Why Customer Experience Matters

The UK general insurance industry is the third largest market in the world. It’s a large, mature and well-developed marketplace which has a high openness to new entrants. The most competitive markets are motor insurance followed by home insurance. Our client is one of the fastest growing insurance companies in the UK. They’ve created distinct car insurance brands with ground-breaking policies and are regularly featured as the most competitively priced insurer on several price comparison websites.

Our client experienced exponential growth as a result of its innovative offering, advertising and the introduction of price comparison sites. In less than five years its customer base grew to over one million, the fastest growth of any insurer. This rapid growth resulted in the company requiring an FSA accredited partner to provide highly skilled and motivated staff to deliver exceptional customer service and realise sales opportunities. The challenge was to:

• Provide 50 fully vetted advisors as part of an in-sourced solution within four weeks.
• Deliver training accredited by the client.
• Support their in-house contact centre and provide additional capacity and flexibility.
• Deliver exceptional customer service.
• Realise up-sell opportunities to increase customer lifetime value. Reduce the cost to serve.

We leveraged our in-house recruitment expertise and worked alongside the client in defining the role profile. A bespoke assessment process was designed to incorporate a greater focus on written communication skills, customer relationship building and up-selling competency. In summary, our solution included:

• Accelerated ramp up of fully vetted and credit checked employees.
• In-sourced solution to utilise existing capacity and reduce lead time to ‘go live’.
• Created a flexible cost base to drive down the cost to serve.
• Introduced a robust staffing model to support key service pinch points.

• We provided an in-sourced solution removing IT set-up costs.
• Fully vetted and trained advisors
• Reduced call handling times by 8%.
• We directly contributed to over £3.3m of revenue through cross-selling.
• Achieved 6% above target on quality and compliance metrics

Consistently achieved increased sales in both service and sales environments:

• Customer service teams improved breakdown cover add-ons by 130%
• Customer service teams improved – Motor Legal protection cover by 400%
• Sales teams improved breakdown cover add-ons by over 30%
• Sales teams delivered Motor Legal protection cover 20% above target

The client has seen many benefits since implementing our services. They now have a flexible partner, providing resourcing solutions to fit their seasonal demands. We provide multi-skilled people on both inbound and outbound lines that can flex to phone and web traffic to suit demands. They also now have a disaster recovery solution in place and have seen improved compliance metrics. We’ve helped to reduce operational costs; have provided insights and customer feedback on competitor products and have helped the client to attain an industry-leading customer satisfaction score, supporting repeat business and business growth objectives.