Tag: fnol outsourcing

How Does First Response Time Affect Customer Claim Satisfaction?

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September 27th, 2022

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fnol textingFirst response time (FRT) measures how much time passes between a customer initiating first notice of loss (FNOL) and an agent responding to it. Customers want to be able to reach their insurance provider whenever they need them. Losses rarely give customers the courtesy of occurring during regular business hours, and how quickly an insurance agent responds significantly affects the customer’s claim satisfaction.

FNOL, FRT, and Customer Loyalty

FNOL and FRT go hand-in-hand to keep customers happy. FNOL represents 25% of a customer’s overall satisfaction with their insurance provider. In addition, industry research shows that the claims experience influences 87% of customers’ loyalty, while almost 80% will switch providers if their insurers’ responsiveness falls short of their expectations. A short FRT is essential following FNOL to retain existing customers.

Text and Chat for Better FNOL and FRT

The FNOL experience affirms customers’ expectations for better or worse. If they have a positive experience, they feel secure in their choice of insurance provider. If the experience is poor, it may reinforce the customer’s belief that they need a new insurer. Customer’s top complaints regarding the claims process include:

  • Too slow (25%)
  • Too difficult (22%)
  • Too much paperwork (22%)

Text and chat services can address many of these pain points. Text messaging rapidly decreases FRT, as agents can respond within minutes of receiving a claim notification. Agents can also pull existing data from the customer’s file to partially complete the data-gathering process. Filling in known information can also reduce friction during the interaction. For example, the make and model of the customer’s car are already in the system. Customers are often already agitated when initiating FNOL and asking them for information they provided well before the loss will only increase their frustration.

Agents that communicate with customers through text messaging can also close their claims faster. Customers always appreciate an expedited claims process, but it can also net cost savings for the insurer. For example, customers need rental cars while waiting for repairs on their vehicles. Insurance carriers often cover the rentals costs, and closing the claim several days faster curtails that expense. Contact the experts at Actec to learn how text and chat services can improve your customers’ claims experience.

4 Employee Recognition Ideas for Call Centers

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August 16th, 2022

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fnolMotivated and engaged call center employees are more likely to deliver high-quality customer service. However, consistently providing superior service and meeting KPIs is challenging and can leave agents exhausted without adequate support. Recognizing their efforts shows customer service agents that the company appreciates their work and cares about their well-being. It also behooves companies to recognize call center agents, as customer service directly effects revenue.

The following are several ideas companies can use to show appreciation for their call center employees:

  1. Personalized incentives. Gift cards are easy to give out as rewards for top performers, but they require little thought and can come across as impersonal. For example, gift cards to restaurants can backfire if the employee has dietary restrictions that limit their options. While a plain Visa gift card is a safe option, it lacks thoughtfulness. Personalize performance incentives to show genuine appreciation, such as a gift basket from the employee’s favorite store or drinkware with their initials engraved on it.
  2. Technology accessories and gadgets. Most adults own smart devices, including smartphones, tablets, e-Readers, and more. Businesses can offer a range of high-tech accessories and gadgets for employees to choose from, allowing them to select items that best suit their needs. Companies can divide the options into tiers that employees can unlock by meeting KPIs or let employees choose from the most coveted items on their work anniversaries. Ideas include pop sockets, protective cases and screens for their devices, charging pads or docks, power banks, external hard drives, wireless earbuds, etc.
  3. Peer-to-peer recognition. A peer-to-peer recognition system encourages employees to show appreciation for each other’s hard work and fosters better teamwork. For example, all employees can enter a coworker into a monthly raffle for appealing prizes (e.g., a small bonus, taking a half day on a Friday of their choosing, and so on). With more entries, the more an employee stands a chance to win. Employees are more likely to up their teamwork skills, such as taking the extra time to help a new employee or working amicably to find creative solutions on group projects.
  4. Relax the dress code. Consider relaxing the dress code if call center agents don’t interact face-to-face with customers. Companies can show employees they care about their well-being and want them to feel as comfortable as possible while at work.

Call center employee appreciation and recognition are essential for ensuring excellent service and delivering a superior customer experience. Contact Actec to learn more about implementing a successful nearshore call center.

5 Customer Service Metrics that Define Successful Call Centers

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July 26th, 2022

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Outsource FNOLCall center metrics can reveal the overall health of a call center and determine its likelihood of success. Analyzing metrics and implementing data-based changes allows a call center to continually improve its processes and the service it provides to customers. The following metrics characterize top-performing call centers:

  1. Average handle time (AHT). AHT encompasses the total time of a customer phone call and often plays a critical role in customer satisfaction. Shorter calls tend to indicate better service, as the agent is rapidly resolving customer problems. In contrast, ineffective call centers often have a high AHT due to lack of training, knowledge, or efficiency.
  2. First call resolution (FCR). Call centers that answer customer questions or find solutions to customer problems on the first call typically have a high FCR. FCR is essential for customer satisfaction, as frequent transfers or escalations frustrate customers and erode their loyalty.
  3. Average speed of answer (ASA). ASA measures how long it takes for a customer to reach an agent after connecting with the call center. Much like AHT and FCR, ASA directly affects customer satisfaction. If a customer has to navigate a convoluted phone tree or has to wait a long time to speak with a person, they’ll likely be agitated by the time they reach an agent.
  4. Average resolution time (AST). Similar to AHT, this metric focuses on how long it takes agents to resolve customers’ inquiries. Customers expect agents to be knowledgeable enough to answer their questions or find a solution without delay. If the agent has to place them on hold several times or for long durations, the customer loses faith in the agent’s ability to help them. If they have to wait for too long, they may abandon the call altogether.
  5. Customer effort score (CES). CES measures how much effort it took to contact the company and the ease or difficulty of reaching a customer service agent. Customers don’t want to hunt for contact information, and they don’t want to jump through several hoops to reach a customer service representative. CES also measures how much effort it took for the customer to receive an answer or solution to their problem.

All these metrics influence customer satisfaction and are pivotal to securing customer loyalty. Organizations that analyze their call center data can harness that information to improve processes, service capabilities, and the customer experience. Contact Actec to learn how a nearshore call center can elevate your company’s customer service.

What Qualities do Customers Prioritize in a Call Center?

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May 3rd, 2022

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Outsource FNOLTechnology, innovation, and convenience are constantly increasing customer expectations. Customers often leave a call center interaction dissatisfied, even if they received an answer to their question. Customers want more than a solution for their problems. Achieving customer satisfaction is a nuanced skill call centers can’t afford to mismanage.

Detailed Breakdown of Customer Expectations

Insurance providers have a significant opportunity to improve customer satisfaction by ensuring their call center meets their customers’ needs and expectations. Customers consistently list speedy problem solving as their top priority when engaging with a call center. Their next main concern focuses on their personal interactions with call center agents. Similarly, their third priority is to speak with a knowledgeable agent.

Rapid Problem Solving:

  • 42% of customers want their problem resolved quickly
  • 40% expect rapid answers to their questions
  • 40% want personal interaction with agents
  • 39% want easy access to information
  • 37% want to speak with call center agents located in their country

Personal Interactions with a Knowledgeable Agent:

  • 40% of customers expect respectful treatment
  • 39% expect call center employees to have good communication skills
  • 38% want multiple communication channels
  • 36% expect easy and painless customer service interactions
  • 36% expect agents to know their details and information upfront
  • 35% expect call center agents to have access to all their information

Successful call centers understand customer priorities and train to meet their expectations. Failing to do so results in an unsatisfactory experience and degrades customer loyalty. Contact the experts at Actec to learn how a nearshore call center can improve customer service and exceed customers’ expectations.

4 Ways to Personalize the Customer Journey and Maximize Loyalty

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April 26th, 2022

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Customers have an overwhelming number of options to choose from when considering insurance providers. Well-established organizations, innovative newcomers, and digital insurers round out an oversaturated market. Many of these insurance companies carry similar products, and insurers can no longer rely on their services as a differentiating factor. Instead, insurance companies need to provide a seamless customer journey to capitalize on the 73% of customers that favor businesses with personalized shopping experiences.

Here are four steps insurers can take to personalize the customer experience:

  1. Gather data through surveys. Customer surveys provide a comprehensive overview of customer preferences. Asking customers about their preferences can provide actionable insights to create an effortless experience without resorting to clunky trial and error.
  2. Identify customer segments. As the name suggests, personalization is not one-size-fits-all. Surveys can help insurers identify customer preference groups and adjust their experience accordingly. For example, customers purchasing homeowners’ insurance in flood-prone areas may not realize they also need flood insurance. Insurers can use this opportunity to make relevant and targeted product recommendations.
  3. Cross-train teams. Teams that operate within work bubbles miss critical personalization opportunities. For instance, a customer experience team has the knowledge and expertise to facilitate an effortless customer experience. However, while they can funnel customers to the right products, they may not understand why the customers abandon their carts. A customer service team can offer insight into customer hesitations. By working together, these teams can craft personalized communications that entice customers to return to their carts.
  4. Reach customers on their preferred platform. Part of personalization is knowing where customers prefer to engage. It’s useless to send a survey request by email to a customer that doesn’t often check their inbox. Offering omnichannel communication gives customers the option to communicate by phone, text, chat, email, social media, and more.

Insurers can’t afford to neglect the customer experience, as many customers consider leaving their insurance provider after a single negative interaction. Contact the experts at Actec to learn more about improving the customer experience with text and chat services.

How to Transition Your Insurance Company to a Call Center

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March 22nd, 2022

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Customer service is the backbone of any successful insurance provider. Customers expect a knowledgeable representative to provide rapid resolutions to their questions and problems. However, it’s not always cost-effective to staff a customer service department in-house. As a result, some insurance companies spread their limited customer service agents too thin. When this happens, long wait times, over-worked employees, and dissatisfied customers accumulate.

Insurance providers need to make themselves available whenever and wherever the customer needs them. Investing in a nearshore call center can address this need without breaking the budget. However, transitioning to a call center requires thoughtful planning and transparent communication with employees. Here are a few methods to help insurance providers implement a call center with minimal interruptions:

Train Employees on How to Use the Call Center

Employees won’t inherently know how to interact with a new call center. Training employees on how the call center functions limits chaos and confusion. Some areas to cover include:

  • Know who to call. Employees may need to get in touch with the call center support department on occasion. The employee in charge of call center communications needs to know the contact number and email for initial communications, who is next up in the chain of command, and the typical response time. It’s a good idea to train the rest of the team on this information if the team lead is out for the day.
  • What to do when communication lines go down. Employees need to know the business’ forwarding number if the line of communication to the call center disconnects. How calls forward from a business to its call center varies. Some companies engage it manually at the close of business, while others use an automatic system. Insurance providers that use manual forwarding should train all relevant employees on this process.

Outsource the Easiest Tasks First

Companies can outsource almost any business function. However, it’s best practice to train call center employees on the simplest tasks first. Companies can increase the call center’s responsibilities once they establish a baseline for how the call center functions.

Call centers can improve customer service and the customer experience. Insurers can engage with their customers in a timely manner, provide rapid answers about policies or claims, and more. Contact Actec to learn more about the benefits of implementing a nearshore call center.

5 Methods to Improve the Quality of Your Call Center

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January 4th, 2022

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Businesses need a call center that answers customers’ questions quickly and satisfactorily while providing superior service. If customer satisfaction dips, companies can implement several strategies to enhance the quality of their customer service. These include:

  1. Ensure call center employees understand the standards. Poor quality of service reflects badly on a company. Without clear guidelines, call center employees will struggle to provide the level of service a company expects. For example, if a company’s culture prioritizes friendliness, call center employees should adopt a friendly tone rather than a strictly corporate one.
  2. Train new employees. Onboarding and training new employees are norms, but how thorough the training is affects the quality of service employees can provide. For example, allowing new employees to shadow veteran employees improves their understanding of service expectations.
  3. Coach employees often. Call centers often record customer calls, which companies can use to coach employees. Companies can recognize high performers to help new employees learn the desired quality of service. Managers can also coach employees that are struggling to meet KPIs.
  4. Ask customers for their input. Companies may believe their call center is performing well, but they can’t know for sure without feedback. Businesses can ask customers to fill out satisfaction surveys either via email, text, or on their website.
  5. Learn from negative feedback. Angry customers aren’t likely to take employees’ feelings into consideration when they leave feedback or reviews. However, it’s valuable insight into weak areas of the company’s customer service.

Providing clear standards, training employees well, mentoring them, and learning from customer feedback are critical to providing quality customer service. If your current call center isn’t performing to your standard or if you’re searching for a provider, contact the experts at Actec to learn more about our nearshore call center services.

4 Strategies to Improve the Digital Customer FNOL Experience

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December 14th, 2021

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Customers have high expectations of their insurance company. Providing a good customer experience hinges on how well providers understand these expectations. Quality service and competitive product prices are still important, but customers aren’t willing to tolerate friction to get them. Customers need to know they are more than a file to their insurer, and they expect frustration-free interactions. Half of the customers will seek a new insurance provider after a single negative interaction. That number skyrockets to 80% with repeat bad experiences.

Here are several strategies to improve the online customer experience:

  1. Find their pain points. Companies that identify bottlenecks or common frustration points for their customers can take steps to remove as much of this irritation as possible from digital customer service. Live chat is a great way to facilitate these conversations with insureds and allows agents to resolve customer problems in real-time.
  2. Optimize for mobile and accessibility. Customers need to have access to their provider on any browser or device. Having a responsive website for all devices is an established standard, but it’s useless if the webpage can’t function properly on certain browsers. Customers won’t bother to download or switch to another browser. With every abandoned interaction, insurance providers lose some of that customer’s loyalty.
  3. Let them help themselves. Customers are tech-savvy and often want to find solutions on their own time. Some popular self-service options include knowledge bases, frequently asked questions, and community forums.
  4. Offer omnichannel communication. Customers have diverse preferences for how they engage with their insurance provider. Some prefer traditional communication methods, such as the phone or submitting a ticket through their portal. However, others want to reach out over social media, text message, or chat. Many use a mix of different channels depending on the complexity of their problem.

Insurance companies need to provide high-quality service during every customer interaction. Engaging with customers when and how they prefer is a significant step to meeting their expectations. Contact the experts at Actec to learn more about implementing text and chat support.

4 Ways Nearshore Call Centers Avoid Cross-Cultural Miscommunication

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December 7th, 2021

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Call centers are a boon to growing businesses. A dedicated call center can handle all incoming calls, answer common customer questions, and allow employees to focus on their primary tasks instead of working the phones. However, many offshore call centers struggle to bridge cultural divides, which makes it difficult to provide high-quality customer service.

Nearshore call center agents have enough geographic proximity to understand the customer’s needs, frustrations, and expectations. The following are several ways nearshore call centers improve communication and the customer experience:

  1. Language. Customers expect agents to speak their language fluently. However, call center agents need a nuanced understanding of the language as well. Agents that don’t comprehend common idioms or struggle to understand local accents will run into repeated frustrations.
  2. Culture. Greetings vary between cultures. Some cultures prefer friendly exchanges, while others expect direct and professional communication. Nearshore call center agents understand the customer’s culture, which facilitates better communication.
  3. Time zones. Many companies turn to offshore call centers because they can provide coverage outside of regular business hours. Nearshore call centers can provide extended coverage too, and their closer proximity makes it much easier to communicate business concerns. If a company wants to discuss changes to the call center or review KPIs, nearshore call centers are better equipped to meet during regular business hours.
  4. Communication channel. Customers have several options for communicating with a business. Some prefer to speak to a live person, while others may prefer to send a text or a message. Cultural divides can make it difficult for offshore call center agents to pivot from the phone to a chatbox. What sounds friendly with verbal inflection can seem cold over text.

Customer loyalty is hard-won and easily lost. One poor support experience is enough to make a customer consider finding a new service provider. Customers are also much more likely to leave reviews after a negative experience, which can harm the company’s reputation. Companies need call centers that can resolve their customers’ needs and exceed their expectations without stumbling over cultural miscommunications. Contact Actec to learn more about the benefits of nearshore call centers.

How to Overcome Chat Customer Service Challenges

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October 26th, 2021

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Customers expect businesses to offer several channels of communication, including through social media, email, phone calls, and chat support. Chat support is particularly effective in securing customer satisfaction and loyalty when done well. However, chat customer service has unique communication challenges that can damage the customer’s experience and perception of the company.

The following are the most common challenges that can trip up customer service agents while chatting with a customer:

Misunderstandings

Whether the customer doesn’t understand the message or the service rep fails to grasp the problem, misunderstandings can occur on both sides of the conversation. Agents should always ask for clarification rather than making assumptions about the situation. Agents that ask specific questions and use active listening techniques can get the conversation back on track.

Impersonal Interactions

Personalization plays a critical role in customer satisfaction, but it’s easy to lose in chat communication. Compounding the problem, customers can tell when an agent gives them a scripted answer to their inquiry. Using friendly greetings, referring to the customer by name, and engaging in the conversation all show the customer they are more than a ticket number.

Tone Issues

People rely on inflection, gestures, and facial expressions to interpret the tone of a conversation. Without these social cues, chat communication can come across as blunt, cold, or outright hostile. Establishing a company-wide tone for customer communication can help alleviate the issue. For example, a company that brands itself as energetic and friendly can use language to reflect that while chatting with customers.

Empathy and efficiency are critical for successful chat communication. Customers expect agents to be knowledgeable, friendly, and fast problem solvers. Effective chat customer service can meet all these needs. Contact the experts at Actec to learn more about implementing chat services.