Picture the scene; your insurance brand sales team receives a call and it rings 9 or 10 times, then the caller hangs up. The same caller tries using the website chatbot, but it can’t quite cope with the query on whether a motor policy can be simply switched to a new vehicle after a part-ex deal, or an adjustment payment is required.
Policyholder gives up, starts searching comparison sites instead for a new deal on the new car.
Suddenly your brand is looking at losing a loyal customer all because your comms aren’t doing the job. It only took about 90 seconds to lose three years of goodwill.
IE talked to IP Integration CEO Sat Sanghera (pictured) to find out how insurers and brokers alike can raise their customer comms game in the digital era.
IE; What’s the call centre market looking like after Covid and the rise of working from home?
SS; There are lots of challenges around right now and WFH is just one factor. Margins are very tight and at the same time insurance brands are all trying to give a better service to the customer.
Our research has shown that it now takes around 54 seconds on average for a contact centre to pick up the phone and answer. Partly that is due to new home based agent systems, which had to be deployed rapidly in 2020 during the pandemic. So this is what we at trying to do; helping companies make customer contact systems work more efficiently with the latest technology.
IE; Most people in the industry would say that claims or FNOL calls are the ones where answering the phone quickly is even more important. Are you seeing increasing stress from the customer contact centres as regards claims calls?
SS; Sometimes yes, it’s an emotive call, especially when an incident is very recent and people are calling just minutes afterwards. So it matters that the phone is answered, but having said that, many younger consumers are happy to use digital channels to make claims. Speed of reply by any channel is what matters.
IE; Are there any sticking points on claims or things like Mid-Term Adjustments for example?
SS; New technology can really help brands to triage things now. Whether a customer is using a chatbox online, a social media channel, a brand’s in-house app, or making the traditional call, there are ways to identify the importance of the contact. There’s a lot of talk now about how AI can help brands make savings by doing the customer ID verification process, or answering typical queries such as MTAs.
But it goes beyond saving time and money. AI can help improve the customer experience and IPI does a great deal of consultancy work in helping insurance brands achieve those goals. The shift to having data in the Cloud rather than servers within the building has opened things up.
So it’s not just about basic task processing like MTAs, renewals etc. All that Cloud-based data means you can enhance the contact team’s ability to do all kinds of other things: retrieve data on other policies, amend, bring in another operative onto a call – even if the call has been directed to a home based agent. Until recently insurers and brokers struggled to do that, but now it’s easy to let another agent or manager jump on the call and resolve something very quickly.
That’s the real benefit of all the tech tools we now have, plus the power of the Cloud; it comes together seamlessly to improve the contact experience.
IE; Do you think WFH has affected the `churn’ factor in contact centre work?
SS; It has and for the better. When you can offer flexible working patterns you reach a wider employee base because your insurance brand can offer shifts that fit in with people’s lives. It also allows the brand to cope better with peaks and troughs in demand, as well as offering services for customers whose first language isn’t English.
Then there are features like video calls, where two or more people can discuss a complex claim, for example. What you now have is total flexibility that no call centre office could match.
IE; Many insurers have existing systems of telephony, software, messaging etc. How rapidly can they change, is it affordable for smaller brands?
SS; During the pandemic you had a rapid transformation in both attitudes and the tech being used to service calls and emails. Suddenly, WFH became the norm, investment was found quickly to set up new systems. That proved to be the fundamental shift that the insurance sector needed.
There is still a value in legacy systems however and we have found that it’s possible – and often the best option – to update what you already have and overlay new tech on top. `Rip and replace’ is not always the best strategy; you can bolt on AI analytics, voice recognition ID, or chatbots to what you have already installed across your brand. The important thing is to make sure everything is working together, that no data is being handled in a disjointed way.
IE; So there is a different mindset now, is the contact centre itself seen as something of an outdated concept?
SS; It still has a place, but what’s interesting is that the decision making process has changed. For example, just a few years ago the tech decisions were being taken by Board level managers, or perhaps the CTO, IT managers and so on. Now others are involved, such as marketing, admin, claims and so on, because you have to build a people-centric system. There’s no tech for its own sake anymore; people ask what it can do for the brand, how can technology actually help the customer?
Part of the process is saving time and money as well, for example IPI has saved one customer around £1m per year by using automated systems, AI and voicebots, but it is about improving the experience too. There was a recent McKinsey report which stated that deploying new contact centre tech could improve your net promoter score, and consumer satisfaction levels could rise between 10-20%.
Ultimately, it is about offering customers multiple ways of contacting you. Younger consumers rarely pick up the phone, they prefer message apps, social channels and so on. What matters is the resolution of the conversation, the outcome. Plus you have to do more than place a message on your call waiting line that advises people to try using the website. Utility companies have found that this annoys consumers. They want help, not nudging the query online and having to do it for themselves.
Old fashioned email is still popular; people see it as proof of a conversation happening and a promise to resolve something. Don’t under-estimate email.
IE; What’s the key takeaway on contact centres Sat?
SS; Good customer communications not only leads to better renewal rates, better reviews online and saving money in call centres. It is about adding value to your brand, because it adds trust. Then there are cross-selling opportunities to consider; by using AI to join up the questions and conversations from different channels you start to see trends emerging, enabling insurers and brokers to offer cover on other needs the consumer might have.
For years, cross-selling depended very much on trained operators in contact centres, but now technology is doing a great deal of work from just one contact. Multi-channel comms means multiple products and services too.
IE; Interesting stuff, thanks for your time.
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