In this article, Isaac Richardson, sector specialist, Insurance at IPI, takes a look at how the modern contact centre can help insurance brands deliver a better customer experience.
Customer service in the insurance sector must evolve. At a time when claims and costs are rising and profits are being squeezed, insurance providers need to understand that a poor Contact Centre experience can do more than leave customers feeling disappointed. It will drive them to a competitor.
Unfortunately, customer satisfaction is falling and call handler attrition rates are far above the crosssector average. The good news is that technology can play an important role in re-energising the Contact Centre – and with it, both the customer and employee experience.
A brief history of the Contact Centre
As part of the wider financial services sector, insurers run more Contact Centres and employs more agents than any other vertical in the UK, according to ContactBabel. And although the number of Contact Centres in the UK has been slowly falling since 2018 thanks to outsourcing and industry consolidation, the number of agents continues to rise. The industry employed an estimated 63,000 last year, up 29% from 2010. That’s despite employees leaving the sector in growing numbers.
This matters, because a growing agent skills gap makes it harder for insurers to deliver the experience their customers are increasingly demanding. Today’s post-pandemic consumers are more digitally savvy, and more sensitive to what they perceive as poor customer service. Despite the complexity of many interactions in the sector – which makes self-service harder – and rigorous security and compliance requirements, there’s a sizeable opportunity for insurers to improve the Contact Centre experience.
This would undeniably be a good thing. A McKinsey study claims 71% of consumers expect a personalised experience from brands, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
Meeting the demands of today’s customers
According to the Institute of Customer Service, as of July 2023 customer satisfaction in the insurance sector stood at 78.7, a fall of 2.1 points versus a year previously. Seven of the 26 insurers studied in the report were at least three points below their July 2022 level, with the largest drop in customer satisfaction related to complaint handling. The Contact Centre has a critical role to play in turning this around.
It can do this by improving response times, offering a wider choice of channels with a consistent experience and boosting self-service options where possible. In fact, they’re all interconnected. Take response times. Contact Babel research reveals that the speed of response has fallen from an average of 18 seconds in 2010 to 102 seconds today. Long wait times are an obvious cause of customer frustration, which can impact brand perception and loyalty.
By creating more opportunities for customers to self-service where possible – through advanced voice based IVRs, chat bots, proactive digital deflection and other online tools – insurers can take the pressure off agents and help customers to help themselves. Whilst most insurers now allow customers to make changes to their accounts and even file claims online, there is still a disconnect between online journeys and interactions with the Contact Centre, which insurers need to address to create a consistent joined up experience.
Beyond self-service
Yet the Contact Centre experience must go beyond self-service. ContactBabel research reveals that consumers use an average of nearly six touchpoints. These must be unified to present a seamless experience for the customer, and integrated at the back end so agents can trace each journey. Yet just 3% of insurers use web chat, and only 15% offer email as a channel, according to ContactBabel.
Both could help to take the heat further off phone-based agents, to speed up response times. An ideal omnichannel strategy would recognise the customer via any channel and automatically route them to the best agent or support personnel.
IPI customer Motability Operations used these “digital deflection” tactics to divert traffic away from the Contact Centre and ensure seamless support during non-operational or peak hours. Its cloudbased platform included live person chat and AI-powered chat and voice bots, and was also integrated with WhatsApp, email and SMS capabilities – to optimise the customer experience.
Improving the agent experience
Yet to create a great customer experience, organisations must first address the agent experience. Unfortunately, insurance Contact Centres have traditionally struggled to motivate and retain their employees, with attrition rates at 27% versus an average across industries of 23%. Absenteeism rates are also high. This matters, because demotivated agents and high turnover not only impact the customer experience, but can also add extra costs due to recruitment, training and lost productivity. Research reveals that call centre agent productivity has flatlined over the past 10 years, at around 55%.
Fortunately, advanced AI driven automation technologies can help here. Utilising advances in real time speech transcription and analytics technology can enable AI to provide real time assistance to call handlers, to prompt relevant knowledge and articles and drive next best action. Similar this same technology can remove tedious post call work, buy providing an automated text based summary of the call that removes the needs for post call note taking and wrap up codes.
Gamification is another useful technique to keep agents engaged and motivated. One study found that gamification made employees feel more productive (89%), happier at work (88%) and more socially connected to their peers (87%). The latter is particularly important given that a growing number of agents work from home. Cloud-based Contact Centre solutions are essential to supporting this trend for more flexible working, which can in turn help productivity and satisfaction at work.
No slowing down
There’s plenty that insurers can do to boost the performance of their Contact Centres. The key is to remember that this is a journey. Whenever the destination appears just around the corner, new technology and customer behaviours force another evolution of the strategy. Given the dynamism of the market, regular training for staff, and a keen eye on technology trends should be a given.
In today’s market, insurers are increasingly forced to differentiate on customer experience. That should put the Contact Centre front and centre of any plans for sustainable growth.
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