Delivering exceptional experiences from the comfort of home

Embracing a cloud-first way to work

Farmers Mutual Group (FMG) is New Zealand’s leading rural insurer. Built on the foundation of excellent client support and experiences, the business has fostered long-term client relationships — helping build strong and prosperous rural communities.

“Our clients deserve and require for us to be there when they call, providing assistance and advice in their time of need,” said Matt Harvey, Head of National Advice and Service Center at FMG.

This held true during New Zealand’s first COVID-19 lockdown. FMG was already migrating to the Genesys Cloud platform as part of its new cloud-first strategy to remove reliance on its local infrastructure and create more resiliency within its ecosystem. In the first rollout, the FMG team discovered the impact of the implementation and how to use the system to create the best client experience possible.

But when the pandemic hit, the team accelerated the rollout across FMG within the span of a month due to lockdown restrictions.

“To ensure success during this period, we worked closely with the Genesys team, and our internal communications and training teams, to ensure that we were explaining to our people what was happening, create the right documentation and move people over to the new system with as little impact to their day as possible,” said Alex Turner-Steele, Senior Technical Consultant at FMG.

Seamless service excellence

FMG was able to run its business as usual for the few hours it took to roll out its cloud platform. Shifting interactions seamlessly from voice to email, FMG created a frictionless experience for its clients during the transformation.

“The Genesys team was great help during the migration and implementation as they reviewed our existing platform, Genesys PureConnect,” said Turner-Steele. “The team took our setup and evolved it into a more modern way of working within the Genesys Cloud platform — helping us minimize impact to our teams and therefore our clients.”

“Its seamless user interface also made it very easy for us to roll out and train our teams on how to use the system, while they were working from their homes across the Manawatu,” added Harvey.

With Genesys Cloud, FMG has added functionalities and features like BYOC Cloud — allowing the business to rely more on the Genesys platform and less on its own internal infrastructure. Lowering the cost of internal infrastructure and maintenance costs has led to an estimated $1 million in savings over five years.

Not only has FMG reduced costs, but it also has gained more flexibility and interoperability in its journey to provide a white glove service for clients.

“We’ve brought in scheduled callbacks for our clients,” said Turner-Steele. “This means during those peak periods the client has a shorter wait and we will still get back to them in record time to support them when we can.”

Implementing a quality scoring module and automating quality assurance within the FMG service center has ensured compliance across interactions while saving significant time. Auditing that used to take around 30 hours a month has been eliminated. Every interaction is automatically tracked and recorded with insights gathered — giving FMG the ability to identify areas for improvement.

Building a flexible work environment

FMG is in the business of providing a superior customer experience, but the team understands how essential its frontline employees are for its success. That’s why the migration and implementation plan were centered around the employee experience.

“With Genesys Cloud, our teams now have the ability to work from home as and when they need to,” said Nicki Mackay, Head of Claims and Digital Assessing at FMG. “We’re in the business of risk and events, and the ability to move teams around and still have them accessible to our clients is massive. It means we can use the best technology and the best people to deliver the best service — and our clients get the best possible outcome.”

For the FMG team, simplicity in the ability to adjust call flows and IVRs seamlessly in the back end with greater agility has played a part in the employee experience.

“Employees have responded particularly well to Genesys Cloud,” said Mackay. “The clean UI, the easy-to-use system and allowing them to work remotely as required has been really well received. They now have the ability to see not only their own performance, but the performance of those around them as well — making them more vested in the results and giving them transparency to see what’s going on live at all times.”

These improvements have contributed to a more engaged workforce. In fact, FMG has seen strong employee satisfaction scores in the Gallup Q12 Survey. Despite the large level of technical change implemented with Genesys Cloud and its CRM, along with the ongoing disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the team has maintained a very strong 70% Engagement Index.

The Genesys Cloud platform also enables FMG team members to get the information they need — quickly, and in a central location.

“The Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration with Avtex InteractionSync allows us to connect Genesys Cloud directly with our CRM platform,” said Harvey. “This gives us all the information we need when a client calls us — right in front of the team member — including details like their identity, background, past relationship to FMG and how they’ve been directed previously.”

The CRM integration speeds up client verification and history review, allowing agents to empathize with the customer’s situation and begin resolving their queries more quickly, while providing a personalized, connected experience every time. In addition, it allows the FMG team to share information across its consultants and businesses — helping them deliver a better, more personalized experience to clients across business lines.

The Genesys Cloud integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivered an average savings of approximately 15 seconds across 250,000 calls. While saving close to $30,000 in employee effort was beneficial, the efficiency gain allowed team members to answer more calls and spend more time with clients, further enhancing service levels.

Feedback from employees was extremely positive, with the modern interface and ease of use enabling efficiencies in agents’ daily roles. This led to a call answer rate of 96% — a 5% improvement — and a 5% reduction in call length. And since the company has maintained a Net Promoter Score (NPS) in the high 50’s, FMG deemed this cloud deployment a resounding success — a major contributor in helping it build long-term relationships and deliver excellent service to its clients.

Next steps

FMG is working on its continuous roadmap with Genesys Cloud. In adapting and implementing a more resilient cloud methodology, the insurer looks to leverage more support from Genesys as it builds a more stable environment for its teams and clients nationwide.