Top 5 Ways Speech Analytics Helps Insurance Companies Improve their Customer Service

When it comes to customer service, the insurance industry has always been uniquely complex. But in recent years, insurance providers have had to deal with an increasing number of challenges, including:

• Ever-changing regulatory compliance
• A sharp increase in insurance fraud
• A competitive marketplace
• Increasing customer expectations

One of the most powerful ways to overcome these challenges, stay one step ahead of the competition, and deliver outstanding customer service is to leverage modern technology such as speech analytics. 

Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), speech analytics is a process whereby human conversations are understood, processed, analysed, and transformed into valuable insights that can be used to transform contact centre performance. 

Speech analytics is particularly powerful in customer service, where it enables contact centres to record 100% of customer-agent interactions, analyse phonetics, identify keywords and phrases, and transcribe what has been said into a readable text format.

In this article, we’ll highlight some of the ways that speech analytics software can help your insurance company to deliver outstanding customer service while ensuring accuracy, regulatory compliance, and fraud prevention. Let’s get started.

Further reading: To learn more about how technology can transform customer service outcomes, check out our free eBook — Your Contact Could Operate Better… A Lot Better 

Enhance compliance

In addition to delivering a seamless, hassle-free customer experience, contact centre agents have to ensure that they remain compliant at all times. This is particularly challenging in the insurance sector, given the evolving regulatory landscape and associated risks of non-compliance. 

Contact centres can mitigate these risks by establishing keywords and phrases that imply or suggest non-compliance. Speech analytics software then automatically tags customer interactions where these keywords and phrases are used, allowing managers to step in and ensure that their agents remain compliant during the interactions they have with customers. 

Again, with speech analytics for insurance companies, this process can be applied across every single customer-agent conversation. Ultimately, this helps protect agents, customers, and the business itself. 

Prevent fraud

Fraud detection has always been a key responsibility for contact centre agents, but now the risk is higher than ever. Insurance giant Zurich recently revealed that fraudulent claims are up 25% in 2022 compared to last year, fuelled by the ongoing cost of living crisis.¹ 

In what can be an extremely complex and high-pressure work environment, how can you support your agents to be aware of possible fraudulent claims from policyholders? The answer is speech analytics.

Speech analytics can help contact centres identify potential fraudulent activity by: 

• Reviewing previous fraudulent calls and creating a benchmark to compare future calls to
• Flagging potentially fraudulent calls and notifying agents and managers in real-time, allowing them to respond swiftly

Automating fraud prevention in this way ensures that fewer fraudulent claims slip under the radar. It also takes some of the pressure off contact centre agents to spot each and every incidence of fraud, allowing them to focus on doing their jobs well.

Reduce costs

In a world where fine margins matter, contact centres must strive to reduce costs while delivering performance improvement. While this may seem like a big ask, it is possible with the right tools. 

One of the best ways to do this is to minimise the number of calls contact centre agents deal with and reduce the average handling times. This represents a win-win for both businesses and customers. The former get to process more calls with the same or fewer resources, while the latter get a speedy resolution to their problems. 

Speech analytics makes all of this possible by enabling insurance agencies to: 

• Uncover the root cause of calls that are typically time-intensive or result in multiple contacts — and address them directly
• Uncover trends in relation to customer complaints or wants, allowing contact centres to be prepared and respond quickly to them

This enables contact centres to reduce the number of lengthy calls and increase first-call resolution rates, which in turn allows them to reduce costs and improve customers’ experiences. 

Additional reading: To learn more about solving customer issues at the first time of asking in the insurance industry, check out our recent article — Improving First Call Resolution Rates in Insurance

Retain existing customers

As a business, it’s tempting to see customer acquisition as the holy grail of success. But research suggests that focusing efforts to retain customers is even more important, with the cost of acquiring a new customer said to be five times higher than retaining an existing one.²

As a key touchpoint for customer-brand interactions, contact centres have a central role to play in keeping existing customers happy. Speech analytics can help by: 

• Automatically identifying customers that are at risk of looking elsewhere, allowing contact centre managers and agents to take the necessary steps to retain them
• Identifying trends in the insurance industry that relate to new customer expectations and what competitors are offering, allowing call centres to meet those needs and outmanoeuvre the competition

Ultimately, it’s about understanding what customers need — often on an individual basis — and then giving it to them in the simplest way possible. Speech analytics takes away the guesswork involved in this process, which increases the likelihood of customers sticking around.

Identify where agent training is required

In order to deliver outstanding customer service while navigating the unique complexities and challenges that come with the insurance industry, you need to train your agents effectively.

But training an entire department can be a tricky task. Every agent is different. Some agents may excel in certain areas but not others, which makes generalised training programs ineffective at meeting the needs of individuals. Fortunately, speech analytics can help solve this problem.

By analysing every call, speech analytics software gives managers a better understanding of the areas their agents need help with. This allows them to intervene with targeted training designed to close individual skills and knowledge gaps. The result is a team that’s better equipped to deliver the service that customers expect.

Use speech analytics to transform your contact centre

An increasingly important contact centre trend, speech analytics, is unlocking the potential for superior customer service and improved customer satisfaction. But to realise the benefits covered above, it’s vital to choose the right software provider. 

In a market saturated with speech and voice analytics solutions, it pays to work with a provider who understands the challenges that contact centres face today — and the type of service customers expect.

At Awaken, we are experts in the field of customer service, with decades of contact centre experience among our leadership team. We build solutions packed with features — such as speech analytics — designed to meet the unique needs of the insurance industry.

With our powerful speech analytics, you can: 

• Ensure that agents adhere to regulatory and company compliance
• Provide a slick, speedy service and first-call resolution
• Cut costs while improving agent performance
• Identify vulnerable customers — and take active steps to re-engage them
• Identify areas where training is needed and deliver targeted training to close skills gaps

The result is a platform that supports your agents, customers, and business to realise the best possible outcomes. If you’d like to see how Awaken speech analytics could transform the way you deliver customer service, get in touch and book a demo today.

¹ Cost of living crisis fuels 25% rise in insurance fraud

² Customer Retention Marketing vs. Customer Acquisition Marketing