Swoop + Avante: a lean benefits function, now always on
Overview
How Swoop gave nearly 500 employees a benefits expert through open enrollment, an acquisition, and throughout the year — while question data helped drive a vendor decision.
Competitive benefits for a fast-growing tech workforce
Swoop is a market leader in AI-driven, data-powered, and privacy-compliant healthcare engagement comprised of almost 500 employees across the US and Canada. For a company competing for technical talent, benefits are a competitive advantage. “We pride ourselves in providing a positive experience to our employees and being competitive with what we can offer them,” says VP of Human Resources Lauren Buczkiewicz. “Our goal is to make benefits something employees don’t have to stress about. As much as we can limit the noise, that’s our goal.”
Company Size
~500 Employees
Industry
Technology
Location
US & Canada
622
benefit questions answered
35%
of questions resolved after hours
50+
hours reclaimed for benefits team
A modern benefits experience for an AI-forward workforce
Swoop is an AI-forward technology company, and it wanted its benefits experience to match the standard its people expect from the tools they use every day. Swoop was on a PEO, and benefits questions either routed to the PEO portal, where the team had no visibility into the questions being asked, or landed with the one person on the front line for benefits: Tammy Winsett, Swoop’s payroll and benefits manager, who could only get to them so fast.
Now, Swoop was moving off the PEO, and its advisors at OneDigital knew the lean HR team might need extra support through and after the transition, as the volume of questions coming to HR would increase significantly.
Meanwhile, Swoop’s employees are the type to solve things themselves. An Engineering leader took it upon himself to build an AI assistant on Swoop’s internal AI tool to review and compare medical plan documents, a clear signal of demand. But a general-purpose tool isn’t a safe or reliable source of truth for benefits, and building and maintaining one shouldn’t fall to employees.
What Swoop wanted was a purpose-built benefits assistant it controlled: accurate, current, and available whenever employees needed it.
“I try to respond within twenty-four hours, but if they’re sending after hours or on weekends, they’re waiting a little bit longer.”
Tammy Winsett
Payroll & Benefits Manager
A benefits-specific source of truth the team controls
OneDigital brought in Carly, an AI benefits agent for employees, and fed it with Swoop’s own plan documents. Carly is purpose-built to read complex health plans, charts, and exceptions with patent-pending document-parsing technology, so critical details aren’t missed or misrepresented. It can also rationalize the entire plan, so when someone asks a specific question about one benefit, it knows to bring up all the relevant information at once.
On the HR side, Ava, Avante’s AI benefits agent for HR teams, lets the team mine and analyze question data for insight. That surfaces signals into what’s working, what’s confusing, and what’s missing, something that was previously impossible at scale.
Employees got answers, and the team focused on strategy
Impact on employees
Carly meets employees when they actually make benefits decisions. 35% of questions came in after hours and on weekends, when the Swoop HR team would otherwise be offline.
Impact on the benefits team
In eight months, Carly answered 622 questions across 227 conversations, reached nearly one in five employees (and climbing), and saved more than 50 hours of benefits-team time. When an acquisition added roughly 200 employees, monthly question volume jumped 8x and Carly absorbed it with no added headcount.
The question data also reshaped an important vendor decision. The team had been considering replacing its wellness point solution, so OneDigital asked Ava to dig into what employees were actually asking about it. The signal was telling. “The data helped confirm that it’s really just noise,” Lauren says. “The questions were about how to access the solution, not complaints. It allowed us to take making a change off the table until next year.”
622
benefit questions answered
35%
of questions resolved after hours and on weekends
50+
hours reclaimed for the benefits team
Clarity on vendor decisions
Swoop plans to use question data to sharpen communications and spot plan gaps. Tammy and OneDigital will fold Ava’s question insights into 2027 planning. “I’d be interested in seeing that data as I start preparing for open enrollment,” said Tammy, “so I can see how we need to change our communications.”
“I find people are often making these decisions outside of their working hours, It gives them the flexibility to sit and think. You’re not juggling a call, you can talk to a family member about it. Having that flexibility is huge.”
Benefits Manager
Major U.S. TPA
