Insurance industry is competitive and insurance companies need to improve customer experiences. Contact center software can be at the core of insurance customer strategies. It can help generate more leads and capture more customers. It can help to deliver satisfactory and prompt responses as well as resolutions in the claims section. Insurance companies can track emerging customer preferences and tailor strategies accordingly.
The multi-channel connect
It was phone or email at one time. Today, customers make use of whatever is convenient. In fact, customers are likely to use social media to find out information about insurance, email and phone to complain or inquire and chat. They expect to receive prompt and satisfactory response. Omnichannel contact center software in insurance customer service plays a pivotal role:
• Ties together all communication channels into a single dashboard and CRM to make it easier for agents to handle such multi-channel communications and deliver supreme customer experience.
• Consistency and reliability. You never overlook or miss communication and risk customer churn.
• Use social media platform to push across offers, as listening posts for inquiries and grievances and act fast.
• Gather data on interactions and compile it into a secure database for future reference.
Reduce workload on employees
On any given day there are hundreds of people calling to inquire about range of insurance services, to lodge complaints or to inquire about status of claims. The contact center software’s self service IVR takes a load off your employees’ shoulders:
• Configure intelligent IVRs to deliver information on insurance services
• Let the IVR allow customers to know status of their claims or policy registrations
• Let IVR manage outbound calls to remind customers about expiring policies and allow them to make payment through the IVR itself.
• Cross sell and upsell insurance covers
Axa Insurance switched to contact center software with artificial intelligence powered AI tied to their CRM. The result? Most such queries are handled by the system and employees work on more productive tasks with reduced stress.
How are your employees doing?
No, it is not about their health. It is about how they handle existing customers and prospective customers through call center software interaction. Its analytics feature gives you the power to monitor each interaction, access call records and analyze employee behaviors. Information you derive helps you to:
• Train employees to reduce time spent on each call or interaction and aim for fastest resolution
• Know if the skill based mapping system needs to be fine tuned for even workload distribution and matching knowledge of employees to nature of caller’s issue
• Identify pain points for customers and employees and find out solutions
• Empower employees with knowledge and facilitate team collaboration through the contact center software
Training employees
The omnichannel contact center software with its channels like chat, voice, SMS, fax and, importantly WebRTC audio-video conference is good for customer service and the ideal tool for employee empowerment with knowledge. Your employees could just as easily use the software to collaborate with team members and other teams. You could make available recorded video sessions or conduct live training through the software. Employee interaction and suggestions will help you further fine tune strategies for customer service, lead capture and more sales.
The agent syndrome
The traditional way insurance companies operate is through a network of agents. This system has pros and cons in that it is cheaper for insurance companies to have thousands of agents who work solely on commission. It saves costs. However, agents have been known to not fully inform customers or not address genuine grievances or hinder claims processes. The result is that customers lose confidence. Introduce call center software and the equation changes:
• More transparency: Insurance companies can keep watch over agent-customer interactions and intervene where necessary.
• No obfuscation: Customers can navigate to website to find out right information and get answers from the IVR before they commit with an agent.
• Better claims process: Agents may sit on paper claims and delay matters but when you have the contact center to permit customers to lodge claims or to disseminate information about claims then agents are likely to be more alert. Even customers benefit by faster claims process and status tracking.
• Empowered agents: You draw agents into your insurance strategy fold by making them part of the omnichannel contact center software solution. Like customers, they have access to multi-channel communications and even customer records that will help them to reduce dependency on paper records or their private database.
• The contact center software can be configured to route calls from customers to their handling agents and, this again, frees up their employees to do more productive work.
Looking at call center software simply as a communication tool is a rather short-sighted approach. Instead, if you are in insurance industry, make it the platform for your strategies to serve customers, generate new business and even improve branding.
Author Bio:
Hiten Dudhatra is a Team Lead - Digital Marketing at Ecosmob Technologies Pvt. Ltd. He likes to share his opinions on IT & Telecommunication industries via guest posts. His main interest to write the content for Voice Broadcasting Software & VoIP Contact Center Software. @hitendudhatra