Treating customers as valued guests with an end-to-end cloud solution

Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Company Australia (ADICA) provides end-to-end insurance solutions for motor vehicles. With operations in Gippsland and Melbourne, ADICA employs around 120 staff at its customer contact centres. The insurance provider aspires to be a unique company with a distinctive character where customers are treated as if they were guests, with sincerity, authenticity and attention to detail. The company embarked on a journey to upgrade its contact centre platform to meet this global vision.

The insurer’s decision to move from an on-premises contact centre solution to the Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud™ platform was motivated by the organization’s goal to provide seamless experiences for customers across multiple channels. Leveraging a platform that supports omnichannel engagement from voice, chat, email and potentially social media — all on a single platform — proved to be the right solution for ADICA to take employee and customer satisfaction to new levels.

“Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud has only been live for three months since the implementation in December 2019, and the team has already experienced significant improvements in operational efficiency, staff efficiency and customer experience,” said Sheridan Francis, Manager, Regional Operations Centre at ADICA.

Driving performance improvements and employee engagement

A major area of concern for ADICA was how to effectively balance agent resources with changing customer call volumes. The previous process used Excel spreadsheets for workforce scheduling that were not integrated with the rest of the on-premises contact centre system.

Implementing the Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud platform has helped eliminate work silos, allowing for greater harmony between the needs of the contact centre and staff scheduling. The solution has not only helped promote staff accountability, but it has also provided managers with better visibility over operations so they can optimise team structures across various functions.

“Since implementing the new platform, some natural attrition did not affect the service levels, as we are working so much more efficiently with clear occupancy data,” said Francis. “With the workforce management capability, occupancy rates have balanced out, because it gives us visibility of where the excess resources are and the ability to move this additional resource to other functions.”

With near-real-time performance statistics, agents are now empowered with valuable insights to achieve targeted improvements. They also have the ability to set daily goals and appreciate the fact that they can access their built-in call recording histories without having to involve a team manager, enhancing their sense of ownership and responsibility.

Ensuring business continuity planning

Business continuity planning is critical. Especially in wildfire-prone Gippsland, natural disasters are frequent occurrences that can disrupt operations and endanger employee safety. The flexibility of Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud makes it easy to maintain business continuity and efficiency — even in times of crisis.

With the help of their delivery partner CVT, ADICA deployed the cloud platform at the right time. Following the first few weeks of implementation, a severe hailstorm hit the region. Call volumes surged four to five times higher than the normal average of 200 claims calls per day.

“With the introduction of call wait times and callback features, we still managed to keep the abandonment rate to under 10%, with wait times of just four to five minutes. This is in contrast to up to two-hour call-wait times that can be seen in the industry,” said Francis.

ADICA achieved this without needing to increase staff capacity; the intelligent routing capabilities maintained contact centre efficiency by assigning calls to other functions with lower occupancy. ADICA has ensured that all customer needs are covered, despite being inundated with calls. “There is no longer a need for manual interventions with getting agents to log off and onto different queues. We are able to make more efficient use of our workforce,” he added.

The Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud platform has also made it easier for staff to work remotely during the COVID-19 lockdown. It gives ADICA staff the flexibility to perform their jobs safely from home while still accessing communication and collaboration tools.

“Having the capability for remote working opens up new possibilities for the business. We now have the flexibility to expand our operating hours to 24/7 should the business require it,” said Francis.

Delivering seamless customer services

With the old on-premises system, customers sometimes dropped off the call queue at the 20-second mark, even if staff became available to take the call within just a few more seconds of the wait time. That resulted in customer frustrations and had an impact on Net Promoter Score (NPS).

“In just the first two months of implementing call wait times and callback features, the call abandonment rate fell from 8% to just 2%,” noted Francis. The number of inbound calls also dropped, thanks to the callback feature, because it eliminated duplicate calls from customers hanging up and calling back later.

From driving performance improvements and employee engagement to business continuity planning and a seamless customer experience, the all-in-one Telstra Contact Centre Genesys Cloud platform has proven to be a game changer for ADICA customers and employees.