customer service representative

software engineer

data engineer

claims examiner

senior software engineer

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska

Be ready to be lied to by management, trainers, and anyone higher up from day one. They try to pull you in with lies of your job being great and blue cross being a great place to work and the offer you a stay at home job so they can reel you into their delusions. Customer service has such high turnover rates that they are constantly have to hire for new representatives- if you don’t believe me pay attention to how many times a year they will post an add for customer service reps- keep in mind new hire classes are usually anywhere from 6-12 people and they are still having to post new adds multiple times a year for a new class of 6-12. This is NOT because of promotions like they will try to say- it’s because people leave because they realize they are being lied to and manipulated by upper management. I had 3 people leave from my training class before we even hit a year. The only positive I will say about this company is that they will work with you on your schedule- if you have kids and need to pick them up at a certain time they will make sure your lunch or break is scheduled for that time so you can still work and do you daily duties. Also being home is a huge bonus- but don’t  expect to be able to monitor your kids and do this job at the same time. They also pay for you to go back to school- but this is also a way to trap people to stay because if you leave you have to pay them back- so yes good benefit but also keeps you from leaving. In customer service you get a large amount of calls- you do not get to answer the call it just beeps through so you are required to sit at your desk and be ready for a call at any time. There is always system issues too which prevents you from doing your job properly and they will just keep the lines open just for you to tell the customer to call back later and look dumb. also they will lie to your face and tell you that your don’t have a call number to hit or your calls are not timed- this is one of the first lies they will try to tell you over and over again. we all have score cards and all calls are monitored for time it took to resolve, hold time, if we had to call someone for help, and how many calls per hour we get. So yes you do have any amount of calls per hour you need to meet. Not only that but members can leave reviews on you- if they leave anything negative it affects your score card and management will micromanage you for things you have no control over. If accounting makes a mistake it’s your fault, if a preauth is denied it’s your fault, if they have a large bill it’s your fault and they will leave bad reviews and it goes against you. Also they have a team that pulls your calls at random and “grades” them- we get “in trouble” for not being little sales people and not offering to guide them through an online account. It’s required to offer it in almost 90% of your calls and if you don’t offer myblue you get an error on your report which affects your score card. They also will try to find anything in your calls to tell you did wrong- you are micromanaged 100% of the time. If they can’t find anything wrong with your calls they will add little remarks like “try to be more conversational and ask how their day is or blah blah” also your score cards play a huge role in your hours. We have shift bids 4 times a year and if you have a lower score card the lower you are to having first pick on your shift so you can get stuck with a shift that you absolutely do not want.
You will get pulled into meetings just for people and managers to try to say they want to help you but all they are doing is picking you apart and micromanaging you. Don’t ever expect to be told you did good with a call they will try to make you sit there and tell you that you could have done better even though you did everything that was required and everything was correct. You could have had a better tone or you need to stop saying um, or you need to stop saying like, or you need to fix how you say this because you don’t sound confident. It’s a position full of put downs and makes you feel like you can’t do anything right. So think about just these few things before you decide to apply for a customer service position at blue cross. I’m not sure how other departments are I’m sure they are 99 times better than customer service. If you want to work for a company that lies to their employees and puts you down all day then work here and get to work from home!! These are just SOME of the issues with the customer service position. 

Worked for Federal Employee Program - a smaller and specialized team separate from the larger customer service division. Amazing training and onboarding, felt well prepared to hit the ground running. Incredible coworkers who were knowledgeable, willing to help, and we all worked well together. Role was fully remote with Monday - Friday 8 to 5 schedule. PTO not initially easy, but at 6 months and year, this became more generous. Performance/metrics could be luck of the draw for hard skills; soft skill ratings by leader not always consistent and annual performance review was tweaked each year, making merit increases/ ratings a moving target. That said, generous bonuses throughout the year and sizable annual 401(k) deposits. Paid holidays slightly below average… standard big ones BUT day after Thanksgiving was recognized. 
Being tied to the phones/call center limited opportunity to enjoy all meetings/trainings/events, but management would try to accommodate.  Took provider and member phone calls and-outside of Open Season or major rollout/change, calls very manageable.  Highest # of calls in a day was between 35-40.  Often had sufficient downtime between calls to wrap up notes and complete work.
Advancement/growth opportunities were limited, and the occasional role that opened up seemed to be predetermined. While additional job responsibilities and “promotions” were given, it was mostly cosmetic and it was difficult to actually make even a lateral move to another department. 
I strongly believed in the overall mission of the company and overall enjoyed and respected my leadership team from frontline supervisor up through the CEO. 
I had daily interaction with other departments who were also staffed by friendly, competent folks. A testament to the employees is that everyone genuinely cared and always tried to do right by the members. We would do everything possible to pay a claim or approval a prior authorization.  “NO” was an infrequent response. To that end, BCBS Nebraska is one of the- if not the - best insurance companies in business. I felt a sense of pride during my tenure and would highly recommend the organization as one of the best employers in Omaha and Nebraska.  

At the end of my career, I worked from home something I truly enjoyed.  I did not have to deal with the micro management activities that went on in office.  I was left alone to do the job I was hired for.

I loved all the customer contact that I had with outside as well as inside people.  Most of my team mates worked well together. The hardest part of the job was dealing with the ever increasing management the company was hiring along with the management style changing.  Buying into the new training the colleges are putting out for students studying to be a manager has not proven to be effective although the status quo is still pushing it..

It made no sense to any of the staff why it would take 3 managers to run 2 departments.  It seemed as if it was a total waste of money. The company rotates management into different departments which again makes no sense as they need to learn how the department that they manage runs.  They should know all job functions, and be able to sit down and do the job that they expect the employees to do.  Moving managers just upsets the work balance from the employee prospective as we have to deal with showing someone new the ropes the quickest way possible to get them up to speed which in my view point hurts the customer.  

The management always puts out surveys but never seems to address the problems that the employees bring up.  The atmosphere is don't make people responsible for the work they put out, just push it along for the next department in line to correct if they catch it.  The company needs to go back to the proactive stance they had before and let the employees go back to making the customer first.  That is what made this company a great place to work when I first started working there.

I enjoyed my job very much at BlueCross Blueshield but quickly realized I was looked at as a number even though I proved myself to meet all my performance goals. The enivroment is very stressful. You must be prepared to be subject to possibly up to 4 QAs a week on your calls and a series of micromanaging techinics  and leadership punishes all associates for failing customer service satisfaction scores even those that were exceeding performance goals. I was talked in to resigning from my position due to voicing my opinion and upsetting leadership. Overall the company has the ability to be successful but some leadership is dragging it down and is not at all welcoming of feeedback regarding negative feedback towards certain changes being made. The pay is attractive but it is at the cost of your sanity as you may find yourself subject to tons of verbal abuse by local contracted providers in Nebraska and other third party companies that call and other departments that do not like your department so they are very angry with you when you ask for help, lastly they are really behind in the technology available to perform your role successfully and due to constant upgrades to these systems, you will find yourself without access to various systems while you are being yelled at on the phone by your caller for having to tell them to call back due to issues with the systems, etc.

The training classes are very thorough and last about 6 weeks with pay. They determine your strengths during this time and recommend you to different departments to work. Then once the department has been assigned the new hire goes through on the job training for that department.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is a not for profit company. There are a lot of charitable walks/runs and health fairs in which an employee is urged to take part. These are a lot of fun.  

The office campus was beautiful and had a walking path. 

The most enjoyable part of the job was being able to help providers get answers to previously denied claims and make the adjustments whenever I was able to adjust for reconsideration. I enjoyed my coworkers. Lunch lotteries in which the CEO sends out invitations to five employees for a round table impromptu lunch.

Hardest part of the job was advising a provider that the claim they were questioning denied correctly.

Blue Cross Blue Shield NE as an organization is fairly good and provides excellent benefits. However, their Customer Service Department is lacking in professionalism, specifically it's management team. They inappropriately gossip about their staff and text on their cellphone. They do not praise employees for a job well done and only focus on negatives. The majority of the managers in charge have not updated their technical or customer services skills in years. It's very difficult to get promoted out of customer service due to the good ole boy system they use in customer service which is "It's not WHAT you know it's WHO you know." The management team keeps employees in the dark about where they stand, so at any give time you can be fired or disciplined without having a full and complete understanding of the ever changing policies. Overall, it's a very depressing department to work in.

This is the kind of place you should want to work at and stay for a long time. I think it once was that kind of place but it hasn't been that way in 15+ years from what I gather. When I first started, there were a lot of "long-timers". Most of them have left. People I thought would never leave have left. The company has fallen victim to the pitfalls of reorg after reorg and seem to promote staff to managers who don't have the natural skillset nor receive proper training. Most of the people I know left solely because of bad managers. The work environment is typically fine though with each reorg certain folks would get territorial and wouldn't want to share information which obviously makes the job a lot harder. It's funny the top line management is extremely impressive, but most of the mid and lower management were severely lacking. Lastly the workloads were incredibly uneven across teams and departments.

I worked here for 15 years.  I was lucky enough to be given a lot of opportunities and chances to advance myself within the company.  I took all of those opportunities very seriously and made a career for myself.  The last couple of years with the company changed a lot with the leadership from the top.   There were plenty of people doing a good job but with new leadership it caused them to become exceedingly micromanaging.  BCBSNE talks about transparency, open door policies, open feedback, but when you have a VP that only hires 'yes men' directors and then those directors indicate they can't give feedback to that VP unless they are in the right mood, that does not follow any of the policies blue pretends to contain.  I hope with the new CEO things improve but everything takes time and the last CEO left a black mark on a company that helped grow their employees instead of controlling every aspect of their work.  

The company claims to care about it's members. What a joke! They spend a lot of money on the community, which is great. But what they really care about is making money. Veteran employees are laid off almost every week. There is a new sales model, yet they can't even get the sales leaders to follow it. If you want to make a lot of money quickly, then this place would be a good option. However, they'll suck the energy and charisma right out of you after you realize the mission is merely on the walls and not in any executives heart. They finally announced the new CEO. If you talk to him, you'll learn he's overpaid and spends more time jet setting with family than he does in the office. They are raising rates for it's members, in debt, and trying to open new business ventures in an unstable market and industry. You are better off working for McDonald's. If I didn't have a family, I'd quit and move my wife and kids.

Strong, steady flow of projects and a strong brand identity make it a great place to keep you occupied. Strong culture and initiatives within the company keep everyone pretty unified and focused. If you have a great manager that advocates for you, you may love it. If you don't, or you lose that advocate, things may sour quickly. Under one leader, annual reviews of me and my teammates went from historically all very positive. Under the next, it became a deliberate tiered quota of A. is great, B. is satisfactory, but C. is below standard and must improve. A difficult situation to navigate that when you know the only change was leadership. For years it was a wonderful workplace with fantastic leadership, then it quickly soured with changes in management.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 1 salary reported	$42,640 per year
Software engineer 3 salaries reported	$90,000 per year
Data engineer 4 salaries reported	$112,000 per year
Claims examiner 1 salary reported	$16.50 per hour
Senior software engineer 4 salaries reported	$100,000 per year

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