November 20, 2025
GoHealth and Second Nature: The AI Partnership That Cut Employee Training Time in Half
At this year’s Contact Centre Expo, co-located with Customer Experience Expo UK in London, GoHealth’s Senior Vice President of Talent Operations, Jay Fortuna, described a transformation inside a business where precision, empathy, and regulatory compliance are non-negotiable.
GoHealth, a major Medicare and health insurance provider in the United States, has been using Second Nature’s AI role-play platform for nearly four years, long before AI training tools became mainstream.
Fortuna says this move was an operational necessity. Onboarding was slow, resource-heavy, and dependent on traditional role-plays that most employees dreaded.
As he puts it bluntly: “No one likes roleplaying. In fact, anybody who says they like roleplaying they’re like kind of half lying to you, I think.”
GoHealth initially turned to AI because its training model couldn’t scale. Realistic practice was the single largest bottleneck since trainers were spread thin, practice time was limited, and performance didn’t always improve at the pace required in a highly regulated insurance environment.
Second Nature’s conversational AI changed the structure of training almost immediately, explains Fortuna. Training time dropped by more than half, and facilitator ratios shifted dramatically, from one trainer for eight people to a model where one individual could support around forty learners simultaneously.
The quality improvements were equally significant. According to Fortuna, the organisation is now “seeing people come out 30% better productivity in the same amount of time.”
Building the Platform Together
GoHealth and Second Nature co-created the solution that best meets the Medicare provider’s needs. Fortuna explained that the platform evolved through a genuine partnership rather than the usual vendor–client dynamic.
“We truly in conjunction said, here’s what we need now, let’s look at six months a year and two years from now,” he said.
What began as a useful but heavy product matured into a system where GoHealth can build simulations in 15 minutes and deliver real-time feedback to hundreds of users.
This collaboration reflects his broader philosophy: if a tool can’t meet the need, show clear ROI, and offer true partnership, he’d rather build it internally. Second Nature, he says, met all three.
Why Employees Prefer AI to Traditional Role-Play
The most significant shift came from the employees themselves. In a sector where mistakes carry serious consequences, especially when advising elderly customers on Medicare options, the safe space of AI is crucial. New hires can experiment, make errors, repeat scenarios, and receive direct, unbiased feedback without the discomfort of performing in front of managers or peers.
Fortuna points out that peer-to-peer feedback rarely helps new employees improve. People don’t want to tell colleagues they’re struggling, whereas the AI doesn’t sugarcoat anything.
The Bigger Conversation: Is AI Replacing Jobs?
Fortuna is pragmatic in his view of AI’s broader impact. Some roles, he says, will inevitably change, but the real story is the work companies can now reach because they are no longer bogged down by inefficiencies.
For GoHealth, AI is about enabling people to operate faster, handle more complex tasks, and focus on areas long deprioritised.
“Stagnant is dangerous,” he said, summing up why adopting AI is not just an operational decision but a strategic one.
