What is an ACA campaign, from the floor's side?
An ACA campaign is a US health insurance campaign built around the Affordable Care Act marketplace, the plans people buy for themselves when they don't get coverage through work. For a call center in Lahore, Karachi, Mohali or Ahmedabad, it means one thing in practice. You find adults who may qualify for a marketplace plan, ask a short set of screening questions, and transfer the ones who pass to a licensed agent in the US who can actually enroll them.
Your floor never sells the plan. Your fronters don't quote premiums, don't name carriers and don't tell anyone what subsidy they will get. The licensed agent does all of that. What you sell is the conversation that gets a qualified, willing caller onto that agent's phone, and the buyer pays for it only if it meets their definition of qualified.
That definition is the whole campaign. Two floors can dial the same kind of data and get paid very differently, because one of them understands what the buyer is counting and the other one is counting transfers.
Who buys the transfer, and what are they paying for?
The buyer on an ACA campaign is usually one of three kinds of business. An insurance agency with licensed agents in many states that wants a steady stream of callers. A US call center that closes but doesn't want to front. Or a lead broker that sits in the middle, buys transfers from floors like yours and resells them to agencies.
Knowing which one you're dealing with matters. An agency feels every bad transfer directly, because its own agent sat on the call. A broker feels it only when its buyer sends the call back, which can be days later. With a broker in the middle, your feedback arrives slower and with less detail, and sometimes all you hear is "returned, not qualified" with no recording note.
Whoever it is, they are paying for a live caller who lives in a state their agents are licensed in, doesn't already have coverage that rules them out, has a household income their agents can work with, and knows they are being connected to someone about health coverage. That last point gets skipped on busy floors, and it causes more returns than most managers expect.
The qualifying questions, in the order most buyers want
Every buyer sends their own script, and you should run theirs, not the version your team lead remembers from last season. Most of them follow the same shape, which you can see in our sample ACA fronter script. As a checklist, a clean ACA screen covers these points:
- Disclosure and consent. Who you are, that the line is recorded, and that you are a licensed agency or calling for one. Never Healthcare.gov, never the government.
- Current coverage. Insurance through work, Medicare, Medicaid or a plan of their own? Employer coverage, Medicare and Medicaid usually end the call.
- Household size. Everyone on the tax return, not just the person on the phone. Callers often answer with the number of people living in the house, so ask it plainly.
- Estimated yearly household income. A rough figure or a band. The fronter never argues with the number or suggests a better one.
- State and ZIP. Plans and licensing work state by state, and some buyers only take certain states.
- Willing to speak to a licensed agent now. Not after work, not tomorrow. Now.
How much can a fronter say about subsidies?
Very little, and that's on purpose. Marketplace subsidies (the premium tax credit) depend on household income compared with the federal poverty level, and the rules around them have changed several times in recent years. They may change again. Our short note on ACA subsidies has the plain version for training.
A fronter can say that a licensed agent will check what savings the household may qualify for. A fronter should never say a figure, never call a plan free and never promise a zero premium. Promised savings that don't appear on the enrollment are a steady source of complaints, and buyers treat a recording with that promise on it as a serious problem. Confirm the approved wording with your buyer and their compliance team before the season starts.
Open Enrollment and the shift it puts on your floor
Most ACA volume sits inside Open Enrollment. On the federal marketplace it has started on November 1 and run into mid-January in recent years, while state-run exchanges can set their own end dates. Dates have moved before, so confirm them with your buyer each year instead of trusting last season's calendar.
Outside the window, people can still enroll after a qualifying life event, such as losing job-based coverage, moving or having a baby. Special Enrollment volume is thinner and buyers often pay for it differently, so ask whether they treat in-season and off-season transfers the same way.
The time zone is where offshore floors feel the season. Open Enrollment starts right as US clocks fall back on the first Sunday of November. Before that, 9:00 a.m. Eastern is 6:00 p.m. in Pakistan and 6:30 p.m. in India. After it, 9:00 a.m. Eastern is 7:00 p.m. PKT and 7:30 p.m. IST. Your shift slides an hour later in the busiest week of the year. The federal calling window closes at 9:00 p.m. in the caller's local time (some states are stricter), so a West Coast list stays dialable until around 10:00 a.m. PKT the next morning. Plan the rota and the transport before November, not after.
How ACA transfers are paid
Most ACA buyers pay per billable transfer. A transfer becomes billable when the caller stays connected to the licensed agent past a duration the buyer sets in the agreement, usually counted from when the agent picks up, not from when your fronter started the call. Shorter calls cost the buyer nothing. Get the exact number written down in seconds, and confirm whether time in their queue counts.
Some buyers pay per enrollment instead, or a blend of a smaller payment per transfer plus a bonus on enrollment. Per-enrollment deals can look generous on paper, but they leave you carrying the agent's close rate, and you never get to see their closing floor.
Then there are returns. A buyer can return a transfer within a window after the call if the caller didn't qualify, was a duplicate or didn't know why they were transferred. The return window, the allowed reasons and the way you dispute one should all be in writing. Ask for a call reference on every return. If the buyer can't give one, the return is a conversation, not a deduction.
Why do ACA campaign transfers get rejected?
When a closer on an ACA desk says a transfer was bad, it is almost always one of a short list. Use it as a QA checklist on your own recordings before the buyer does it for you.
- The caller already has employer coverage, Medicare or Medicaid, and the fronter didn't ask or didn't listen.
- The caller already has a marketplace plan through another agent and isn't looking to change. Buyers are strict here because unauthorized agent switches drew federal enforcement in recent years.
- The household income was guessed by the fronter, or the caller was nudged toward a number.
- Duplicate: the same person reached that buyer inside their dupe window, often from a list that was loaded twice.
- The caller didn't know why they were on the line. The fronter said "please hold" and transferred without saying a licensed agent was coming to talk about health coverage.
- Dead air at the handoff. The agent picked up to silence and the caller had already gone.
- A Spanish-speaking caller sent to an English-only agent.
- A state the buyer doesn't cover, usually because the fronter skipped the state question when the caller sounded keen.
Running the season without burning the buyer
Notice how few of those rejection reasons are about selling. Most are a fronter rushing a question or a handoff, which is exactly what happens in hour seven of a winter shift. The floors that keep an ACA buyer for a second season tend to share a few habits. They QA a sample of transfers every day against the buyer's own rejection reasons. They write dispositions that mean something, so "employer coverage" and "not interested" aren't lumped together in the report. And they warm transfer: the fronter stays on, introduces the caller and the reason for the call, and drops only once the agent has spoken. Our piece on warm and cold transfers covers why that last habit moves acceptance rates.
If fronting capacity is your limit in November, an AI fronter is one option. B3 Voice's ACA fronter reads your approved disclosure, asks about coverage, household and income in your order, ends the call politely when the household is outside your thresholds and stays on the transfer until your agent answers. It runs in English today, with Spanish coming. The full flow is on the ACA bots page.
However you staff it, the campaign rewards the same thing: a short, honest script, run the same way on every call, and a floor that reads its own returns.
