How To Boost Productivity by Automating Your Open Enrollment Period

Table of Contents

• How automation streamlines OEP
• Struggling to connect with clients
• Tasks slip through cracks
• Leads pile up with no timely follow-up
• Struggling to keep up with compliance
• Efficiently gathering medicare Rx Data
• Using disparate CRM, Quoting, & Enrollment Tools

Save Valuable Time & Energy During AEP/OEP

Enrollment season and the time leading up to it are some of the busiest times of year for insurance agents. Between certifications, continuing education, enrollment preparation, and the actual AEP/OEP season, you’re likely overwhelmed and booked with tasks. It can feel overwhelming, but there are steps you can take to effectively manage your to-do list.

With so much on your plate, it can become difficult (and stressful) to stay organized and on top of client communication. But there are tools that can help.

Automation can make your OEP processes more efficient. Stop spending your days writing emails, creating tasks, remembering to communicate, and so much more. Automation can help you complete those tasks without the headache. Let it handle routine tasks seamlessly in the background so you can focus on delivering exceptional service to your clients.

How Automation Streamlines Enrollment Season

For Open Enrollment and AEP, the more you improve your systems, the smoother the season will go — and the more profitable your agency has the potential to be.

One of the most helpful tools you can have is an agency management system (AMS). With the right features, an industry-specific AMS can help your team maintain optimal productivity during OEP.

AgencyBloc, for example, offers a suite of industry-specific features that provide insurance agencies with the tools they need to get started immediately. You can store essential client records and communications, run reports, build email campaigns, and much more. All of these features help prevent data silos, save time, and support seamless agency operations.

Open Enrollment Challenge: Struggling To Connect With Clients

While it’s important to have a strong lead nurturing plan for new and incoming leads, keeping regular and meaningful contact with your current clients is just as (if not more) important. The #1 reason clients leave is because they don’t feel heard or valued.

Sending emails and text messages is a great way to maintain consistent communication with your clients. However, doing this manually is both time-consuming and energy-intensive.

Manual: Without automation, staying in touch means you have to: 

1.  Remember to write the email or text message(s)
2. Create the campaign if there will be multiple sends — drip-style or behavior-based
3. Determine and isolate recipients to segment your audience correctly (sending the wrong message to someone can cause confusion and impact your reputation)
4. Send all campaign messages on time — while you’re already busy

In short, managing email and text message campaigns becomes a separate job on top of everything else you’re handling.

Automated: Using automation makes maintaining communication with clients much easier. In AgencyBloc’s AMS+ solution, you can set up an Automated Workflow that automatically creates and sends a message after a specific trigger.   

Select the recipient and trigger criteria, write the message, and AMS+ will do the rest. You will be able to streamline communications for birthdays, anniversaries, renewals, new client/policy onboarding, and more. Find more client retention-focused automation templates. 

In addition to saving time, this automation runs off your existing book of business, eliminating the need to update multiple databases.

"I value AgencyBloc a lot. The automated drip campaigns are my favorite. I've been able to save 50 hours every Open Enrollment period just in client communications."
—Patrick O., Integrity Insurance

Open Enrollment Challenge: Tasks Slip Through Cracks

Task assignment and management are crucial during busy times, like the AEP/OEP. Without a simple way to assign, track, and complete tasks, it can quickly become more stressful than helpful.

Manual: If your current system doesn’t support task assignment capabilities, you’ll be forced to do so through other means that can create gaps and inefficiencies, like:

• Sending emails manually to each agent 
• Leaving a sticky note on their desk
• Creating an appointment on their email calendar
• Sending texts 
• Individual calling and leaving voicemails
• Verbally telling someone about a new task
• Tracking tasks in a system separate from your CRM

Not only are these methods inefficient, but they also make it challenging to track task completion, increasing the risk that important tasks will be missed.

Automated: One of the biggest benefits of our Automated Workflow feature is that it assigns tasks immediately to you and your fellow agents to guarantee that nothing is missed. These tasks appear on their Activity Dashboard and Calendar, providing a comprehensive list of daily assignments and responsibilities in one place.

Each task can include notes, priority levels, and other details to help you and your team complete it and stay clear on the next steps. To ensure tasks are completed and track your team's productivity, use Custom Reports to view what's assigned and what's been completed.

"Automated Workflows let us automate our daily, monthly, and yearly tasks, making us more efficient to reduce workloads and overhead costs. I highly recommend AMS+ as your agency management system."
—Patty P. My Benefit Advisor

Open Enrollment Challenge: Leads Pile Up With No Timely Follow-up

Two significant challenges insurance agents experience during AEP/OEP are:

1. Noticing when new leads come in
2. Being able to follow up with those new leads quickly

When you’re busy selling to new clients, handling renewals, and working 60+ hours a week, managing and nurturing leads can easily get pushed aside. This is exactly why you need a system that automatically captures, nurtures, and converts your new leads into clients.

Manual: Without automation, new leads can easily be overlooked. The speed-to-lead game is essential to winning them because delays significantly reduce your chances of conversion. When lead management and follow-up are done manually, it becomes a gamble of whether you spot the new lead in time to reach out and close the deal.

Fact: Following up with a lead in five minutes is 21 times more effective than after 30 minutes.

Automated: Reach the five minutes (or less) follow-up goal by pairing customizable Lead Forms with Automated Workflow. These features ensure that you're instantly notified of submissions from lead forms or lead vendors, allowing you and your team to follow up quickly. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Create a Lead Form in AgencyBloc and embed it on your insurance website
2. A new lead fills out the form at their peak level of interest
3. A task and/or email notification is sent to the agent assigned to reach out immediately
4. The agent reaches out, catches the lead when it’s hottest, and gets the conversion! ?

With an industry-specific, ready-to-launch solution like an Engage+ Insurance Website, you can connect your customizable lead form to Automated Workflows to notify your team instantly when leads come in, allowing you to reach out to them promptly with an automated follow-up.

"I feel like I'm the VIP customer. The entire onboarding experience has been so high level. It's been what I would have paid thousands of dollars for. And now I have a beautiful website that is actually going to be a lead generator for me, make my life so much easier, and allow me to scale up as a one-woman show."
—Mary F. Your Medicare Specialist

Open Enrollment Challenge: Struggling to keep up with compliance 

During AEP/EOP, agencies experience a deluge of  calls and sales. This makes it harder to stay compliant. Managing various compliance documents (SOA, ACA Consent, and ACA Attestation) as well as ensuring proper phone recording can be a headache. 

Using a system with all of those compliance requirements built in takes the stress away.

Manual:Without integrated compliance tools, maintaining regulatory compliance during AEP/OEP involves:

• Manually tracking and documenting all client interactions across multiple platforms
• Remembering to record calls and store them in compliant systems
• Remembering to send out Scope of Appointment (SOA) documents 48 hours ahead of meetings
• Remembering to send ACA Consent to Contact and ACA Attestation documents at the right time
• Compliantly storing each and every signed document manually in the proper place with the correct record for the correct number of years
• Risk of missing required disclosures or documentation during busy periods
• Spending additional time organizing records for audits or regulatory reviews

The bottom line: Having a fragmented approach to health insurance compliance management opens the door to audits, disorganization, and decreased client satisfaction/retention.

Automated: AgencyBloc’s AMS+ solution includes built-in compliance documents and compliance tools that streamline regulatory requirements while you focus on sales and service. 

Included Compliance documents:

• Scope of Appointment (SOA)
• ACA Consent to Contact
• ACA Attestations

Having these tools built-in allow your agency to streamline processes and stay audit-ready at all times. Leverage the one-click process to send and store signed compliance documents without the worry of remembering to do so. Everything is localized to one central place, making your life easier and your enrollment season smoother.

“The built-in SOA functionality in AMS+ is huge. We could’ve never supported the 48-hour rule and our growing book of business while staying compliant using spreadsheets.”
-Kellie G., Davies Agency, Inc. 

Open Enrollment Challenge: Integrating Phone System with CRM

Open Enrollment is one of the busiest and most critical times of the year for insurance agencies. High call volumes, time-sensitive deadlines, and the need for accurate communication can create a lot of pressure. By integrating a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) or phone system with a CRM platform, you can streamline operations, improve customer experience, and ensure compliance with greater efficiency.

Insurance VoIP tools, like the one in AMS+, must have:

Manual: Using disconnected systems creates confusion, needlessly complicates compliance, and makes everyone work harder. When your VoIP solution and CRM are separate, you have to spend your valuable time downloading MP3 recording files from one and uploading them to the other — and these files can be huge! 

• Click-to-call dialer: Direct dialing from leads, prospects, and client records within the CRM interface
• Ring groups: Get the right call to the right team to increase client satisfaction
• Voicemail drops: Instantly deliver pre-recorded voicemail messages to save time and create more touches during the sales process
• Interactive voice response (IVR): Leverage an automated assistant to help callers find who they need to talk to
• Call queues: Leave no lead behind with organized queues to keep you efficient and connected
• Automated compliance: Stay compliant with pre-recorded compliance-friendly messages and automatic phone recording

Or worse, you keep them separate, creating more hassle for your team to locate information and service properly. Plus, if an audit comes up, you’re stuck doing double duty to pull all of the data you need.

But, it doesn’t have to be this hard.

Automated: Using an AMS with built-in insurance VoIP technology can save your team significant time and headaches by centralizing the process into one. 

Stop worrying about compliance, recordings, and finding the data. Everything is in one place and automatically recorded to ensure you never miss a beat. After a call is finished, the recording is automatically attached to the contact’s record for each access and reference. Plus, you can record pre-recorded messages that play at the beginning of every call that can share critical business information, compliance messages, or other necessary communications.

Looking for more ways to automate? Using Automated Workflows to automatically add leads to your call queues to ensure you’re always connecting with the right leads and increasing your odds of conversion.

“Consolidating our VoIP and  AMS saves us over $6,000 a year in subscription fees and provides them with industry-specific tools to stay compliant and competitive.”
-Benjamin M., Advantage Insurance Group 

Open Enrollment Challenge: Efficiently Gathering Medicare Rx Data

It’s critical to have Medicare prescription data available to provide the most advantageous coverage to prospects and clients. However, the collection process traditionally involves long phone calls with clients, multiple follow-up conversations, and constant back-and-forth.

Manual: If your current system doesn't support automated prescription data collection, you'll be forced to rely on time-consuming and error-prone manual methods that create significant inefficiencies, like:

• Long calls reading pill bottle labels
• Follow-up calls to confirm details
• Matching incomplete medical records
• Tracking prescription changes

These methods are inefficient and stressful, while increasing the risk of missing critical medications or recording incorrect dosages that could impact plan recommendations. And if your tool doesn’t securely keep records from one year to the next, you get to rinse and repeat every single enrollment season. Additionally, using siloed systems makes it nearly impossible to send that information to the carriers, requiring duplicated manual efforts and more headaches.

Automated: Rx Collect simplifies the complex task of prescription data collection by automatically collecting and organizing medication information from multiple sources. 

One of the biggest benefits of Rx Collect is that it automatically gathers comprehensive prescription data from multiple sources with just a few clicks, ensuring accuracy and completeness. Then, it saves that data year over year, making updates a breeze and delighting your clients.

Each prescription entry includes detailed information, like drug names, strengths, quantities, pharmacies, and prescribing physicians, helping you make informed plan comparisons and recommendations that improve your client retention. Send the Rx Collect data automatically to many leading Medicare quoting and enrollment solutions (SunFire, Connecture DRX, Lead Advantage Pro, and more) via the built-in integrations in AMS+.

“Email marketing, call recording, data collection with RxCollect — these tools have been a huge game changer for us. AMS+ saves us a lot of time and has automated a lot of our manual tasks.”
-Nate R., Midwest Medicare Advisors 

Open Enrollment Challenge: Using Disparate CRM, Quoting, & Enrollment Tools

The name of the game during enrollment season is efficiency. And the number one way to achieve that is by reducing manual entry and eliminating duplicate manual efforts. Using disconnected, non-integrated tools like a CRM in parallel to quoting and enrollment solutions is one place you can save significant time.

Quote+ offers another powerful efficiency boost, allowing you to seamlessly quote and enroll clients across multiple insurance carriers from a single, unified platform—eliminating the need to juggle different carrier websites and systems, which significantly reduces manual tasks and potential errors during open enrollment season.

Manual: When your tools don’t work together, your efforts can not be streamlined. This means:

• Logging into multiple carrier sites separately
• Entering and re-entering client data for each carrier
• Switching between platforms
• Risking input errors and missed coverage options
• Creating an inconsistent client experience
• Delaying getting quotes to clients

Automated: Combining the powers of your AMS and your quoting and enrollment platforms integrates this process and saves your team valuable time. With integrated solutions, your team can:

• Enter client info once
• More efficiently gather and present quotes
• Eliminate data entry errors
• Create consistency in client experience

AMS+ integrates with many of the leading quoting and enrollment solutions for health, benefits, and senior insurance agents. We also have AgencyBloc’s Quote+ solution, which offers a one-stop solution for end-to-end benefits quoting. Using Quote+, agencies can:

• Shop multiple carriers and coverage types in one marketplace
• Compare level-funded, ACA, and ancillary plans at the same time
• Create employer-ready proposals with side-by-side comparisons
• Quickly pivot to stay competitive and increase client satisfaction
• Gather all necessary MHQ and underwriting data for every carrier with one survey
• Send data and forms automatically to carriers

"Since implementing Quote+, we've been able to significantly increase our companies under management and the premiums generated by them, while also decreasing our average sales cycle. We can now send initial quotes in 10-15 minutes, not 3-5 days."
-Clayton R., Apollo Insurance Group

By automating your AEP/OEP process, you simplify enrollment, minimize errors, and free up valuable time for both your team and your clients. It creates timely communication, consistent outreach, and stronger compliance, leading to greater efficiency, higher client satisfaction, and more room to grow your business. 

This blog was originally posted on July 20, 2018, republished on September 8, 2020, on August 23, 2022, and again on August, 28, 2025.

Posted by Shannon Beck on Thursday, August 28, 2025 in Lead Nurturing & Automation Software

1. insurance automation
2. open enrollment
3. productivity