Benefit Counselor - Bilingual

Job Title: Bilingual Benefit Counselor 

Summary/Objective

The Benefit Counselor is responsible for assisting with the enrollment and administration of all benefits including medical, indemnity plans, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability for our clients on the Aetna Medsure platform. The Benefit Counselor engages with employees across the call center’s phone, live chat, and SMS text channels.

The Benefit Counselor is responsible for providing quality and efficient customer service to callers, chat contacts, and SMS contacts as well as internal customers and team members.  The Benefit Counselor is expected to have strong verbal and written communication skills, excellent phone, chat, and SMS etiquette, and the ability to understand and communicate the general scope of our client’s company benefit offerings.  The Benefit Counselor must remain positive and professional during stressful calls, chats, and text conversations, and must be able to move comfortably between voice and written channels, at times handling more than one conversation at once. The Benefit Counselor will work closely with their Team Leads and Supervisor.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Answer calls, respond to live chats, and respond to SMS text messages in a timely, efficient and knowledgeable manner.
• Manage multiple concurrent chat conversations at the same time while maintaining accuracy, quality, and a professional tone in each conversation.
• Maintain clear, professional, and grammatically correct writing when corresponding with customers via chat and SMS, consistent with company tone and brand standards.
• Meet established response-time and handle-time expectations for chat and SMS interactions, in addition to call-handling standards.
• Completes enrollments during Annual Enrollment, New Hires, employees newly eligible (class changes), and rehires with Benefit Plan Information, educating and informing the caller, chat, or SMS contact in a manner that is conducive to the sale of the benefit plans, regardless of channel.
• Ensure the accuracy of all benefits enrollments in the Benefit Harbor system is accurate.
• Ensure all dependent information is entered in the Benefit Harbor system accurately and completely.
• Responds to benefits inquiries from callers, chat users, and SMS contacts on plan provisions, benefits enrollments, status changes and other general inquiries.
• Assists employees regarding benefits claim issues by directing the caller, chat, or SMS contact to the appropriate vendor.
• Ensures callers have been provide accurate and complete information to make educated decisions regarding the enrollment into benefits and other client specific administrative information.
• Creates and maintains a high-quality work environment, maintaining professional demeanor with peers, leadership and callers.
• Works as a member on special or ongoing projects that are important to goals and values of the call center.
• Place outbound follow-up calls, chats, or SMS messages to customers to complete benefit enrollment, answer questions, and resolve escalations.
• Maintains a full understanding of clients’ benefit offerings and the ability to answer questions about the benefit plans and the administration for assigned clients.
• Participates in outbound call, chat, and SMS campaigns and completes contacts timely and report progress to Team Lead.
• Communicates concerns regarding call, chat, or SMS volume, voicemail outside the normal realm, and phone, chat, or system issues on a real time basis to Team Lead, Supervisor or Call Center Director.
• Continues to work with senior member of the teams to ensure individual Quality Assurance metrics are being meet and improved upon. 

Other Duties

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Required Qualifications

• Commination Proficiency:
  • Strong Written and Verbal Communication Skills, including the ability to write clearly and professionally in real time during chat and SMS conversations
  • Ability to manage multiple simultaneous chat conversations without sacrificing accuracy, quality, or response time
  • Excellent listening skills and the ability to ask probing questions, understand concerns and overcome objections

• Customer/Client Focus
  • Demonstrated ability to provide superior Customer Service
  • Must be able to educate and inform callers of benefits options and overcome obstacles during the “sale”. 
• Leadership
  • Strong work ethic and self-starter, able to effectively manage multiple clients and adapt to change within a fast-paced, high-intensity, multi-channel call center (phone, chat, and SMS)
  • Highly organized with great attention to detail
  • Possess a professional and friendly attitude and be able to quickly develop a rapport with customers over the phone, in chat, via SMS, and with team members

• General Knowledge, Experience, Technical, and Problem Solving Skills
  • Ability to type 40 wpm+ with accuracy, sufficient to manage real-time chat conversations
  • Comfortable navigating and toggling between multiple software platforms and systems simultaneously (phone, chat, and SMS) while assisting customers
  • Basic knowledge of Microsoft Office, including excel
  • Health and welfare knowledge is a plus but not required
  • Previous call center experience is a plus but not required

Other Positional Details

Minimum Required Qualifications

High school diploma or GED diploma

6 months of Customer service experience in any setting

Supervisory Responsibility

This position has no supervisory responsibilities.

Work Environment

This job operates in remotely in a home office setting. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, and printers, along with multi-channel contact center software supporting phone, chat, and SMS communications

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.  While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear.   The employee is frequently required to stand; walk; bend; and type.

Suggested Schedule

This is a full-time position. Hours of Operation are Monday through Thursday 8 am to 7 pm; Friday 8 am to 6 pm. Occasional evening may be required as job duties demand.  Shifts Vary.