for the power of Integrity Service. We’re retaining customers more effectively and adding additional lines of coverage. This will help our business and I’m very excited about it.”

“Improvement have been seen both internally and externally. Their customers feel it, the same band is producing the sound. This process has sparked some creatively in the way that they are thinking about customers and presenting to them. They actually pull out the GVALHI card and walk through each step and describe how they used it to pitch different ideas to their clients.  They ended up winning an important case, that was otherwise dead to us, because of that.”

“It’s a powerful process that generates results you can see right away. As the weeks went on, people applied the skills more and more, individual confidence improved and overall interactions became more productive and collegial.”