Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry

Transcription

1 Industry Strategy Guide EMEA Region Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry

2 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry Table of Contents 3 Introduction 4 The Key Challenges Facing the Insurance Industry Mature Markets and Price Competition Challenge Continued Growth The Customer Experience is Becoming Even More Important Insurance Companies are Dissatisfied with the Results of Their Cross-Selling/Up-Selling Efforts Keeping Costs Down is Difficult 10 The Strategic Role of the Contact Centre in Insurance Strategy 1: Facilitate Integrated and Consistent Cross-Channel Interactions Strategy 2: Offer an Inviting Customer Front Door Strategy 3: Get Customers Off the Phone and Onto the Web Strategy 4: Handle Calls More Intelligently Strategy 5: Give Agents the Information They Need to Do Their Jobs Strategy 6: Initiate Proactive Contact Strategy 7: Make More Effective Use of Customer Data and Segmentation Strategy 8: Optimise Business Process Execution Strategy 9: Create a Winning Team Effort with Contact Centre Virtualisation Strategy 10: Boost Agent Productivity through Interaction Blending 17 The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre 19 Genesys in Insurance 20 Case Study 23 Conclusion 24 About Genesys

3 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 3 of 24 Introduction Whilst the overall European life and non-life insurance industry is growing, business growth is slowing and some important western European markets are stagnating. Price competition is accelerating as customers turn to Internet data aggregators to shop for the best deal for many types of insurance. In addition, the insurance business and the needs of policy holders and distributors are rapidly changing, but many insurance companies can t keep up because they are unable to differentiate their business by providing an excellent customer experience, reach customers likely to respond to new sales opportunities or make the most of their valued staff. Insurers that define and implement solutions to these challenges are those that will successfully compete and thrive into the future. This paper examines the strategic role of the contact centre in the insurance industry, and how it can deliver the increased revenues and cost savings that will drive profitability and shareholder value. The paper introduces ten essential strategies you can use to realise this potential by improving the customer experience, leveraging cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and promoting agent productivity and satisfaction: Facilitate Integrated and Consistent Cross-Channel Interactions Offer an Inviting Customer Front Door Get Customers Off the Phone and Onto the Web Handle Calls More Intelligently Give Agents the Information They Need to Do Their Jobs Initiate Proactive Contact Make More Effective Use of Customer Data and Segmentation Optimise Business Process Execution Create a Winning Team Effort with Contact Centre Virtualisation Boost Agent Productivity through Interaction Blending This paper further explains how the Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre provides integrated communication technologies to optimise customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes for today s changing conditions. It concludes with a real-world customer case study that illustrates how Groupama has used Genesys solutions to make its contact centre vision a reality.

4 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 4 of 24 The Key Challenges Facing the Insurance Industry Mature Markets and Price Competition Challenge Continued Growth The Capgemini World Insurance Report reveals that 31% of non-life insurance customers have changed providers in the last five years. Consumers are going on the Internet to compare prices, assisted by the growing popularity of data aggregators that present insurance products as commodities sorted by price. Data from CEA, the European insurance and reinsurance federation, show total European insurance premiums of 1,065 billion in 2006, an increase of 4.8% over The life business grew by 4.4% to reach billion whilst the non-life business grew by 5.3% to reach billion. However, overall growth is slowing as some important western European insurance markets show sluggish or even negative growth in certain sectors. To foster continued growth, insurers are turning to emerging eastern European markets for new opportunities. For instance, the highest growth rates for the life business in 2006, according to CEA, were Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Hungary with an average growth rate of 26% in eastern countries. Non-life business was led by the Netherlands due to health insurance privatisation. Other than this market, the highest growth rates were in the eastern countries: Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia and Croatia. In addition, some analysts are predicting the Russian insurance market to grow tenfold over the next decade. Life Premium Growth Rate 06/05 (inflation-adjusted) Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Hungary lead the pack for life premium growth. Source: CEA Statistics N 31 August 2007 With the exception of the Netherlands, where health insurance privatisation spurred non-life premium growth, the highest growth rates were in the eastern countries: Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia and Croatia Non-Life Premium Growth Rate 06/05 (inflation-adjusted) Source: CEA Statistics N 31 August 2007

5 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 5 of 24 The European insurance market is very concentrated, with the 20 largest European insurance groups commanding a 52.5% market share in PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that acquisition values in the European insurance sector reached 25 billion in 2006, an increase of 34% over Diversification and expansion into central and eastern European countries, as well as into other geographies around the globe, accounted for some merger and acquisition activity, but many other factors came into play as well. Most notably, the bancassurance models of some financial services companies weren t working as well as anticipated, and these companies divested of their insurance business to focus on their core banking business. Yet, other insurance companies sought out acquisitions to gain direct access to distribution. Customer churn is mostly driven by customers shopping for the best price, particularly for non-life insurance, which is placing downward pressure on overall profit margins. More and more, consumers are going on the Internet to compare prices, assisted by the growing popularity of data aggregators that present insurance products from carriers as undifferentiated commodities sorted by price. The Capgemini World Insurance Report published in 2007, which based its results on customer behaviour in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S., reveals that 31% of non-life insurance customers have changed providers in the last five years. Reasons for Customer Turnover in Insurance For both non-life and life products, price shopping is the major contributor of customer churn followed by a poor customer service/ experience. Source: Capgemini Analysis, 2006

6 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 6 of 24 The Customer Experience is Becoming Even More Important Just because price matters the most doesn t mean that service does not matter. A study by Claes Fornell International (CFI) Group, an employee and customer satisfaction consultant, showed that nearly 61% of people who have a bad experience with their insurance company s contact centre will consider switching companies, and 26% said they will definitely switch companies because of a bad call centre experience. Further, the 2006/07 Genesys Consumer Research Study of the European market discovered that 35% of consumers say that customer service has the biggest impact on their loyalty. Although customer service is very important for winning new and retaining existing customers, insurance companies struggle to achieve acceptable customer satisfaction levels in their call centres. In particular, more sophisticated members are demanding expanded advisory services for their retirement, pension, healthcare and life insurance needs. Insurance companies also have trouble meeting the needs of specific constituents, namely agents, brokers and networks who are the most important channels for bringing in new business. FileNet, an IBM company, conducted an insurance industry survey on customer service, and results indicate that more than half of insurance carriers identified current policy holders as the primary target audience for their customer service efforts, whilst only 20% identified agents and brokers. Insurance Distribution Channels 2005 In most European countries, insurance products are mainly either distributed through agents (tied or multiple) or through other networks (bank, post offices, etc.). Yet, insurance companies aim their customer service efforts primarily at policy holders. Source: CEA Statistics N 31 August 2007

7 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 7 of 24 According to a McKinsey & Company survey, the most important factors influencing which carriers an agent will engage with include ease of doing business and personalised service. The McKinsey & Company analysis also reports that the insurance industry s one-size-fits-all model for servicing agents isn t working. Larger agencies may require dedicated service teams and demand service level agreements, whilst mid-size agencies may need local service and smaller agencies that are expensive to service may need centralised call centres and self-service tools. Insurance Companies are Dissatisfied with the Results of Their Cross-Selling/Up-Selling Efforts According to Capgemini, 71% of customers never or rarely (only once per year) interact with their principal distributor. Consumers are increasingly using the Web to research products and prices, but insurance companies have a massive challenge aligning their back-end policy writing engines to their Web-based consumer facing applications. In addition to new global market opportunities, many insurance companies are trying to grow by cross-selling and up-selling more products. Even in mature western European markets, opportunities abound as some countries shift from public to private pension reforms and health systems. Retirement products are poised for growth with Europe s aging population. Though bancassurance models have not done well in some countries, there are also many successes. And, where the models have failed, joint ventures are being formed in recognition of the synergies between banking and insurance products. Further, composite insurance companies are expanding the number of product opportunities. New products, such as unit-linked insurance products that divide premium investments between life coverage and trusts or funds, are gaining popularity. Clearly, the contact centre is a necessary component of developing sales strategies to exploit these opportunities as successfully as possible, but this transition has been difficult. Lack of customer interaction is one of many factors that limit selling opportunities in the insurance industry. According to Capgemini, an astonishing 71% of customers never or rarely (only once per year) interact with their principal distributor. This is in stark contrast to customers in the banking industry who, Capgemini states, interact with their banks more than 200 times a year. Another selling challenge is that consumers are increasingly bypassing distributors and using the Web to research or purchase products. According to a Forrester Research survey of consumers across seven countries France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom about a third of those who own at least one policy said they were likely to use the Web for a sale query, and 47% said they were either likely or very likely to use the Web for a quote. The survey also discovered that consumers in the United Kingdom and France were more likely to use the Web for sales interactions than consumers in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

8 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 8 of 24 European Insurance Sales Channels Source: Booz Allen Hamilton Although traditional sales channels mobile salesforces and insurance agencies (independent, corporate, or in alliances with banks) are still dominant for completing sales transactions, the Internet is becoming an important channel, both as an information and as a transaction platform. Even though the Internet is becoming a more important sales channel, insurance companies struggle to leverage this channel as effectively as possible. Some insurance companies face a massive challenge in aligning their back-end policy writing engines to their Web-based consumer-facing applications; further, many Websites don t facilitate agent interaction. Thus, insurance companies lose sales by being unable to engage the customer during the key points in the decision making process. And, after consumers complete their Web research and contact the agent to purchase insurance, lack of multi-channel integration means that agents have no knowledge of the customer s prior interactions on the Web, making it more difficult to develop personalised sales strategies. Insurance sales occur mainly by product silos, further limiting cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, as well as making it difficult to differentiate products. But, to capture the full lifetime value of the customer, insurance companies should anticipate the needs of the customer as they move through life stages, and strive to understand which channels their customers feel comfortable interacting with. Insurers will need to pay particular attention to demographic trends to identify and target promising opportunities. Examples include Europe s aging baby boomers who will soon retire, Generation X and Generation Y consumers who are technically inclined, and specific ethnic groups who value products and services tailored to their unique needs. Keeping Costs Down is Difficult Not only are insurance companies trying to increase revenues, they are also trying to keep costs low without negatively impacting customer service. This is a tough task among commonly used techniques to decrease contact centre costs, such as reducing call volume, handling time, workforce costs and overhead costs.

9 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 9 of 24 Call volume is high In their efforts to reduce call volume, insurance companies are making progress in transitioning customers to the Web, but adoption is still not what it should be. Claes Fornell International Group reports that 67% of people who use a method other than the call centre try visiting a company s Website first. But, this percentage is lower than in other industries, where 80-90% of customers try the Website before using the call centre. Forrester Research s report Online Europeans Aren t Rushing to the Net to Manage Their Insurance reveals that only 24% of Internet users who own at least one insurance policy would be willing to fill out an online form to submit a claim, and only 33% would be willing to use the Web to check the status of a claim. Handling times are too long According to Claes Fornell International data, insurance call centres have lower customer satisfaction rates than most other industries because of their below-average ability to resolve customer issues. Decreasing call handling time requires that the information the customer service representatives need for a successful resolution must be readily available. In many insurance call centres, however, this isn t the case. Agents have to manually access dozens of screens, one at a time, causing the call to take longer than it should and sometimes leading to inadequate resolution. Because of the complexity of claim and membership enquiries, calls frequently need to be routed to appropriate specialists. This process can take days, or even weeks, before the customer gets the right answer. Workforce costs continue to increase Because the skill requirements for agents in the insurance industry are high, it has been difficult to reduce workforce costs without negatively impacting quality of service. For instance, health insurance agents must handle a mixture of inbound claim and membership enquiries from members and providers, as well as provide policy assistance to agents and brokers. Callers pose complex questions about claim status, billing, membership and benefits and due to the intricacy of insurance products product specialists are often required to handle calls. The increase in new product lines has added a new layer of complexity, and contact centre agents need to learn and understand the new offerings to be able to effectively communicate them to customers and distributors. In the future, the issue of agent skills in insurance will only get worse as baby boomers retire. Overhead costs are too high Processing contact centre requests can be intricate, often requiring information to flow between systems, between people and between the company and third parties. And, typically, the workload of agents is mixed about 60% telephone and 40% offline support involving paper-based processes. The offline work is difficult and expensive to manage, and is rarely integrated with telephone activities, both from a routing and a workforce management perspective. The result is two separate workload silos that make poor use of agent resources.

10 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 10 of 24 The consolidation of contact centres represents an obvious candidate for cost savings, as does the increased use of outsourcing. However, insurance customers value personalised service and prefer to work with a dedicated agent who will take care of all their enquiries. As a result, many insurance companies may find that outright contact centre consolidation will frustrate and alienate their customers and that alternative strategies, such as contact centre virtualisation, ought to be undertaken to reduce overhead costs. The Strategic Role of the Contact Centre in Insurance As recently as just a few years ago, the contact centre in the insurance industry was usually simply seen as a way of dealing with customer requests. These operations were run as a so-called cost centre, and a clear objective for management was to make sure the contact centre was run on a lean budget whilst still providing acceptable levels of customer service. Today, however, contact centres are seen as a far more strategic asset. Fundamental customer service goals that should be delivered by today s contact centre include cross-selling and up-selling more products and services, and running more cost efficient operations by increasing agent productivity. Further, contact centres are now considered a key instrument in changing the public s perception of a company, creating a great customer experience and executing on the business goals of the company as a whole. How can your contact centre accomplish these service objectives? Depending on contact centre maturity and business requirements, here are ten possible contact centre strategies to make your goals a reality.

11 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 11 of 24 Strategy 1: Facilitate Integrated and Consistent Cross-Channel Interactions The first step in offering an exceptional customer experience is to offer multi-channel contact centre interactions comprised of phone, fax, , SMS, and perhaps even Web chat, so that prospects and customers can conduct business with you exactly when and how they like. According to the Genesys Consumer Survey 2007 Europe, 89% of consumers would like to communicate with a company via and 50% say that is their most preferred method of communication. Offering superior Web channel interaction will encourage consumers to use insurance company Websites in place of, or in addition to, aggregator sites. This Website visit will give insurance companies a greater chance to differentiate their products and services. Further, with one view of the customer across all interaction channels, insurance companies are able to deliver more personalised services, improve cross-sell and up-sell rates and lower operating costs. Providing customers with a seamless experience across all channels ensures that interactions are as consistent and efficient as possible, which will help you build a solid relationship with the customer. For relationship selling, agents require a unified view of interactions across all channels to effectively promote and sell insurance products. In the early promotional stage, this means ensuring that insurance companies don t repeat the same offers to customers at different touch points, such as the call centre and the Web. As the customer responds to the promotion, agents can pick up where the customer left off at each stage in the sales process, regardless of which channel the customer was using. For example, if a customer (let s call her Sophie) had gone online to request a bindable quote, the call centre would be aware of this and take steps to close the deal with her. Strategy 2: Offer an Inviting Customer Front Door When customers use the call centre channel, the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system provides the customer s first impression of the company. It also serves as a guide to the insurance services, and determines how well the insurance company can decrease the volume of calls that agents must handle or reduce handling times. Unfortunately, traditional IVR menus have often frustrated customers with long and confusing menu trees. Open dialog call steering is emerging as an innovative alternative to traditional IVR menus. By asking what the customer wants and recognising key words in natural speech, and by integrating with business rules and routing strategies, open dialog call steering applications take intelligent action to ensure the most efficient resolution of the call.

12 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 12 of 24 An example: IVR: Thank you for contacting Premier Property and Casualty Insurance. How can we help you? Sophie: I would like to check the status of my insurance claim. If Sophie s dedicated insurance representative is available, the Customer Front Door application could route Sophie s call to that person who might be able to use the opportunity to explore Sophie s needs for additional insurance. Or, the application can execute a self-service application for immediately processing Sophie s claim status enquiry. Strategy 3: Get Customers Off the Phone and Onto the Web Using Web self-service, members, providers, agents and brokers can interact with the company whenever they want, not just during weekday contact centre service hours. Not only does Web self-service enhance customer service, it also helps migrate calls away from expensive call centre agents. Call centre agents can dedicate their time to handling more complex enquiries and concentrating on selling activities, rather than responding to routine calls that can be easily automated. There are tremendous opportunities for self-service in insurance. Members can view policy coverage, pay bills, make changes to policies, submit claims and check the status of claims progress. Private healthcare providers can verify benefits or coverage, automate claims processing, and review claims and correct errors. Agents and brokers can more easily obtain online quotes, proposals and plan designs for customers and can keep track of their own customer accounts. The opportunities for self-service in insurance abound for all customer groups. Members can view policy coverage, pay bills, make changes to policies, submit claims and check the status of claims progress. Private healthcare providers can use secure online tools to verify benefits or coverage, automate claims processing, and review claims and correct errors. Agents and brokers can more easily obtain online quotes, proposals and plan designs for customers with different profiles and needs. And, they can more easily keep track of their own customer accounts rather than having to consult with a call centre representative. Integrating self-service with agent assistance enhances the customer experience by allowing the customer to interact with an insurance company in a convenient way whilst still receiving the same personalised advisory service offered by call centres. As customers increasingly engage in online research and transactions, they can be offered agent assistance to make their interaction go more smoothly. For instance, Sophie goes to an insurance Website and decides to request a quick quote. As she reads the quote, an online chat window pops up inviting her to speak with an insurance specialist. Sophie accepts and is able to immediately ask the outstanding questions she has after reviewing the online materials and quote. After Sophie becomes a client, she might use the click-to-call feature to speak directly with an agent if she is having trouble filling out an insurance claim.

13 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 13 of 24 Strategy 4: Handle Calls Intelligently When taking calls, one of the number one priorities for insurance companies is to make sure they provide acceptable customer service. Skills-based routing, virtual hold and business priority routing are three key strategies for meeting service requirements as efficiently as possible, whilst also making the most of opportunities to drive new revenues. An IVR system not only identifies customers, but also why they are calling. With this knowledge, skills-based routing determines where the call should be directed either to a self-service application, or to a customer service agent most qualified to efficiently handle the call based on license certification, selling skills, language skills, product knowledge or the ability to handle a specific type of claim, benefits, billing or sales enquiry. During times of peak volume, virtual hold technology allows customers to receive a callback at a convenient time rather than wait on hold. This technique complies with requirements for call response times and improves customer satisfaction levels without adding costs for additional resources. Often, response times are easily met during times of low call volume and agents have free time to focus on other activities, such as calling clients to review their current coverage and additional needs. Business priority routing uses business rules to prioritise calls based on customer value, customer segments, available channel resources, hold times and other factors. For instance, when Sophie, a health and accident insurance customer, rings during a period of low demand, she is passed straight through to a contact centre agent rather than routed to the self-service application. The call centre agent handling her request then proceeds to explain the company s life insurance products to Sophie and how she can save money by buying bundled policies from the same provider. It turns out that Sophie had already been considering life insurance and, after discovering the discount she will receive from her insurance provider, she signs on. Using business priority routing, insurance companies can also match service priorities with the needs of different types of carriers. Calls from larger agencies can be directed to dedicated service teams as soon as they are received, whilst calls from smaller agencies can be directed to self-service when possible.

14 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 14 of 24 Strategy 5: Give Agents the Information They Need to Do Their Jobs The integration of back-office system information with everyday contact centre activities helps agents resolve calls more quickly and effectively. As soon as the agent takes the call, relevant customer information is displayed within a single screen so that agents don t need to manually navigate through systems to find the information they are looking for. Workflow management allows the service representative to efficiently take all necessary steps to resolve customer issues, reducing the time it takes to get customers the answers they are looking for. As back-office integration with the call centre and workflow management decreases average handling times and reduces unnecessary repeat contacts to resolve issues, customer satisfaction becomes higher whilst the contact centre workload and costs are lowered. Strategy 6: Initiate Proactive Contact Insurance companies find that policy renewals increase with frequent communications leading up to the renewal event, and the number of products sold per customer increases. Proactive contact helps insurance companies stay in touch with their customers. Because customers don t interact with the contact centre on a frequent basis, insurance companies should consider initiating proactive contact to stay in touch with the customer. Insurance companies find that policy renewals increase with frequent communications leading up to the renewal event, and the number of products sold per customer increases. Whenever an agent or broker opens or renews a large account, using proactive contact to send a thank you note can let these important distributors know that you appreciate their business. The Genesys Consumer Survey 2007 Europe found that 89% of consumers would have a more positive opinion of a supplier after receiving a courtesy call just to thank them for their business or ask them how satisfied they are. Proactive contact management is also a useful form of automated telemarketing to scale the contact centre for increased cross-selling and up-selling activities. Insurance companies can further use proactive contact to notify their customers about new products and services or special promotions. Strategy 7: Make More Effective Use of Customer Data and Segmentation Given slow growth in certain mature markets, some insurance companies are abandoning their product-centric approaches to selling. Instead, they are maximising the lifetime value of customers through cross-selling and up-selling. In this new paradigm, using customer data and segmentation to anticipate the future needs of individual customers becomes more important than mass marketing. Going one step further, high-value policy holders and distributors may interact, when possible, with a life-time advisor who is intimately familiar with the client s history and needs. For instance, demographic matching is a way to assign the customer to an agent

15 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 15 of 24 Front-office integration with the contact centre helps to increase sales. Insurance agents are able to provide advisory assistance and/or customised offers based on the customer s interactions across all channels, existing insurance-wide product portfolio, claims records, demographics, life stage and propensity to buy. who has a common demographic profile. The result is that customers get to interact with agents who will more readily relate to the customer because they share certain commonalities, such as native language, age range, degree of technical competence, and so on. Front-office integration in the contact centre helps insurance companies move away from their siloed views of customer data. To make relationship selling a success, front-office integration gives agents a 360-degree view of the customer, which helps in focusing on lifetime customer profitability. Agents have access to the right information across all touch points to enable effective interaction with the customer. In this way, customers may receive advisory assistance and/or customised offers based on their current behaviour, recent interactions across all channels, existing insurance-wide product portfolio, claims records and detailed knowledge of the customer s demographics, life stage and propensity to buy. For example, suppose Sophie, a Generation X customer who has no insurance products in her portfolio to help her plan for retirement, rings to enquire about the status of a motor claim. The call is routed to a call centre agent who is in the same age bracket as Sophie and who is a retirement planning specialist. After updating Sophie about her claim status, the agent tells Sophie about the importance of early planning for retirement and describes unit-linked insurance products that provide life coverage whilst allowing her to build cash values in investment funds. Sophie is pleased that the contact centre agent has taken the time to understand her personal situation and agrees to purchase these products. Strategy 8: Optimise Business Process Execution Insurance interactions usually involve multi-step business processes that may include multiple contacts with customers, service providers and other third parties. As the communications hub for the company, the contact centre can be harnessed to automate and expedite end-to-end business processes supporting these communications. By directly integrating a business workflow engine, the contact centre becomes an active participant in driving business efficiency. For instance, a motor insurance provider can reduce the time and effort to sign up new customers, settle claims or collect payments by automating the various external interactions and notifications required to complete these processes. Contact centre agents can play an even broader role in these and other processes through integrated workflow that enables the routing of back-office tasks as work items to available agents for processing.

16 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 16 of 24 Strategy 9: Create a Winning Team Effort with Contact Centre Virtualisation Many insurance companies are moving towards a virtual contact centre to allow geographically dispersed agents to operate as a single, winning team. Regardless of location, agents can be called upon, as available, to ensure appropriate response levels and to provide access to needed expertise. A virtual contact centre is vital for load balancing during times of peak demand and is essential in the insurance industry where the appropriate resource for each call is highly variable and is often unavailable in a centralised call centre. A virtual contact centre unifies the skills of home-based agents, outsourced agents, mid-and back-office specialists, field agents, and other experts, regardless of their location. In the case where an agent takes a call that requires the additional skills of a specialist, rather than frustrating the customer by providing incomplete information, the agent can quickly locate available experts and seamlessly pass the call on to someone who has complete details of the interaction. In this way, the customer isn t forced to repeat details of the previous conversation, and the company gains the benefit of a reduction in costs through operating multiple locations as one centre. Here is an illustration: Sophie has just telephoned the call centre to ask about a home claim. The contact centre agent needs help from an adjuster who does not work in the contact centre in order to answer Sophie s questions. The agent taking the initial call gathers information and then passes the claim to an adjuster in the back office for further action. Sophie perceives the contact centre experience more positively than she would have if she d been asked to make multiple calls to specialists to help her with her enquiry. Strategy 10: Boost Agent Productivity through Interaction Blending Insurance companies benefit from optimising their agents time as much as possible. Call blending allows agents to handle both inbound service calls and outbound sales calls as call volume and skills permit, whilst task blending allows agents to offer their assistance at different interaction channels. Or, contact centre agents can be switched to answering s or engaging in text chats with customers. Not only does this maximise agent productivity, but interaction blending also breaks up the potential monotony of the position.

17 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 17 of 24 The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre is designed to transform customer service by automatically optimising customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes. Whilst contact centres can manually adjust to changing patterns, an advanced or dynamic contact centre has the know-how and technology to make automatic adjustments in real time. As contact centres become increasingly important channels, insurance companies can convert themselves to dynamic contact centres to automatically optimise the customer experience, foster cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and increase agent productivity. The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre provides key customer service capabilities that are integrated and orchestrated to fulfil these objectives: The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre The Genesys Dynamic Contact Centre provides integrated and orchestrated customer service capabilities to optimise the customer experience, foster cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and increase agent productivity and satisfaction. Customer Centric Routing puts an end to customer frustration by ensuring that each interaction is routed to the ideal resource with the right information no matter where that resource is located in your organisation. This helps you increase first-call resolution rates, meet variable call volumes with limited resources, increase cross-sell and up-sell rates and improve agent satisfaction. Business Process Routing integrates phone, and fax with back office business processes to improve agent productivity and customer service. Through this integration, contact centre resources can be leveraged as part of workflow processes such as processing a claim, fax, work order or other interaction. Ultimately, contact centre and back-office processes are streamlined, and agent utilisation is improved.

18 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 18 of 24 Workforce Management and Optimisation is central to managing and optimising contact centre resources. It gives you control over your operations by allowing you to forecast and schedule agents dynamically based on traffic volumes and resource availability across a multi-site, multichannel environment. Proactive Contact Management provides a personalised customer interaction experience by allowing you to send relevant outbound notifications at any time. It also enables you to create, modify, run and report on voice and multimedia outbound campaigns for proactive customer contact and sustained communications. Integrated Self-Service provides a holistic caller experience whilst reducing handling times and service delivery costs. These capabilities provide touch-tone or speech-enabled access for conversational exchange to identify and resolve routine customer requests and transfer more complex calls to the best skilled agent. Internet and Multimedia Integration capabilities allow customers to interact with you the way they want to when they want to through voice, , Web chat, Instant Messaging and even video calls. Branch, Remote and Expert Integration allow you to extend your contact centre to manage interactions based on business strategies and objectives. For example, higher valued clients might be sent to a highly skilled resource located within a branch office, rather than being sent to the general call centre. The Virtual Contact Centre, enabled by voice over IP (VoIP) technology, allows geographically dispersed contact centre agents to operate as a single, winning team. Regardless of where the contact centre agents are located, they can be called upon, as available, to ensure appropriate response levels and provide access to needed expertise. Real-Time Offer Management helps you capitalise on cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by providing the capabilities to recommend an offer to an agent in real time, based on a customer s background, history and interaction type. Reporting and Analytics allow you to assess your contact centre and customer service activity by providing real-time and historical views on the performance metrics of contact centre objectives and how these metrics change over time.

19 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 19 of 24 Genesys in Insurance Genesys is a market leader in providing solutions for global insurance companies. These include: The world s 10 largest insurance companies 3 of the world s 5 largest life/health (mutual) insurance companies 5 of the world s 5 largest life/health (stock) insurance companies 4 of the world s 10 largest property/casualty insurance companies Below are just a few of the many examples of how insurance companies in Europe are benefiting from their Genesys solution. Macif is the leading domestic insurance company in France, offering all the services required by its 4.6 million members (property insurance, health, social security, savings, support, credit, and more). Using Genesys solutions, Macif has modernised the infrastructure of its call centres by making greater use of ITC technology for incoming and outgoing calls and providing supervisors with call forecasting and staff planning facilities. Pacifica, a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole and one of the top ten French general insurers (fire, accident and general risk), uses Genesys solutions to absorb the peaks of call volume activity and guarantee 100% call treatment whilst controlling its costs. The monitoring of statistics, both centralised and site by site, is automated and based on a strategy common to all Pacifica call centres. Swiss Life is Switzerland s leading life insurance company. Using Genesys, automated routing strategies based upon the caller s regional location and the agents language skills and product knowledge ensure that the centre s resources are maximised. In fact, Swiss Life has seen a 50% improvement in agent availability, resulting in a 95% availability rate and correspondingly higher customer satisfaction levels. The Genesys Reporting suite provides all the data that managers need to monitor staff performance and analyse results.

20 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 20 of 24 Case Study Groupama is the largest insurance company in France providing home, health, provident and auto coverage to families across Europe. Groupama Rhone Alpes Auvergne (GRAA), a division of Groupama, was considering its needs in light of its then current technology infrastructure, and found that an earlier decision to build its contact centres on Genesys technology left GRAA perfectly positioned for the multimedia future. This started a technology revolution within the firm by bringing the power of the Internet to the company s contact centres. Challenge GRAA needed technology that could support the easy addition of new contact centre agents anywhere in the country. In addition, it was clear that the future of telephony resided in smart phones that accommodated voice, SMS messages, photographs and video transmissions. To be prepared for these advances, GRAA sought to adopt a technology that could support a broad array of media choices. GRAA was determined to preserve the Genesys contact centre features including screen pops on agent desktops, skills-based routing, and management reporting tools that had contributed so greatly to its productivity since Thanks to the VoIP Genesys solution using the SIP protocol, we have improved customer service whilst reducing our costs through more efficient balancing of workloads across our staff network. Patrick Hinschberger DSI, Manager of System and Network Infrastructure Groupama GRAA decided that the future of customer service was in the multimedia communications made possible by the Internet protocol. With a contact centre operating over IP, GRAA agents could work anywhere in the country from their homes or satellite offices simply by logging onto the decentralised IP network. And IP communications, supported by the SIP standard, supported all modes of communication that customers were becoming accustomed to from their Internet experience, including voice, data and video. GRAA also sought to continue Groupama s dual commitment to superior customer service and new technologies to improve service and reduce costs. The division has five contact centres staffed by more than 400 agents who respond to one million customer calls per year. Many of these calls arrive via traditional telephones. The GRAA contact centres include a TDM network supported by the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) Platform plus Inbound Voice for call routing.

21 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 21 of 24 Solution To deliver all of the functionality of a contact centre to the world of IP communications, GRAA chose Genesys SIP Server. GRAA s previous reliance on Genesys proved that Genesys could provide all of the productivity and management features required, and also could apply to the IP contact centre the same business rules and routing strategies used on the TDM side. In addition, Genesys followed an open architecture approach that allowed the company to choose any hardware vendor. Genesys SIP Server technology was integrated into the existing TDM solution. Interactions with customers by TDM Voice and IP/SIP Voice use the same Universal Queue and the same applications and processes. Contacts are routed through the different virtual sites on the basis of agent skills and caller profiles. On the IP side, Genesys SIP Server provides screen pops from the Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) program, routes calls to agents based on defined business rules, and delivers the power of Genesys CCPulse+ and Content Analyzer to perform real-time statistical analysis and maintain call logs. Genesys SIP Server also provides management with Workforce Management capabilities. Adopting Genesys T-Server ended the need for expensive servers at each site, decreased maintenance overhead, and most of all improved routing strategies and staff utilisation by giving management a view of all available agents. Virtualisation leveraged the power of the Genesys CIM Platform plus Inbound Voice, which can now route calls to the best available agent anywhere on the network. It also allows for multi-site quality monitoring with Genesys CC Pulse. Results GRAA s IP contact centres, managed by Genesys SIP Server, have led the company into the future of customer service with multimedia contact centres that integrate voice, data and video communications. Today, GRAA customers are able to communicate with the company in ways that redefine customer service. Customers can contact the company using a traditional telephone, or by sending an or text message. GRAA is even considering the use of kiosks in local branch locations which would allow real-time video conversations with company agents. With Genesys SIP Server, GRAA will continue efforts to expand the range of its customer communications to include a full range of media, with the ability to manage, route and report on those communications across a decentralised, virtualised contact centre. GRAA can now manage VoIP communications and route them to agents along with screen pops of customer data, and report on the productivity of each interaction.

22 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 22 of 24 The company can also dynamically manage staffing needs as employees change jobs and new contact centre agents are hired. With Genesys SIP Server in place, managing the IP contact centre is simplified and offers capability for anyone, anywhere to be added as an agent on demand. Agents can log into the contact centre, open up the desktop application and softphone, and register with SIP server to accept routed calls. Thanks to the VoIP Genesys solution using the SIP protocol, we have improved customer service whilst reducing our costs through more efficient balancing of workloads across our staff network, said Patrick Hinschberger, DSI, Manager of System and Network Infrastructure, GRAA. Customers are now more willing to call the contact centre for help now that wait times are reduced and skill-based routing delivers them to the best available agent. Numerous cost savings have been realised including reduced telephony costs through VoIP and lower hardware costs such as ACD s and PBX s. Call duration times have been reduced by 20 to 30 seconds per call. The new Genesys solution provides management reporting across the virtual network to track metrics and drive operational improvements. In addition, GRAA now has the flexibility to integrate Genesys with any future technologies by leveraging the standards-based SIP. Customers contact GRAA using whatever communications method they prefer, said Hinschberger. The TDM/IP hybrid architecture supports traditional voice communications as well as , Web chat, video and the communications methods to come. By establishing a solution based on the standards-based SIP and Genesys, GRAA is well positioned to create a highly successful contact centre to provide exceptional customer service today and in the future.

23 Customer Service Strategies for the Insurance Industry 23 of 24 Conclusion As this Strategy Guide has detailed, the insurance industry currently faces its own unique set of contact centre challenges, such as slowing growth in some mature markets, customer churn and increasing price competition all of which means that customer service is increasingly important for winning new and retaining existing customers. But, there is an abundance of opportunities if insurance companies replace product-centric approaches to selling and, instead, develop cross-selling and up-selling strategies that maximise the lifetime value of customers. Further, cost cutting pressures should be balanced against escalating customer care expectations a tough task amid increasing call volumes, manual processes that lack integration with front- and back-office systems, and complex skill requirements. To meet these contact centre challenges, insurance companies can strive to transform their operations into dynamic contact centres that ensure an excellent customer experience across channels, increase customer loyalty, implement cross-sell and up-sell strategies based on customer relationships and promote agent productivity and satisfaction.