Week 5: Solving Problems and Improving Leadership

My entire project plan this summer was created around solving problems and observing places and interactions within the business to provide suggestions so I will try to keep this blog short and to the point. In order to most effectively address both operational issues and insights about teamwork and collaboration that could positively impact the work at my site, a summary of one of my extra projects I created for myself is the best approach.

I know all of us at Jepson love to say leadership is the most unique and interesting major, but I really did feel like my leadership studies allowed me to put more into my work and take more out of my internship experience than some of my other peers this summer. During the second or third week I noticed that all of my projects and work for the summer really drilled down to how to better support colleagues on the front lines in their work to constantly improve the Aetna member experience. I noticed that as an intern in a temporary position, I needed to get down to the customer service provider level in order to come up with the most realistic and innovative suggestions. To do this, I created a survey using Microsoft Forms and included a range of questions and questions formats: How long have you been with Aetna? On a scale of strongly disagree to strongly agree, do you agree that repeat calls are frustrating? Do you agree that your supervisor promotes an inclusive and empowering environment? Are you comfortable asking a colleague for help when you need it?

Although this survey was not directly related to any of my projects, I feel like it added the necessary context I was missing as a bit of an outsider to the business and showcased my drive to provide meaningful and thoughtful suggestions that could really change the business and improve the work of the team. Specifically with my project surrounding repeat calls into the call center and how to improve those metrics operational issues, this survey gave me an incredible look into what customer service representatives see with repeat calls and get their take on how to improve those numbers.

I knew there would be lots of leadership matrices in the enterprise but one common thread I kept coming back to throughout my experience is that there are a lot of decisions that are made without necessarily weighing all of the stakeholder’s interests equally. For instance, around week 5 of my time at CVS, the customer service representatives within the organization and team I worked with started transitioning to a new member portal software to use when a member calls in with a question. In the old member portal, there were more specific options to code for service requests built specifically for Aetna. The new member portal however was not programmed with the same codes for the same service requests and upon the first few weeks of using the portal, seemed like it was not designed for Aetna at all. The decision to switch over to the new member portal was made by leaders four, five, six steps removed from the people whose lives are most directly impacted by the change: the customer service representatives. I distributed my survey to the customer service representatives during the rollout of the new portal and I their responses to the survey, especially the final “additional comments section” solidified for my, the reason why I was inspired to create the survey in the first place: to help support customer service representatives as colleagues and make sure their interests and needs are taken into account when making suggestions and business decisions that undoubtedly impact their work and their day to day lives the most.

I cannot say for sure that I would not have thought of this idea without my leadership studies or whether I would be on the lookout for this sort of this without the knowledge that I have now, but I am confident when I say that my leadership knowledge and attention to these sorts of situations and analysis led me to reflect longer and think harder about how to approach my projects and led me to be more open with how to provide the best, most feasible suggestions for the business. I also think my leadership studies also gave me the confidence and the language to talk through my observations about the operational issues and insights about teamwork and collaboration that I would otherwise not have.