ASHLEY PEREZ: Hi, Sareeta. Thank you so much for having me today.
SAREETA SIMS: Of course, Ashley. And my other guest is Bayron Madrid, another talented Service Center Manager in WTW's benefits outsourcing team.
BAYRON MADRID: Hello, Sareeta. Hello, Ashley. It's great to get some time outside of our day to day in the Service Center to connect. I recall we all actually met during the Service Center mentorship program. I'm so glad we had time to discuss today's topic on the human and AI experience through people who have seen it firsthand, us from our junior positions and are now higher positions in leadership.
SAREETA SIMS: Yes, agreed. Thanks to you both. It's great to have this time to connect. You know, that brings us to our topic of discussion for today. As we move into an environment where connecting with individuals continues to evolve into the future of technology, it's important to keep a highlight on the human element of the work we do.
We continue to work in conjunction and focus on our technology and how it can enable our world class human experience, while also concentrating on the full knowledge of benefits and really meeting people where they are from their first days as a new hire through their retirement. Ashley, are there instances that come to mind where you could use technology and that individualized touch to help a participant through their benefits needs?
ASHLEY PEREZ: Yes, there are many instances that come to mind. Our tailored guidance and support is one thing that can help a participant make a significant difference in helping those individuals navigate a complex pension and/or health decision. These choices are some of the most important for a person at that time in their life.
One example that really sticks out is, we had an employee that had very specific health needs, and they were confused about selecting the right health insurance option during their open enrollment period. This participant had several pre-existing conditions and needed a plan that would help them cover their medical expenses without straining their budget.
As CSRS, we assist. However, we don't ever want to take on the risk of giving someone our opinion on the best choice for them. And how we do this is by directing to different tools that we have. An example for our health site is the Help Me Choose option. This is embedded in our employee self-service system. And it helps the participant to provide direction for their personal situation.
So what we did was, we guided them through evaluating the different health insurance plans, really putting a focus on coverage for those pre-existing health conditions. We provided a side by side comparison of the available plans and focusing on the key differences, such as premiums, deductibles, copays, and even network providers.
We also utilize the technology by directing this participant to our Help Me Choose tool, where they could put specific questions that were unique to them, and this tool offers answers and a personalized advice. The virtual enhancement also allows a person whose employer offers multiple plans to decide which plan may be the best fit for them and their health needs.
The overall outcome of this is we were able to help the participants select a plan that offered the comprehensive coverage that fit their needs and fit within their budget, ultimately ensuring that they had access to all the necessary medical care without any financial stress.
BAYRON MADRID: I agree, Ashley. The Help Me Choose tool has honestly helped me and has helped other people here at WTW and our clients because it's really taking a lot of the tough questions that a participant might have, and just putting it into a system where it can help us make those decisions and give educated, real- time answers to their information. I really do love that.
And speaking of, I think I actually have a pension example for this similar thing. One of our other tools is our Retire Online capabilities for some of our pension clients. We actually had one of our participants message in into our chat system, ask a couple questions. And they were struggling. Retirement only happens once in a lifetime, so it is a little bit difficult for a lot of people. It's new to them. They've never done it before. So of course, our representative was actually able to reach out to them directly and get on the phone with them and walk them through the Retire Online process.
And it was perfect because the participant was struggling trying to decide, should I take my retirement benefits as a lump sum? Should I go with an annuity? I'm really stressing about the financial decision. And them being able to enter it into our Retire Online tool and being able to select different ages, maybe they're thinking about retirement in the future, and just being able to see those compared side by side was really great for him.
And he even had us actually perform a conference call with his financial advisor so that we could actually all be on the line together and walk him through the process, and he can return his forms through our online portals now. Definitely different from when we started our careers here at the Service Center, Ashley. But it's just so amazing the different technologies and tools that have come into play as we've advancing into the future.
And then for this gentleman specifically, he ended up choosing an annuity option because he discovered it was the best option for him. He's also married, so it was best for him to go with an annuity option such as joint and survivor where it would pay out to his spouse in the event of something occurring to him. And he felt he made the best decision for his future financially. And that's honestly what we're here about, putting the customer first and really showing our premier service to be able to help people along the way.
But we've honestly had some great development, as mentioned a little bit earlier by Ashley and by myself, we have tools now that can actually check sentiment when calls are coming in or voicemails are left by our participants to see if it's something that they have to look into or maybe someone needs a follow up call because all their questions weren't answered. And just being able to get all of this information real time, have our AI analyze this information, and then the supervisors being able to actually leverage it and use it to help enhance the process has just been amazing overall.
SAREETA SIMS: Yeah. It sounds like in your time at WTW, we've seen a fair amount of improvements and changes to our technology for handling calls. I hear that there's also some changes happening with the way that we get our knowledge for calls. Ashley, you know more about that?
ASHLEY PEREZ: Yes. Our knowledge base has a plethora of enhancements and improvements that are coming along. And one of these that we really have seen make a big difference is our updates to the representatives not necessarily needing to rely solely on reading the knowledge base to gain their knowledge. But instead, an enhancement is where content is pushed to them based on the dialogue between the caller and the representative.
This is continuing to improve as we have enhanced voting options. So just for an example, we have a caller who is needing assistance with 401(k). This enhancement within our knowledge base will push that content for 401(k) to the top of the page. And the representative is able to easily direct the caller to the appropriate vendor or provide additional navigation steps to help ensure that they're getting assistance with their inquiry. And the representative can then utilize the voting options within our knowledge base to say, this was really helpful during this conversation, or they can state that it was not a helpful content page. And it just helps to improve the overall AI as we move forward.
BAYRON MADRID: That's awesome, Ashley. I heard there's also a decision trees or something along the lines where CSRs can choose the different decisions.
ASHLEY PEREZ: Yes. Within our knowledge base we do have what's called our decision trees. And this helps with the summarization of the calls. So for example, we have someone who needs to process an address change for their upcoming retirement. This is something that our representatives will assist with. And the content page directly in our knowledge base will not only have the details about how the address change can be updated, but there is a decision tree that will follow the specific steps for how this process needs to be completed from start to finish. It also will have what we call our courtesy reminders. This is where a representative can advise a participant, once this update is completed, this is how long it will take for you to see that within the system.
SAREETA SIMS: Wow, that's really amazing. There's so many great tools. So the call-handling software can now identify so much, not only for the data on calls, but also to help our colleagues. There are notifications to point out on busier days when colleagues can prepare to be even more on their A game for those heavier call volumes, and having our knowledge management tools shift CSRs from having to rely solely on reading to gain their knowledge to instead have content pushed to them is huge. So how can these tools help our clients?
BAYRON MADRID: That's a fantastic question, Sareeta. Honestly, it does have to do a lot with partnership with our clients. A lot of these enhancements kind of allow us to get messages out in real time. So, for example, if the client is concerned about a communication that they're sending, or they really want us to provide a certain reminder, let's say possibly an end of year evaluation of some sort having to do with their health benefits or something of that nature.
The client can give it to us, and then we can push it to the CSR team in real time. But also, being able to take a holistic view with the leadership team and the different supervisors who work on the different clients, and identifying trends and things that we may not have seen that our call system has called out to us because of a tone that they saw on a review of a survey or something of that nature. There's also other great benefits, right, Ashley?
ASHLEY PEREZ: Yes, Bayron, I completely agree. And with the tools that we have discussed today, so just to reiterate our Help Me Choose tool, our Retirement Online, our improvements and enhancements for the knowledge base, these tools overall give a best participant experience. That is what we are looking for, to make sure that we're assisting and providing an overall great experience, especially on that first, initial interaction that we have with someone. We want them to end that conversation feeling that they have all of the questions answered, and that they may not need to call back in multiple times. Or really just ensuring that our representative team is just as passionate as we are. And if there is a follow up needed, we offer that follow up so the person really feels like they are being taken care of.
SAREETA SIMS: Yeah, that's just so important. This has been a great talk today. I'd like to take a moment to Thank our guests. Ashley, thank you.
ASHLEY PEREZ: Thank you, Sareeta. This has been a great topic of discussion, and just appreciate you having me.
SAREETA SIMS: And Bayron, thank you so much for joining us.
BAYRON MADRID: Of course, Sareeta. Thank you. I think we are all very passionate about this, and I just love having to have the time to be able to connect.
SAREETA SIMS: And as always, I would like to thank our benefits with purpose listeners. We appreciate you joining us. Make sure you subscribe for future episodes, and we look forward to having you back next time.
SPEAKER 1: Thank you for joining us for this WTW podcast featuring the latest perspectives on the intersection of people, capital, and risk. For more information, visit the insight section of wtwco.com.
