Day One was a good day. The training environment kind of reminded me, and everybody, of school. Everybody was nervous and sleep deprived but the trainer Terri was very professional, genial and quite funny. Her personable attitude helped make any nervous transitions dissipate and she was very good at getting the class to open up which I think has resulted in everyone getting more comfortable in the environment in general. We didn't get into too much the first day, it was mostly orientation related things. Downright boring Power Point Presentations that outlined the expectations of the job and talked about what CIGNA Health Care is all about, among other things.
Day Two we finally started to get into learning some of the processes. We shadowed some employees for a couple of hours, listening in to calls while we observed their techniques. The consensus seemed to be very general. I had the advantage of bouncing to a few different employees to shadow because of different circumstance. They all pretty much told me the same thing. The Job is pretty easy and most of the learning of the process will be done out on the floor, not in the training. It's only as stressful as you make it. Which really can be said about anything. We also began to tippy-toe into some of the medical terminologies we will want to have a familiarity with as we work.
Day Three, "hump day" as many of us were calling it. By now we were starting to feel more comfortable in our environment. I had almost felt compelled to put myself into that "class clown" kind of position. Mostly for self-amusement more than anything else. We continued to review medical terms and we also started to learn the main program that we will be using, called "One View" which is the program that we will use to log the phone calls and the different tasks we undertake while in the middle of a phone call. Was also the first day we started to sit with fellow trainees during lunch. The bonding process beginning! People were certainly opening up by this point and everyone was enjoying themselves. It was important because I don't even want to imagine what it would be like if everyone was taking this "All business" super serious attitude into training every day. I would most certainly go crazy if I was the only one in the room trying to be a smart-ass and for the most part, I was.
By Thursday (day four) we were all pretty comfortable with each other I would say and we continued to dive into the learning experience. We continued to practice with OneView as well as continued to review the medical terms. It's all very general medical things at this point. Working us toward being familiar with the terms we're likely to hear on the phone while we're helping providers so that when we're answering calls, we're not the ones asking all the questions we can simply help them and end the call. Convergys has a efficiency code of making sure the "issue" is resolved in one call. That's something I can live with. We had our first evaluative assessment which I scored 100% on (It was "open resource" so... pretty hard not to ace) and we ended the class by playing pictionary for the last half-hour of the day.
Friday was a day everyone was excited, because the weekend was just around the corner. A much hyped and anticipated game of Pictionary was played against one of the other training classes. Which we lost but only after giving the other team a free point because of a member of our team saying the answer out loud. A moral victory was taken that day, regardless. Our team was very lively and we had a lot of energy. That could've easily been attributed to the fact that our training class is pretty young overall. There are older people but there is a large portion of people that are younger than me, and I'm 22. We continued to review OneView and also began to learn about reading benefits which is one of the main portions of the job. Reading Benefits and Eligibility as well as assessing Claims (but we won't be beginning that for a few weeks yet...)
So far I'm enjoying this. It felt like a lot to take in at first and it is, but as we dive in to learning the individual aspects of the job it doesn't seem so bad. The training classes are well paced and we learn quite a bit each day while reviewing things and keeping on top of the things that are essential to us being effective employees. The overall environment is kind of campy. It really makes me think of the "Sebben and Sebben Orientation Video" episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. We'll see how things continue to go. Overall, I'm excited that I've got a full time job that pays well. Since being hired, Tim Horton's has called me twice, nothing stopped them from calling me the month or so between when I gave them my resume and when Convergys hired me. And everywhere else I've applied seems to still be looking on and off as well. They didn't want to call me, they lost out. Convergys hired me and I'll bring my work ethic and professionalism to that job for as long as I can stomach it. It really can't be worse than working in retail, dealing with bitchy customers who cannot be pleased.
No, I think this will be much better.
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