Chicago, IL, August 5, 2011 – The Jellyvision Lab, a company best known for developing computer games (YOU DON’T KNOW JACK), has put their unique interactive technology and whip-smart sense of humor to use in an unlikely place: benefits counseling. With complicated Consumer Driven Health Plans growing in popularity and Health Care Reform mandates looming, HR departments across the country are under increased pressure to communicate ever-more-complex benefits decisions to their employees with ever- diminishing budgets. Enter ALEX, the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor.
Using their proprietary interactive communication platform, Jellyvision has bottled up a the kind of expert benefits counselor that employers previously had to fly in for work-site education meeting—and made him available to employees online, anytime, anywhere. Jellyvision calls their Benefits Counselor ALEX—a virtual benefits expert who engages employees one-on-one in conversation to help them select the very best plan for their lifestyle and circumstances.
More than 450,000 employees at over 30 companies have had access to previous versions of the Jellyvision Benefits Counselor, but ALEX is a complete rebuild, with a whole new interface and widely expanded capabilities. “It’s not typical insurance communication that employees just toss in a drawer every year,” says Amanda Lannert , President of The Jellyvision Lab, “it’s a really robust suite of modules; ALEX help employees chose everything from disability insurance to a 401(k) retirement plan.” While employees engage in conversation and follow-up with ALEX, employers see a whole range of back-end support, from internal marketing materials, to best practices, to data and analytics on all the choices that their employees are making.
The American Medical Association estimates that every year, $73 Billion is lost in unnecessary health care expenditures due to poor “health literacy,” the inability of consumers and employees to obtain and understand health care education. Clear, concise benefits communication is the chief way for employers to staunch those losses. Meanwhile, the magazine Employee Benefits Advisor found that virtual benefits counselors were as effective as face-to-face worksite enrollments in driving high participation in voluntary benefits. The 24/7 access to ALEX allows employee’s family members—who are often the benefits decision-makers—to include themselves in the benefits conversations and education.
“Clear and effective communication really distinguishes ALEX from other products on the market,” says Lannert, “ALEX was developed by game developers, improvisers, and creative writers—not industry experts or underwriters, per se. Our specialty is humor and communicating with users in an engaging way. Of course we care about offering employers a return on investment, a hosted solution, and increased employee participation in voluntary programs. But the revolutionary aspect of ALEX is really very simple: we made a benefits counselor that’s fun and funny, so employees like to spend time with it. The value and differentiation really starts there.”
ALEX is available in time for this year’s open enrollment season. To learn more about ALEX, please visit www.meetalex.com.
About The Jellyvision Lab
If your company website has a lot to say and is currently doing it in a way that’s too technical or filled with corporate jargon, marketing speak, impersonalized FAQs, and outsourced sales reps referring to massive binders of robotic text, then you should seriously consider calling The Jellyvision Lab today. For more information and sample work, visit jellyvisionlab.com.