Team Leader Operations - Customer Service

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Cedar Rapids (IA); On-site; USD 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading mutual insurance organization in Cedar Rapids is seeking a Team Leader Operations – Customer Service. This role involves leading a team of Customer Service Advocates and ensuring excellent service delivery to members. The ideal candidate will have over 4 years of relevant experience, strong leadership skills, and a background in customer relationship management. This position also emphasizes process improvement initiatives to enhance customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in a customer service environment.
• Proven effective leadership in medium to high complexity organizations.
• Experience in business, health care, insurance, or related industry.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of Customer Service Advocates in a critical role.
• Cultivate ideas and facilitate process improvement initiatives.
• Ensure customer inquiries are resolved timely and accurately.

Skills

Leadership

Customer relationship management

Critical thinking

Oral and written communication

Team building

Business technical knowledge

Change management

Education

High School Diploma or GED

Bachelor's Degree

Tools

MS Office

Power BI

Microsoft 365

Job description

Why Wellmark

We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well‑being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best‑class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today!

Learn more about our unique benefit offerings here.

Want to know more? You can learn about life at Wellmark here.

Job Description

As a Team Leader Operations – Customer Service, you will lead a team of Customer Service Advocates dedicated to supporting members across Government Program Plans like Individual Family Plan (IFP) and Medicare Supplement members. This is a critical role supporting a team that speaks with our members over the phone every day. You will contribute to the overall corporate mission by providing leadership, planning, coaching, and daily direction to front‑line staff to meet or exceed customer service expectations to members and employers. You will cultivate ideas and facilitate process improvement initiatives which result in achieving department/division customer goals, operational efficiencies, cost‑savings, customer satisfaction and retention. In addition, you will build and promote an environment of mutual trust, empowerment and teamwork by fostering and encouraging employee development while inspiring and creating accountability.

Qualifications

Required

• High School Diploma or GED
• 4+ years of experience, including:
• Proven effective leadership in a medium to high complexity organization, or equivalent work experience typically gained through a combination of project or informal leadership that demonstrates knowledge of unit work processes, products and services, and leadership competencies.
• Experience in business, health care, insurance, financial services, or related industry.
• Ability to communicate “Voice of the Customer” to the organization; exhibits customer focus and customer relationship management skills throughout prior experience.
• Critical thinking and workflow management skills with demonstrated ability to comprehend and process complex concepts.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills including but not limited to writing reports, letters and documents for internal/external audiences, and presenting to various internal and external audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to create working relationships with stakeholders.
• Ability to lead diverse groups of individuals in highly technical, diverse settings to achieve planned goals.
• Strong team building skills, including coaching, mentoring, and performance improvement.
• Strong business technical knowledge, such as claims and member records processing, benefits and products, or processing systems.
• Demonstrated ability to manage change and effective use of process improvement tools and techniques to improve processes and improve customer satisfaction.
• Proficiency with MS Office products.

Preferred

• Prior Health Insurance industry experience
• Bachelor's Degree
• Formal leadership experience in a contact center where production goals and metrics were measured
• Demonstrated ability to leverage Power BI dashboards to analyze data, identify insights, and inform decisions.
• Experience using Microsoft 365 applications, including leveraging Copilot to enhance productivity.
• Experience in a SAFe Agile Product Centric Environment.
• Strong change management and stakeholder engagement skills to guide adoption of AI‑driven or continuous improvement initiatives.

Additional Information

• Lead, develop, motivate, and coach staff to support business objectives and produce results that are effective, accurate, timely, and on‑target to meet or exceed team and stakeholder needs. Works together and collectively to identify ways to continue to improve Wellmark’s culture.
• Supervise the on‑going operations of departmental functions to ensure compliance with internal standards, policies/procedures and external regulations.
• Ensure customer inquiries and issues are resolved timely and accurately, leading to customer satisfaction and retention.
• Successfully achieves unit quality, production, financial and customer goals.
• Research and resolve complex business problems and situations to the satisfaction of the customer.
• Evaluate and initiate continuous process improvement, resulting in the reduction of re‑work and increased customer satisfaction. Leads and participates in cross‑functional project teams to successful outcomes.
• Responsible for assuring human and other resources are used effectively through appropriate budget planning and inventory management.
• Other duties as assigned.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. The policy of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield is to recruit, hire, train and promote individuals in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other characteristic protected by law.

Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability at any stage of the employment application process should contact us at [e-mail].

Please inform us if you meet the definition of a "Covered DoD official".

At this time, Wellmark is not considering applicants for this position that require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. This includes, but IS NOT LIMITED TO: F1‑OPT, F1‑CPT, H‑1B, TN, L‑1, J‑1, etc. For additional information around work authorization needs please refer to the following resources: Nonimmigrant Workers and Green Card for Employment‑Based Immigrants.