Insurance Technology: The Impact on Remote Working

The pandemic has meant that many businesses have had to adapt to remote ways of working. Technology has helped the insurance sector adapt to these new remote working methods but how has that happened? Through this article, we’ll provide an overview of how the insurance sector has been impacted by the evolution of voice analytics, speech analytics and call scripting technologies and how they are supporting positive remote working practices.

In a landmark move, Nationwide Building Society became the latest corporate giant to announce that they are giving thousands of employees the freedom to choose whether they work from home, from the office or a mixture of both. In their employee survey, 57% said they wanted to work from home full-time with 36% saying they’d prefer a mix of home and office-based work. As a business that has to adhere to strict regulations and compliance when it comes to processing insurance and banking calls, this decision will not have been taken lightly. Nationwide want to look after their employees and make sure that through the power of flexible technology, agents will still be able to perform their tasks normally whether they’re at home or in the office. This bold move provides an exciting new opportunity for other insurance businesses with strict regulatory requirements. They too can now confidently shift business models by embracing powerful and innovative technology to support their agents, provide excellent customer experiences and have a controlled oversight of their contact centre performance.

Emerging technology trends in the insurance industry

A big challenge for insurance contact centres is to create an engaging environment for the caller to make sure their call is memorable for the right reasons. When considering a remote working environment for an insurance contact centre, common concerns often arise:

• How will I be able to monitor potentially fraudulent activity or compliance breaches?
• How will I know my agents are OK working alone and not suffering a decline in their wellbeing?
• How will I be able to effectively coach my team?
• How will new agents learn complex processes?
• How can we share best practice easily across the team to improve our efficiency?

The great news is that emerging technology is perfectly primed to support transitions to remote based working. Once leaders open themselves up to the possibilities by using voice analytics, speech analytics and call scripting, they see that their concerns are easily overcome. This powerful technology enables them to see the complete picture for their contact centre performance like never before.

How are speech analytics and voice analytics used remotely in the insurance industry?

By using voice analytics and speech analytics software, no matter where agents are working from, leaders have the ability to maintain the same standards as they would if they were sat side by side on every single call. How? Well, voice and speech analytics automatically capture every call, email and social message, so that contact centre leaders can hear the true voice of both customers and agents. Speech analytics determines what’s being said, from transcribing a spoken conversation into a readable text to identifying precise words or phrases that can be crucial to the business. Voice analytics goes one step further by using contact centre AI and machine learning to pinpoint specific words and determine the emotion and sentiment behind them.

Through our Awaken Conversations product which combines both voice analytics and speech analytics, our insurance industry clients are able to perform deep analysis of calls between their agents and customers. Speech is translated into readable transcripts while patterns in spoken audio are also analysed to identify the emotion and intent of the conversation. By combining words with sentiment and emotion, they get a true understanding of the voice of the customer and their agents, so can clearly see where improvements can be made to customer service or to spot potential employee wellbeing issues.

How does call scripting help remote insurance companies?

With complex processes and rules to work within, often ‘getting it right the first time’ takes precedence over the customer experience elements of the insurance call. This pressure can also cause many contact centres to be prone to higher employee turnover rates and absenteeism figures because of technology. Call centre stress can occur for agents when their productivity and call handling times are impacted because of having to navigate multiple systems. Through call scripting and intelligent agent guidance software like our Awaken Scripting Synergy product, agents know that they have systems that are working with them and not against them. This support is there for them whether they are working from home or within a busy office environment. By using innovative call scripting and guidance software, insurance agents are able to relax into the call, knowing they can give accurate information and provide an excellent customer experience at the same time.

The use of call scripting reduces errors and provides the agent with answers so they can guide customers seamlessly, accurately and efficiently. With the rapid development and deployment of scripts and guides, agents have everything they need to allow them to focus on the customer rather than on what to say or do next. This also enables contact centres to quickly onboard new agents as using call scripting and guidance means that less training time is needed.

As reported in a recent KPMG article, the use of AI is predicted to be a key factor in the future ways of working for insurance businesses. Our Awaken platform is revolutionising the insurance contact centre world providing the freedom and flexibility to confidently run their contact centre from one location or hundreds. If you would like to see a demo showing how the Awaken platform could support your remote or hybrid working strategy, please fill out the form below and one of the team will be in touch to arrange a meeting with you.