If office tasks like scheduling appointments and answering phones are taking up too much time, it might be time to hire an intern or part-time help.
Hiring and training interns to help you manage your Medicare business can have a bit of a learning curve. In this Medicare agent internship guide, we'll provide you with tested and proven job descriptions, call scripts, and homework assignments to get your new interns up to speed.
Interesting in growing your insurance business? Check out the other articles in the Level Up blog series.
What does an insurance intern do?
An insurance intern should be scheduling renewal appointments, running reports, processing new business, and answering incoming phone calls.
Now, your intern can do whatever supporting tasks you need the most help with, but in our experience, these are the four basic tasks that stop agents from being able to sell.
If your intern were to only do one thing, I'd focus on scheduling appointments during the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP). Scheduling your own renewal appointments is incredibly inefficient because you know your clients! A call that should've taken 60 seconds has now drawn out into 20 minutes because you're catching up about the grandkids or that recent vacation.
Ideally, you want to do your small talk in your actual appointment, not when you're trying to get through a call list.
We also train our interns to help us run Part D comparisons in the fall, which is a time-consuming task with very little reward. However, it's a great service to provide to your clients, despite the low commission.
Other tasks your insurance intern could do include:
- Posting on social media
- Reviewing your website for potential upgrades or recommendations
- Create or revamp your agency brochure
- Brainstorm ways to engage in your community
- Develop a plan to gather client testimonials
- Assisting with developing or running new reports to help you make better business decisions
We're lucky to have marketing staff, but I know most independent agents are doing everything themselves. An intern could take some of the marketing burdens off your shoulders.
Where do you find interns?
The first place I'd look for a new intern is your local college or university. Many colleges and universities have internship programs in place, and they may even subsidize part of the hourly pay.
Just do an online search with the name of your local college + internships.
For example, our career shop in central Illinois works with a local university, and they pay half of the hourly wage. Most importantly, they supply us with quality talent!
Also, many college students are looking for part-time gigs, and they want the experience on their resumes. If you're looking for help just during AEP, as an example, finding a college-aged intern may be your ideal solution.
We've also gone on to hire past interns to work in the office full-time. It's a great way to test out the waters before making a more permanent commitment.
If you talk to your local college or university and nothing comes of it, move on to a job or internship site like Indeed, Internships.com, or ZipRecruiter. We've also posted our jobs on Facebook with great success.
Example of creating an internship job post on Facebook
What should I include in an intern job description?
Your intern job description should include:
- Job title
- An introduction where you briefly describe what's needed and provide a high-level overview of the role
- List of duties and responsibilities – consider listing them in the order of importance and/or frequency
- Important skills/qualifications, such as education, skills, experience, and abilities
- A brief summary of your agency
- Contact information for sending in the resume
Don't overlook the job description. According to Wright State University, a job description "sets the stage for optimum work performance."
From the very beginning, you're clarifying the responsibilities of the intern and what you expect out of him or her.
Here are two sample job descriptions you're welcome to use or modify to make them fit your needs.
Agency Contact Representative Internship Job Description
This job description is tailored towards finding an individual who would spend the majority of their time scheduling renewal appointments. Feel free to copy and paste this for your own use.
Our agency is looking for a positive, friendly individual to schedule renewal appointments for our agents and to assist with any other client communications.
Duties include:
- Scheduling renewal appointments for several different schedules
- Working with the agency's computer system to update information in customer databases used by the agency
- Providing back-office service to the agents
- Assisting staff with client requests
- Sending in new business to insurance companies
- Learning to communicate effectively and provide excellent customer service in a professional setting
- Performing other related duties as assigned
The ideal candidate will have:
- Excellent phone etiquette and listening skills
- Strong attention to detail
- A high level of confidentiality in their workflow and the ability to work independently
- Strong worth ethic and ability to effectively multitask
- Ability to clearly organize and maintain files and documents, both digital and printed
After this information, include a little paragraph or two about yourself and your agency. Finally, at the bottom, tell the individual where to email their resume.
Open Enrollment Specialist Fall Internship
This is another job description our local agency uses, but it's tailored specifically for the Annual Enrollment Period (AEP). This individual would be spending most of their time running drug comparisons in October and November.
Our agency is looking for a positive, friendly individual to run Medicare drug comparisons for our agents during the fall Medicare enrollment period. Our agents also need assistance with scheduling and client-facing communication during this busy time of year.
Duties include:
- Entering prescriptions and running pharmaceutical comparisons on Medicare.gov
- Scheduling appointments for several different schedules
- Working with the agency's computer system to update information in customer databases used by the agency
- Providing back-office service to the agents
- Assisting staff with client requests
- Sending in new business to insurance companies
- Learning to communicate effectively and provide excellent customer service in a professional setting
- Performing other related duties as assigned
The ideal candidate will have:
- Excellent phone etiquette and listening skills
- Strong attention to detail in a fast-paced work environment
- A high level of confidentiality in their workflow and the ability to work independently
- Strong worth ethic and ability to effectively multitask
- Ability to clearly organize and maintain files and documents, both digital and printed
- No insurance experience required
How do I train my interns?
I always start with a Medicare 101 course. It's about 2 hours long, and while it's a bit of information overload, it gets your interns familiar with the lingo and the basics.
We've created our own Medicare 101 presentation, and that's also included in our All-Star Program.
If you don't have a presentation made, check out Humana and Cigna. They've both created Medicare 101-type presentations that could give you some inspiration or at least an outline for making your own.
Since the primary job of our interns is to make calls, I also give them call scripts. We've created call scripts for setting renewal appointments and leaving voicemails. These scripts are tested by us and have worked wonderfully for years.
You can download these for free, and the PDF is interactive, so you'll enter your information at the top, and it'll automatically customize all your scripts!
Here's an example of one of the scripts included in our call script document:
“Hi, is this [Barb]? This is [Scott] with [New Horizons].
[Jason] has asked me to call you regarding your upcoming renewal. [He] was looking to schedule a time to talk with you about options that could possibly save you money with the rate increase that would occur on your renewal date.
Would you happen to have any dates in mind in the next two weeks that might work for you?
Please bring your Medicare card and your current medication list.”
To train interns to run Part D drug plan comparison on Medicare.gov, I give them a tour. I'll do 3-4 different scenarios and walk them through all the steps. Since Medicare redesigned their Plan Finder, the whole process is a lot more intuitive.
Then, I give them this homework:
- Run a drug comparison on Medicare.gov with these 4 medications – simvastatin, lisinopril, metformin, and Januvia – and find out which plan is best if you go to Walgreens or CVS.
Additionally, CMS often holds a Plan Finder virtual workshop in August – this year, it's on August 19, 2021 – and you can send your interns to that. CMS demonstrates how to shop and compare Medicare options on Medicare.gov. They may not do it the exact way you do, but it's an option.
Related: 5 Steps to Help Medicare Clients Deal with Expensive Prescription Drugs
Conclusion
Getting an intern to help you, at least during AEP, is such a relief. You don't realize how much busywork you've been doing until someone comes and takes it off your plate.
Be sure to download our intern call scripts to make the training process easier, and leave a comment if you have any questions!
