New Options Debut in Insurers' Call Centers
Insurance Networking News, December 1, 2008
Today's call center requires technical heft to help firms within the insurance industry focus on the customer and build strategic advantage. This often demands a continual investment in technology. Such investment though, demands scrutiny to select the proper technology with a finger on the pulse of the return on investment.
The cost-benefit relationship has prompted call center managers and IT folks alike to consider not only the features of technology available, but also the many different options of the technology, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and open source applications.
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"There are almost as many new technologies as days in a year at this point," says Esteban Kolsky, VP and practice leader for Overland Park, Kan.-based eVergance Partners LLC, consultants specializing in call center technology. "I think it is not as much about new technologies as it is about the prudent use of them in a call center."
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The customer in today's marketplace brings valuable data worth capturing. Technology can help in doing this, but it also helps enhance the overall customer experience - what their experience is like when they make an inquiry and the consequences of that experience for the customer and the company.
John Chamberlain, AVP, business optimization at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. (MetLife), New York, says that his company is focused on the customer experience, and utilizes knowledge management products to provide customer service consultants with specific content help relative to customer inquiries during the course of the phone call. It also uses speech technology to enhance self-service features for interactive voice response applications.
American Collectors Insurance, a specialty lines provider of collector-vehicle and collectibles insurance in Cherry Hill, N.J., seeks technology as a solution, but tries to preserve the human touch for customers. They have a "real person guarantee," where a consumer or broker is guaranteed the opportunity to talk to a person anytime they call the company's toll-free number during business hours.
"It's our way of preventing phone-tree nightmares, which are a turnoff to just about everyone," says Melissa Romagnoli, VP of operations for American Collectors. "Even with Web capabilities and the growth in their usage by both consumers and brokers, we find there are still a tremendous number of people who want to do business by phone. People still want to talk to people and hear a voice. So as much as we're revamping our Web capabilities, we still commit a lot of people and resources to taking live telephone calls."
Other insurers, however, embrace more sophisticated technology solutions for their customer contact. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., Columbus, Ohio, uses Jacada WorkSpace, a desktop solution for contact centers that provides an intelligent view of all relevant data and processes required by the customer service representative to complete a customer interaction.
"Agents can focus on 'serving and selling' rather than operating a cumbersome set of systems and tools," says David Holmes, Atlanta-based Jacada's SVP of global marketing. "A more empowered, and less frustrated agent results in a better customer experience. Agent turnover also can be reduced, and improved agent satisfaction means less turnover and more productivity, thereby reducing recruitment and new-hire training costs."
According to Holmes, customer service must be central to the technology and the operation of a call center. He contends that such service is one way to differentiate and compete in the insurance industry, where product offerings have become highly commoditized.
MetLife's Chamberlain advises that during the discovery process for new technology solutions, it is important for insurers to clearly document expected outcomes, and institute a rigorous change management process. He says this always circles back to those expected outcomes when allowing the direction to be reset. This often is due to changes in scope, time or cost constraints that invariably develop during implementation.
"Institute a governance process led by the key decision makers in the business - beneficiaries of the technology - that meet regularly during implementation and are kept up to date on the projects progress," he says.
A RETURN ON INVESTMENT
The purchase decision usually is influenced by an ROI calculation-if such a calculation is possible.
For most any investment in a technology asset, there is great interest in what the return on such an investment will be, despite it being a difficult number to calculate. "We need to see at least a 15% ROI for major investments," Chamberlain notes. "For smaller investments, we require recovery of the outlay in the first year."
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