A Unified Solution for Humana's Plan Enrollment Process

Overview

At Humana, the process around medical plan selection and enrollment for sales agents involved many disjointed legacy systems that did not integrate together. With an Extreme Programming agile approach, our team created a one-stop-shop solution in order to allow agents to more efficiently select and enroll potential customers onto Humana plans. To test desirability, we launched the product as an initial pilot to 100+ sales agents during Annual Enrollment Period, the time when most customers sign up for plans. By the end of AEP, we were successfully able to scale up to over 90% of sales agents and the business stakeholders agreed to continue supporting the product moving forward.

Agent training and support

Since this system was a deviation from the processes that sales agents were traditionally used to at Humana, our product team offered training sessions to all sales agents involved in the pilot. This included creating training materials, presenting demos of the system, and conducting live training sessions. We also maintained several ongoing channels to provide technical support to agents as well as to collect feedback during the pilot.

Test & learn iterative cycles

We operated on a one week iteration basis. In the first iterations, we typically built out prototypes based on roadmap priorities. In the 2nd iterations, we then did quick rounds of usability testing with 3 - 5 sales agents to validate the new feature sets.

High fidelity mocks & QA

We created high fidelity mockups and worked with the developers to ensure that they were implemented. We also did quick QA checks and worked on fixes with the developers to ensure that the design and functionality of features worked as expected.

  • Home page

  • Pharmacy search

  • Provider search

  • Medicare & Medicaid verification

  • Plan comparison

  • Enrollment application

  • Enrollment confirmation

Data & analytics

We defined specific learning objectives that we discussed with our business stakeholders and validated through both qualitative and quantitative data during the pilot. We conducted a survey as well as post-pilot interviews in order to gauge user satisfaction and preferences. We also worked closely with the data analytics team to create and maintain a Power BI dashboard that included the major product metrics that were of interest. The info was presented to stakeholders during bi-weekly touch bases as well as after the pilot.

Results

  • Improved Agent Experience: Delivered a tool that agents praised as a significant improvement over previous disjointed processes.

  • Scaled Effectively: Enabled the transition from 100+ pilot agents to all 1,200 agents after earning stakeholder confidence within the first weeks of the pilot.

  • Ensured Comprehensive Training: Achieved full system training for the majority of agents by the end of the pilot.

  • Secured Long-Term Commitment: Garnered business stakeholder support to continue the tool’s adoption and initiate decommissioning of legacy systems.