customer service representative

software engineer

application developer

intern

business analyst

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

In the many, many years I have been employed, I have never in my life come across a large group of Management that promote the practice of treating their employees like criminals. They discriminate against non-salary employees and treat them like garbage.

They do NOT want suggestions on how to correct processes and promote better quality. Heaven forbid you send a great idea to your superior. You might get chewed out for spending too much time thinking and not acting like the robot they expect.

They bathe in their incompetance, happily soaking in the mere title that succeeds their name. Their performance expectations are purposely created to be impossible to make bonuses and where you barely make your goals.

Oh, and the rumors are correct! Don't bother filing a complaint to HR either. It's a Joke! Don't expect them to be Objective! Expect them to grill YOU as if you were the one being prosecuted! They have made a decision to be for your boss, even if you have evidence of incompetance, retaliation, unethical behavior, lying, cheating, harrasing attitude toward you, falsified documents that they have created, and allowing hostile work environments... but none of that matters. You might as well be prepared to be judged for making your way in there... even if you have never made a complaint before.

In a nutshell, throw your morals out the door when you apply here. Because you may be asked to try and persuade doctors to file their claims when it is past their timely filing limits so they wont get paid. And MUCH more...

Everyone in my department is seeing a therapist and/or is taking anti-depressants because of the stress and toxic environment they have endured from Managment. Oh... and a random fire alarm w/i the last year or so resulted in the evacuation of the CEO's building first before the other buildings were evacuated. They evacuated the CEO first because the other employees were apparently expendable!

Words of Advice: Be Self-Employed! Find something you love to do and go for it. Be your own boss. Love yourself! Value yourself! Work your own hours. Treat yourself and your family like Gold! Don't let this corrupted corporate company wring you until there is nothing left. (Trust me, I'm taking this advice very soon! :) )

BCBST is a pretty great place to work over all. The benefits are top notch, employer paying 80% of all medical and includes dental, vision, life, etc. Compensation is good for the work I do and have done. When I started 3 years ago the entry level pay for customer service was $16.40 an hour. However, due to cost of living and inflation adjustments, it is now tough to find a position within the organization that doesn't start pay at $20 an hour minimum. That same customer service position ended up paying me $21.40 an hour and that's within 3 years time. Got a promotion and make $23.22 an hour or $23.65 if you include the money they pay for your at home internet access. Look for similar growth if you join a customer service/claims job now. Hourly positions get yearly raises, usually about .50 or so on your hourly pay, plus several bonuses including lump sum and QIP. Both are very generous and provide some good relief when they hit. Most employees choose to work from home now, with very few being required to come in, mostly just execs and on site staff like command center and janitorial folks. Advancement can be tough as your resume must match word for word what they job listing says the requirements are, or HR will kick it out and not review it. Remember that. On the bright side, BCBST pays entirely for your secondary education as long as you maintain the good grades needed to pass. BCBST paid entirely for 1 degree and now is halfway thru paying for a 2nd one as well. Best perk of working here if you ask me. Using that to work my way up to the ladder and ultimately do a career pivot, all on company money. All in all, highly recommend! The people are great, the culture is nice and welcoming, the job purpose and focus is our members so it leaves you feeling good at the end of the day. GREAT PLACE TO WORK!

A typical day at work: Clock in exactly at your start time, no earlier, and start taking calls immediately. Breaks and lunch are built into your schedule and adherence to it as much as possible is required. Its inflexible, but I get it because it ensures enough people are always available to help the members. I wish lunches were a full hour. That's my only qualm there really. The hours are otherwise great for work/life balance. No weekends or holidays required, and if OT is mandated it is communicated well in advance. 

BCBST has really sharpened my customer service skills. I always thought I was great at CS, but they really take it to the next level. These are skills I can take with me no matter what. Working here as also improved my time management, I grudgingly admit. I say this because I think the metrics are unrealistic. There is no time to be human built into the workday. Stepping away to go to the restroom or get some fresh air affects your performance metrics. It's insane honestly. I think they should reevaluate this aspect of the role because it fosters burnout, but I still gained better time management skills from the "abuse" lol.

The culture is honestly what they say it is. The leadership is great and supportive. They love to hire from within or by referral from trusted staff. I wouldn't be afraid to give this exact same feedback directly to my supervisor. 

The hardest part of the job is the entry-level positions are kind of miserable. But if you can stick it out for a year, so many more opportunities await within the company. 

The most enjoyable part of the job is working remotely. The work/life balance is great. You never take work home and no one expects you do. It's ok to leave it all at your desk at 5:00pm sharp. 

BCBST is a good place to work if you're content to sit all day and if you have no ethical issues with the idea of profiting off people's health or lack thereof. With that said, if you're looking to work in health insurance in Tennessee, this is by far the best company to work for.
The company generally takes good care of its employees and while pay may be slightly lower than the competitors in the area, their benefits package is solid. In my experience, the lower level management teams are great. They're well grounded human beings who understand that you don't likely live and breathe health insurance. 
I will say too that while most of the industry has been warily approaching health care reforms, BCBST has done a good job of staying up to date and actively working to provide competitive and decent products to consumers. The company seems comparably solid in an otherwise unsettled industry.
One last note, I would have to recommend avoiding any "customer service" or "consumer adviser" positions. These are by far some of the most soul sucking and depression-inducing jobs out there in any field. I always told everyone that there are two facial expressions at Blue Cross... the face that says "don't talk to me, don't look at me, I WILL smack you." (-those are the people in customer service) and then the wandering, happy-go-lucky, carefree faces of everyone else.
Service reps are treated like 1st graders as far as the way they are monitored and evaluated and there is little job security. Customers are often (justifiably) angry and will take that out on you which WILL get old no matter how patient/empathetic/service-minded you are. The job may seem tempting and is a way "in the door" but you will likely be stuck in it for at least two very painful years based on what i saw.

Bcbstn is a great company. They have great benefits and decent pay but I don’t recommend customer service. They are very strict and have tedious rules and expectations on what you say and what they want you to do in each call. If you apply it is best to have some type of experience or knowledge of healthcare. The training is long but not as helpful. You will be going over anything and everything medical dental and prescription related. The pay doesn’t equal up to the amount of information & work you will do everyday. The workload can get overwhelming especially if you are not good at organizing and time management. They will expect you to take calls and also find a way to make outbound calls to work on previous calls that you have to research or follow up with, which can be impossible since it is a high call volume all year round. There is a little room for growth depending on the person. Most other positions are to become a Team lead or do customer service in another department. Bonuses and promotions through the customer service are all based off performance. Once you top out, you can get demoted with a decrease of pay if 3 month performance isn’t met. They do offer a great way to flex your schedule and a good amount of PTO every pay check. Management is great. If you truly like customer service and going over anything health related, it is a great company to work for. I’ve been with them over 4years, I haven’t seen more progress on giving more balance or less stress and plus it’s always new rules being applied that can quickly give you job burnout. Great  company and pay but you will work for it & the calls will not be easy. This is nothing like other customer service postitions. 

I worked at BCBST for 20 years and moved up through the ranks pretty rapidly at first and then it stopped. As executive management became heavier, workers and lower management became targets for elimination as "cost savings". Upward mobility for anyone who had been there, ceased and all new upper levels were brought in from the outside each and every time.
We went through some good years and some lean years, like any business but decisions weren't always made based on anything concrete; some areas would be growing and hiring and others would be laying off people without any obvious explanation or business reason.
Since the newest CEO has come along, things have gotten better overall and the culture is finally getting under control on spending across the board and that's very positive. I left, not because of the overall culture but because I had specific issues with my own management team that no one would address as high up as I could get it to go, which was limited. It's not a terrible place to work, but there are definitely places that are better than others within the enormous structure known as BCBST. It always comes down to your specific management as in any position in almost any company.
Benefits are good. Bonuses can be good and the workplace is really nice. If you are seeking a position there, go in with a positive attitude and see what happens. It's all personal experience and yours may be great like mine has been at different times over the years.

On arrival, I would start calling hospital Utilization Review departments for updates on patients on my daily printout, and either give them an extension of days until I needed the next update, or if there was a question, I would pend it to my Medical Director to make the call.  I also participated in various Quality Assurance projects as given to me by my supervisor.  I made some home visits to assess how things were for our home-bound patients.  And part of our job was to do random Medical Office Reviews as assigned.  I learned a lot about case management, because that was really a large part of our role.  Had I not been privileged to be able to go home to be a full-time mother from this job, I was planning to sit for my Case Management Certification.  My manager was the best!  and I enjoyed all my coworkers in the office.  The hardest part of the job was having to let clients know their benefits were about to run out, which would make them very upset.  The most enjoyable part of the job was finding the physicians who were abusing the system. When that happened, it really brought home the necessity for having this department.

Coming in each day at Blue Cross, you were given a worklist of a variety of claims to process. I normally had half the work most of the processors did because I worked with the Team Leader and Management handling priority claims, problems, training and question time. I learned a tremendous amount at Blue Cross. I started off processing paper claims with COBs/EOBs calculation into the workstation. Then once the claim ran batch and hit our other system known as Facets we completed the process and sent the claim over to the plan to then read benefits and pay per contract. That is the basic but learned so much more within 8 years. We had our good and bad in managment, as anywhere. They were very strict which made our jobs harder and a little miserable. Coworkers morale was down a great deal due to the way the management in Blue Card Host were treating everyone, in all honesty. My goal at Blue Cross was to always come in and far exceed the expectations and that was the hardest part of the job. Far exceeding was at the time processing over 150 claims. Also, strived and maintained a far exceeds quality percentage. I enjoyed my actual job at Blue Cross. It had its ups and downs but I knew my job inside and out and trained alot of coworkers as well as helped the department meet alot of our team goals.

I'm still there at the moment. Most departments are very welcoming. The issue is in certain departments there is so much to learn and most is hands on. They give you 90 days to get acclimated and then mistakes count against you. It's supposed to be if it's  detrimental to the member or provider you take a hard hit. But when you go to a team without a manager for the first 5 months you are there. You have no guidance and then they say it's ok because it was during your developmental period. But then you find out your in a performance review and if more than 1 mistake is made they put you on a "PIP" . Performance improvement plan. Bottom line is nothing changes and I have made another mistake, one in August and one in September. So I will lose my job this coming week. I didn't come from an insurance background and it's very hard to work with knowing at any given moment you're done. It's sets you up to fail. I think we had 25 at the start of training and after the first test we lost 3, and and by the time we graduated training there were 15 and after the first 6 months my class was down to  8 left. Not very good odds. I am there every day, I ask questions and try to be as careful as humanly possible...but it just didn't work out.

I generally like BCBST, however I don't like my immediate superior. That person seems to have taken a dislike to me and makes working there difficult. Additionally, there seems to be a "one size fits all" for work rules which doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, employees are not supposed to use their cell phones while on the clock. That makes sense for customer service / call center folks. However it doesn't make a lot of sense for IT/IS.
My immediate supervisor claims they are just enforcing the rules as they have been instructed to do. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, as other managers/supervisors seem to have a lot of leeway.
Additionally BCBST is very focused on procedure. Everything has to be done EXACTLY how it's laid out in policy. No deviations allowed. You have to answer the phone in a specific manner and follow a script, even on the IS Service Desk. If you don't, you will get in trouble. If you don't "code" things EXACTLY the right way or send to EXACTLY the correct group, you will get in trouble. Even if you send it to the group that normally handles that particular piece of software or that particular issue, if it has to go to a different group, you will get marked down on your reviews for it.
If you are not happy with a VERY structured work environment, do NOT work at Blue Cross

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 4 salaries reported	$20.75 per hour
Software engineer 3 salaries reported	$71,333 per year
Application developer 4 salaries reported	$63,000 per year
Intern 3 salaries reported	$20.33 per hour
Business analyst 5 salaries reported	$69,000 per year

Working at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee: Company Overview and Reviews

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Ratings

Popular jobs at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected