Best Practices for Managing Benefits Vendor and Partner Relationships: A Guide for Employers

It’s not uncommon for employers and HR teams to struggle managing relationships and processes with various insurance carriers and other benefits vendors. Some report slow response times, unresolved issues, and lack of clear communication, all of which can lead to frustration for HR teams and employees alike.  

However, with the right approach, employers can cultivate strong carrier and vendor partnerships that promote timely issue resolution and enhance the overall quality of benefits delivered to employees.  

Here are some of the best practices we espouse so that employers, employees, and HR professionals receive exceptional service from insurers, hold vendors accountable when it comes to resolving issues, and get questions answered in a timely manner.

1. Consider Your Agent as a Liaison, Not Just Another Vendor

One of the biggest challenges employers face is getting timely and accurate responses from their insurance carriers. This is where a strong agent relationship becomes invaluable. Rather than directing employees to a generic 800-number for customer service, your agent can serve as the intermediary, ensuring that questions and issues are handled efficiently and effectively.

Best Practice: Work with an agent partner who proactively engages with carriers on your behalf. A broker with established carrier relationships will have direct contacts to address client concerns personally and proactively. Reaching out to a general customer service desk can often result in requests getting lost in a generic inbox in some faceless system somewhere in the world, with little visibility into whether the issue is being addressed, on what timeline, and by whom.

2. Establish Regular Communication with Carriers

Proactive benefits advisors don’t just reach out to carriers when a problem arises; they build ongoing relationships through regular meetings and consistent personal engagement. Our team, for example, has standing, recurring meetings with a whole host of carrier partners and client vendors. This allows them to stay ahead of potential issues before they arise and maintain strong working partnerships on a consistent basis.

Best Practice: If you manage vendor relationships in-house, consider setting up scheduled check-ins with your carriers to review open issues and ensure alignment on service expectations. If you work with a benefits agent or advisor, ask about their engagement strategy with your carriers and what their process is to maintain mutual accountability.

3. Create a Process for Escalation—But Use It Strategically

While it’s important to hold carriers accountable, escalating every minor issue that comes along runs the risk of straining vendor relationships. It’s important to understand when one should first attempt resolution through regular channels before involving higher-ups, for example.

Best Practice: Work with your agent to establish clear escalation protocols. Your carrier liaisons should know when to push for higher-level intervention and when not to, while maintaining respectful relationships with carrier representatives as a two-way street of both respect and accountability.

4. Ensure Every Client Feels Valued—Regardless of Size

Smaller employers often feel overlooked by larger insurance carriers, where service requests might go through multiple layers of response protocols. A proactive agent ensures that all clients—regardless of size—receive personalized attention and direct support, as they become the first point of contact for most issues. It shouldn’t matter to the agency how many lives are on the benefits plan, as each client receives the same level of importance and urgency.

Best Practice: Ask your broker or agent how they handle vendor relationships for smaller accounts, if your plan is on the smaller side. Do they provide named contacts within the carrier network, or do they offer to resolve carrier issues themselves? How do they manage service requests to avoid delays and miscommunication?

5. Implement a Structured Client Service Model

Employers benefit from working within a carefully structured high-touch service model that includes standing meetings, milestone check-ins, and a commitment to quick response times. A well-defined, clearly documented process ensures that nothing slips through the cracks or gets caught unaddressed in an accountability void.

Best Practice: Look for partners who can offer and illustrate a proven client service framework, such as:

• Guaranteed response times (e.g., within 24 hours, as is our policy)

• Regular milestone meetings (e.g., quarterly strategy sessions, for example)

• Tailored communication strategies for employee benefits education to employees
  

6. Set Expectations for Employee Support

Employees often struggle to navigate their benefits and various providers, leading to increased questions for busy HR professionals. A responsive agent will take the burden off HR teams by providing an additional layer of support to the company’s employees, when needed—something an automated, impersonal customer service line will not match.

Best Practice: Look for an agent partner that can step in as an augmented customer service provider for complex employee benefits questions. A knowledgeable broker or agent team can provide faster, more accurate answers than a carrier’s general support line, in most situations. Typically, the first point of contact should be the internal HR department. If the HR department is unsuccessful in resolving the employee issue, the agent or broker should be contacted for escalation. Most often, brokers should be providing HR with a stack of resources to provide employees for their everyday questions. If those resources have been exhausted, your broker partner can step in to provide resolution.

7. Leverage Self-Assessment Tools

Many employers may not even realize they are underutilizing all that’s available from their vendor relationships, including from their agent representatives. Self-assessment tools like this one can help identify gaps in service and suggest obvious areas for improvement.

Best Practice: Consider taking our self-assessment to evaluate the state of your vendor relationships and the level of service quality your team is receiving. If you’re unsure whether you’re maximizing your agent and carrier partnerships, reach out to us for a no-cost, no-obligation review.

Final Thoughts

Managing insurance carrier relationships effectively requires a combination of proactive engagement, structured communication, and a strong broker partnership. By implementing these best practices, employers can ensure that issues are resolved promptly, questions are answered accurately, and employees receive the full level of support they deserve.