OPM doesn’t have documented customer experience plans for the Postal Service’s open season, OIG says

The launch of a new health insurance plan overseen by the Office of Personnel Management and serving 1.7 million Postal Service employees, annuitants and eligible dependents is set to begin with its first open season in two weeks, but an inspector general’s report questions whether there’s a dedicated customer support plan for it. 

OPM will launch the first open season of the Postal Service Health Benefits System on Nov. 11 with a multi-partner network of agencies and at least one contractor to manage the in-flow of customer experience requests. 

The launch will be the first test of the new federal health insurance exchange designed to serve U.S. Postal Service employees, retirees and dependents, first established by the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act.

But while OPM has detailed its customer experience plans and contingencies for the PSHB to the inspector general through “an array of flow charts, the Maximus task orders and communicated its plans in multiple meetings,” the watchdog said it hasn’t demonstrated a cohesive strategy to guide the public-facing effort. 

“It is essential that OPM has detailed written plans, policies, and procedures to provide customer support, especially during the PSHBP Open Season 2024, so that each involved agency and organization clearly understands its roles and responsibilities,” the Oct. 23 report said. “Without such clearly defined documentation there is a higher risk that customer support will be inadequate to meet demand, particularly during this inaugural open season.”

OPM is coordinating its customer experience efforts through its Retirement Services office as well as the General Services Administration, the Labor Department, the Agriculture Department’s National Finance Center, the Postal Service Human Resource Shared Service Center and its customer support contractor, Maximus. 

Through OPM’s Healthcare and Insurance Office, Maximus is contracted to provide a helpline for PSHB customers, supporting “portal navigation assistance, response to basic PSHBP questions and troubleshooting technical issues,” while also providing enrollment to certain beneficiaries. 

GSA is utilizing its login.gov team to help provide account access, while the Labor Department, National Finance Center and the Postal Service Human Resource Shared Service Center are also tapped to provide customer support services. 

The report notes that the Maximus team will offer portal navigation assistance, basic answers and troubleshooting help on the health exchange for open season, but the OIG raised apprehensions about the level of customer support available. 

“Through meetings with OPM personnel and information requests, we learned that the RS Maximus team consisted of 16 customer support specialists (specialists) to assist approximately 650,000 annuitants. The OIG expressed concern about the low number of specialists,” the report said. “OPM stated during a meeting on July 25, 2024, in response to questions from the OIG, that it was not focused on Maximus’s RS team staffing levels but would instead rely on its contract with Maximus to ensure that annuitants were receiving the necessary customer support.”

Two months later, OPM updated its task order with Maximus to “include almost five times as many specialists as originally planned” with 77 specialists on hand for open season. The contractor also plans to have “daily and weekly contact” with agency officials to assess open-season performance metrics and address issues as they arise. 

“OPM explained that if Maximus is unable to handle the customer support at the required performance levels, OPM’s contingency plan is to leverage resources from OPM’s RS Retirement Information Office and then the Postal Health Benefits Team,” the report said. 

The contractor will be able to route calls to either the RS Retirement Information Office’s 160 customer support agents or the Postal Health Benefits Team’s additional 10 staff members through an Interactive Voice Response system operated by OPM and Maximus, with potential overtime available for contract staff in the event of a call volume surge. 

But the OIG noted that while the agency’s customer support plan was “robust,” it did not possess a comprehensive plan for how it would operate. The watchdog offered a single recommendation that OPM “document comprehensive plans, policies, and procedures for the operation of its customer support experience that ensure all agencies and organizations know their roles and responsibilities. 

While OPM officials agreed with the overall recommendation, they said in response to the report that they have “focused extensive efforts on data integration and have stood up both a cross-functional data tiger team and an enrollment reconciliation team” to help resolve coverage-related issues quickly.

OPM also noted that they are establishing a technical command center to field and respond to technical issues and have tasked an enterprise Postal Operations Support Team to help address incident response and issue resolution.

The OIG said it appreciated the additions of the cross-functional data tiger, enrollment reconciliation and ePOST teams, but couldn’t comment on their customer support coordination as “OPM had not previously shared information regarding these teams with the OIG.” 

“As stressed by OPM, the customer service experience is complex and involves multiple OPM program management offices, as well as external agencies and organizations, the watchdog said. “It is essential that OPM communicate the plans, policies, and procedures in a clear, concise document, or series of documents, to ensure all parties deliver the same messaging and are clearly aware of their roles and responsibilities.”

An OPM spokesperson told Government Executive in an email that “OPM is committed to a seamless transition for all Postal Service employees, annuitants, and their families. We have made a number of updates since the summer and have a robust customer service plan ready for Open Season.”

Editor's Note: The story was updated to include comments from OPM on its PSHB open season efforts.