Highmark Boosts Sales Efficiency and Decreases After-Call Work 51% with Salesforce

Highmark experienced rapid growth by aggressively expanding its footprint and acquiring companies like Health Now, Gateway, and Highmark Wholecare. While this expansion successfully broadened their reach across multiple states and segments, it also left the company with a fragmented tech stack. Highmark found itself operating with multiple disconnected customer management systems and entirely different operational processes for each segment of the business.

This disconnected infrastructure created immense operational bottlenecks. For instance, telesales agents were working in two completely separate CRMs to sell Medicare and D-SNP products, causing big headaches for their sales agents.

These disconnected tools and tech meant sellers couldn’t see complete member data. When a caller reached out, sales agents (or sales reps) could not easily tell if that individual was already a Highmark customer without manually searching through up to three other programs. The older technology also lacked modern communication options like text messaging, chat, and email, limiting how sales agents could interact with prospective members. Sales agents also had to put a lot of time into manual data entry and note taking after each call, so it took longer with them to move to the next call.

From a leadership perspective, the fragmented data severely hindered strategic decision-making. Providing basic reports to leadership regarding pipeline visibility or true sales conversion rates could take up to two weeks, leaving the organization unable to pivot quickly during critical enrollment periods. Highmark needed to consolidate its duplicate systems onto a single platform to simplify the daily work of its sales agents and ensure all teams used the same language and processes.

Intelligent workflows augment sales teams with unified technology

To break through the capacity wall, Highmark partnered with Salesforce to build a consolidated, end-to-end sales ecosystem using Agentforce Health and Data 360. By migrating all of their segments (Medicare, ACA, and D-SNP) onto a single, unified platform, Highmark immediately eliminated the friction of their legacy systems. This consolidation allowed the organization to fully cross-train its telesales agents to sell their full product line, maximizing the talent they already had and creating a much more agile, responsive sales force.

Highmark fundamentally redesigned its sales operations by relying on Salesforce’s out-of-the-box functionality, establishing a standardized structure that simplified workflows across all of their distinct sales channels. During their most recent Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), a season marked by extreme market disruption due to federal legislation, this connected infrastructure enabled their team to handle unprecedented increased volume. 

Thanks to Salesforce, Highmark’s sales agents were able to have all of the information about prospective customers at their fingers during inbound calls, allowing them to provide a better customer experience. Because the Salesforce Platform seamlessly served up assistive insights and streamlines data entry, Highmark achieved a massive 51% decrease in after-call work. The system handled the administrative heavy lifting, allowing the exact same headcount of sales agents to manage 8% more inbound calls year over year.

A better view into pipeline

The unified platform also revolutionized how Highmark’s sales agents prioritize their days. Using dynamic list views that match specific real-time criteria and split-view features that removes the need to jump between tabs, sales agents now have a clear, prioritized pipeline right at their fingertips. Highmark implemented numerical scoring models directly into these list views, allowing the system to intelligently guide sales agents toward the highest-priority customers, specifically members who were facing coverage disruptions.

This level of intelligent prioritization ensured that sales agents weren’t just working faster; they were working smarter. Sales agents no longer have to manually sort through spreadsheets or guess who to call next. The streamlined conversion process reduced necessary clicks, allowing sales agents to seamlessly transition a qualified lead into an active opportunity.

The flexibility of the platform also allowed Highmark to rapidly adapt its sales strategy during peak volume periods. By leaning into their new digital capabilities, Highmark was able to allow customers to digitally book phone appointments with sales agents, as well as differentiate between which of these calls were new sales versus renewals. With that information, they were able to pull their field sales agents off the road and dedicate them to telesales during these peak times. This eliminated wasted “windshield time,” or time spent driving between jobs, and ensured that lucrative sales opportunities were captured internally rather than being lost to external brokers. Empowered by a unified platform, Highmark’s internal sales agents were able to take in an unprecedented volume of applications during the enrollment period.

Unifying the extended Highmark team

The true power of Highmark’s transformation lies in its transition to a deeply unified data model. By integrating Data 360 into their ecosystem, Highmark is actively breaking down the historical walls between different business segments and data sources. The organization is transitioning from treating customer data as fragmented pieces of a puzzle to establishing a holistic, 360-degree view of every individual.

This unified sales intelligence foundation allows Highmark to treat every current member as a future prospects who could transfer from their commercial or ACA plans to Medicare. Using Agentforce Marketing, Highmark is able to proactively manage targeted communications and touchpoints with members approaching retirement age. As these members near their transition date, an automated journey creates a lead in Agentforce Health, prompting a sales agent to build a relationship at precisely the right time. By proactively intercepting these transitions internally, Highmark ensures long-time members remain within their ecosystem rather than being lost to national insurance competitors as they age into Medicare.

Furthermore, Highmark extended the platform’s unified capabilities to its sales support operations using Agentforce Service. The support team, which assists thousands of external brokers responsible for the majority of new business, shifted from tracking issues in manual spreadsheets to using email-to-case functionality. This allowed the team to manage 20,000 inquiries that came in from brokers since go-live in June 2025, including inquiries about certifications, commissions, and products in a centralized queue. Managers now also gain clear visibility into common broker problems so they can better inform future broker email blasts.

Future-proofing with a scalable, integrated ecosystem

Highmark views Salesforce not just as a software provider, but as a strategic, active partner in their ongoing digital transformation. Because they established a highly scalable infrastructure, bringing newly acquired companies or entering new states is now a seamless, business-as-usual process that doesn’t require rebuilding their entire technological universe.

Looking toward the future, Highmark is continuing to expand its digital capabilities. The company is preparing to launch Tableau to gain real-time, executive-level visibility into their full sales funnel, enabling leadership to make faster, data-driven decisions during critical enrollment windows. 

By operating from a single source of truth, Highmark has shattered the capacity wall, ensuring their sales teams can deliver the personalized, human connections that drive limitless growth.