ABC Insurance is a mid-sized Tier 2 insurer in the Midwest. Its primary offerings are auto and homeowners insurance. The company prides itself on its superior customer service and encourages all of its CSRs to work as efficiently as possible to assist customers.
Let’s meet Daniel and Shauna, who are ABC Insurance CSRs. Daniel is a claims CSR, and Shauna is a CSR who services accounts to address billing questions and assist both agents and underwriters.
Daniel just received a call from Barbara Smith, a long-time home and auto customer, who asks when she can get her car back. Daniel must first gather basic information about the customer and then look up the status of her car in his company’s claims management system. After a few minutes, Daniel tells Ms. Smith that her car is in the body shop and her claim has been assigned to an appraiser who is reviewing the file. The customer mentions that she’s aware of this and is in touch with the body shop, but the shop hasn’t received payment from ABC Insurance.
Daniel asks the customer to wait a few more minutes while he logs in to the vendor system to get an update. He sees that an electronic payment has been sent but not yet received by the body shop, so he logs in to the electronic payments system for an update. Daniel finally gets back to Ms. Smith and lets her know that he’ll need to call the bank to find out when the payment will be made so that he can confirm when she’ll get her car back.
With no clear resolution, the customer leaves the call unsatisfied. Daniel is well aware that the customer will soon receive a satisfaction survey about her recent interaction, and it’s unlikely that he’ll receive positive feedback.
During a break, Daniel mentions to Shauna how difficult and time-consuming it’s been to find simple information. Shauna shares a similar frustration, describing her struggle to resolve a discrepancy about last month’s commission payments with one of the company’s top agents. She explains, “I had to pull commission payment reports from two different systems, reconcile agent commission payments, and then get an approval from my supervisor to issue the extra payment to the agent. Also, my underwriting manager asked me to produce a report on how long it takes us to renew a policy, with renewal rates broken down by lines of business and by region.”
Shauna and Daniel share some ideas about how their systems could be improved to help them be better at their jobs and, in turn, help them serve their customers better. After their break, both return to work—still thinking about improvements that would make them better CSRs.
In the second blog post in this series, we’ll see how Daniel and Shauna can work more effectively and efficiently when they have access to Morgan—a trusted advisor and assistant that helps them in their day-to-day tasks.