UPMC Health Plan - Sales Support Professional of the Year

Company: UPMC Health Plan, Pittsburgh, PA
Company Description: UPMC is a world-renowned health care provider and insurer. Based in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, UPMC is inventing new models of accountable, cost-effective, patient-centered care. We provide more than $1.2 billion a year in benefits to our communities, including more care to the region’s most vulnerable citizens than any other health care institution.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Support Professional of the Year

Nomination Title: Marissa Williams

Marissa Williams has been a part of the UPMC Medicare Sales Support Team since July of 2018, shortly after the creation of the department. As the most tenured employee in the department, we rely on her for an immeasurable amount of support, and she has never failed to deliver. Any task we ask her to do is done with precision and quickness. Helping newer agents with their job is second nature to her as she’s first in line with not only an answer, but an explanation as well.

As a Senior representative, we have Marissa guide every new employee to ensure consistency and continued success. These lessons stay with those she mentors and her words and actions have lasting impact that echoes in everything the department have become. Her influence resonates with every employee that has walked through our doors ever since. She is a vital resource of support for our sales organization. She also spearheads or department’s Employee Engagement Committee, which is vital to keep spirits and morale high considering our work-at-home nature amidst the current pandemic. Currently Marissa has made the choice to go back to school to further her career and education.

Marissa’s role is varied. She is a customer service representative, taking phone calls from prospective customers and clients. These callers praise her for the caring and thoughtful approach that Marissa takes with them. She handles our advanced call volume, consisting of calls from our internal clients. These calls are fast-paced and require attention to detail. Marissa’s accuracy, speed, and thoroughness on these calls have led her to be one of our most sought-after representatives for the clients. Fielding all of these calls requires Marissa to ‘switch gears’ constantly to accommodate the type of caller she’s speaking with, and she does so seamlessly with the utmost courtesy and professionalism while maintaining her focus.

Each year we have temporary employees, she provides support both in our Resource Unit as well as a Mentor to the new agents. Marissa takes on the responsibilities of running a team of new agents every year. Requiring a guiding hand and thoughtfulness, she receives high praise from these employees. She’s firm with her feedback, but also quick with positive reinforcement. She’s flexible with the agent’s work-life balance while maintaining the needs of the department.

Marissa is not only a mentor to new hires, but she has established herself as a leader among her peers. Employee engagement could not be more critical during these last few years and her unwavering optimism and drive could not be more apparent than through the various assistance she provides for the team as well as the engagement activities that she has planned.

Marissa’s value of caring and listening has resulted in achieving a 99% customer satisfaction rate with her customer facing calls. She has enrolled over 1500 customers into our products since 2019. Her attention to detail with product knowledge has yielded a 100% satisfaction rate with her client facing calls. Since 2019 Marissa has assisted 70% of client calls related to the enrollment of customers and have impacted those client’s ability to sell our products.

But to say that this is all Marissa does would undercut her importance to the department. Marissa was able to balance high satisfaction scores while mentoring her team of new hires. She has been tasked with all the scheduling, coaching, discipline, and praise of these new employees (2019 – 20, 2020 – 16 agents and 2021 - 22 agents) life balance while maintaining the needs of the department and developing her own leadership skills.

Lastly, her dedication to the engagement and fun of her fellow employees was shown with the activities that she planned and managed throughout the year. Marissa’s engagement ideas have helped the team reach a 90% satisfaction level for both 2020 and 2021.

Marissa is a vital part of our day-to-day operations. She is our ‘go-to person’ for any new process we want to roll out as we can trust her accuracy and competent follow-through. She is held in high regard by not only her peers, but to management, new employees, and other departments she interacts with. To quote Zig Ziglar – “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.” Marissa Williams is the keystone in that foundation of support.

Please see slide 4 in our supporting documentation for specific background information.
Please see slides 6-8 in our supporting documentation for specific achievement information
Please see slide 10-12 in our supporting documentation for specific performance information.