Insurance

White Paper

Why Contact Centers have to Evolve

to Customer Engagement Center?

About the Authors

Sudhakar Bellam,
Head, Business Process Management and Integration Practice, Insurance and Healthcare
Sudhakar is an Enterprise Architect and leads the Business Process Management (BPM)
and Integration practice of Tata Consultancy Services' (TCS') Insurance and Healthcare
unit. Sudhakar specializes in leveraging BPM, case management, and integration
solutions to enable leading organizations to transform customer engagement, automate
back office operations, and improve business agility and operational efficiency.
Sudhakar has over 20 years of IT industry experience and is a TOGAF consultant as well
as a certified Pega and IBM platform expert. Sudhakar has a master's degree in Machine
Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Sambeet Mishra,
Head, Enterprise Cloud Solutions Practice, Insurance and Healthcare
Sambeet leads the Enterprise Cloud Solutions Practice where he focuses on devising
strategies for contact center transformation, agent empowerment, mobile enablement,
customer relationship management (CRM) modernization, and app rationalization. With
over 20 years of industry experience of which over 10 years involved working on
Salesforce.com, Sambeet today works with key TCS insurance and healthcare clients in
North America, leading strategic technology initiatives and driving innovation programs.
Sambeet is a Certified Salesforce Product Consultant and has experience in
implementing innovative CRM solutions for companies with a large customer base
across geographies. Sambeet holds a master's degree in Business Administration from
the FORE School of Management, New Delhi, India.

Abstract

Faced with fierce competition from non-traditional players, the insurance industry is
compelled to explore new avenues for customer engagement and retention. Customers
today expect consistent, relevant, and personalized services. Recognizing the steep rise in
demand for this superior customer service, 40 percent of organizations now use dedicated
customer experience resources while 85 percent support multi-channel customer
1
interactions.
Traditionally, insurers have leveraged the call center model to handle service requests from
customers and agents. However, with rapid technology strides and the opening up of myriad
channels of communication, insurers realize that holistic customer engagement, and not just
reactive customer service, is the need of the hour. A customer engagement center (CEC) takes
customer service to a whole new level, by not merely resolving requests but also
recommending the next best approach for continuous engagement across the customer
lifecycle. It combines call center service with next-generation technologies and applications
for enhanced CRM.
Digitization has significantly helped reduce the human element in customer interaction
through intuitive, high-end technology. The CEC offers a strategic approach that balances
personalized human engagement with modern connected technology to help establish
stronger customer connect.
This whitepaper delineates the trends and challenges faced by insurers in their journey
towards setting up a CEC. We recommend the key components of a next-generation CEC, and
highlight the benefits of setting up this customer-focused framework.

[1] Deloitte Consulting LLP, 2013 Global Contact Center Survey Results (March 2013), accessed November 11, 2014,
http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-operations/us-sdt-consulting-2013-global-contact-survey-051513.pdf

Contents

Why Insurers Need to Better Connect with Customers

What Is Driving the Transformation?

What Todays Customer Engagement Center Must Account For

Strengthening Customer Engagement

Realizing Strategic Value and Operational Efficiencies

Ensuring a Successful Transformation

11

Conclusion

12

Why Insurers Need to Better Connect with Customers

The insurance industry is at a critical juncture. With digitization changing the
way customers acquire information and interact with insurers and agents,
traditional call centers are fast becoming a thing of the past. Today's
customers are better informed - access to information across multiple
channels makes it easy for them to compare products and services, and
bargain for quality customized services. Customers are also willing to
change loyalties if their demands are not met, making it imperative for
insurers to embrace transformative strategies to improve customer
acquisition and retention. These strategies involve a dramatic change in the
way customer service is perceived - from being a mere value addition to a
strategic business growth driver. The industry is fast recognizing this trend.
Research indicates that 62 percent of organizations consider customer
experience offered through contact centers as a competitive differentiator.2
Leading insurance providers are investing in setting up contact centers essentially customer hubs - which not only offer information and resolve
customer complaints but also support sales and marketing initiatives.
While the role of the CEC may vary from organization to organization, its
broad function has been well articulated by Gartner: A customer
engagement center (CEC) refers to a logical set of technologies and business
applications that are engineered to provide customer service and support,
regardless of the interaction (or engagement) channel. 3

A leading property, casualty, and life

insurance provider did not have a
common pre-sales or point-of-sales
platform to help agents with sales
processes. This often led to delayed
customer response and subsequent
loss of market share. The insurer
required a one-stop-shop sales
system to transform and streamline
the sales and operations processes,
increase distribution reach, and
expand the product portfolio in
compliance with data regulations.
After implementing an agency
system, the insurer migrated existing
captive and co-registered agents and
agencies to the new system. By
offering access to the sales app on
mobile phones and tablets, the
insurer witnessed improvements in
agent efficiency as well as realized
new cross-selling and up-selling
opportunities. This is just one
instance of how a CEC transformed
the business.

Where previously call center modernization involving the upgrade of

telephony and network infrastructure, and outsourcing of business process
capabilities was sufficient, insurers are now adopting a more holistic
approach to effectively transform the contact center. Today, the focus of the contact center has shifted to
understanding the customer to offer a unique engaging experience.

[2] Deloitte Consulting LLP, 2013 Global Contact Center Survey Results (March 2013), accessed November 11, 2014,
http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-operations/us-sdt-consulting-2013-global-contact-survey-051513.pdf
[3] Gartner, IT Glossary, http://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/customer-engagement-center-cec/

What Is Driving the Transformation?

For effective customer engagement and issue resolution, insurance providers need to optimize their use of data,
people, and technology. This is especially important in light of the trends that have gained prominence in the
insurance industry:
Customers seek consistent, round-the-clock engagement options: Todays customers value the quality of
service over almost everything else. When consumers contact an insurer, they expect their concern to be
satisfactorily resolved, seamlessly and quickly. This is irrespective of whether the service has been provided by the
insurer or by any third party on behalf of the insurer.
There is greater acceptance of digital technologies: According to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, about
73 percent customers use the internet to gather information (up from 55 percent in 2008) while the rest use call
4
centers, either for standalone research or to supplement their internet research. The contact center is no longer a
standalone entity in the insurers value chain. It must support the insurers overall customer experience strategy
and business priorities by complementing the services and support delivered through digital channels to drive
holistic customer engagement.
Faster access to integrated data is essential: Insurers are increasingly using custom Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs) to enable rapid access to data that resides in disparate organizational systems. Custom APIs help
organize and integrate data across silos to create a complete view of the customer. Agents can quickly access this
consolidated data and respond to customers with the relevant information to enhance customer satisfaction.

What Today's Customer Engagement Center Must

Account For
Customer engagement has evolved significantly from the days of need driven, reactive customer support to
becoming a key success measure. To serve its purpose as a business enabler, the CEC must therefore keep pace
with:
Mobile technology: With more customers embracing mobile technologies, insurers are compelled to simplify and
adapt their products and processes for this new distribution channel. A customer can start a transaction on the
smartphone and then contact the CEC to complete the transaction or for support on an issue. In either case, the
agent should be knowledgeable about the product the consumer has selected, and have real-time visibility into the
data already provided so that they do not ask the consumer the same questions again. It is also essential to enable
all transactions on the mobile channel so that the consumer does not need to contact the agent for a particular
transaction.

[4] McKinsey & Company, Winning Share and Customer Loyalty in Auto Insurance, Insights from McKinseys 2012 Auto Insurance Customer Insights Research,
accessed on 15 November 2014,
https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDcQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mckinsey.com%2
F~%2Fmedia%2Fmckinsey%2Fdotcom%2Fclient_service%2Ffinancial%2520services%2Flatest%2520thinking%2Finsurance%2Fwinning_share_and_custo
mer_loyalty_in_auto_insurance.ashx&ei=sjBvVKWGCsrkuQT53YK4DA&usg=AFQjCNGy06Zqgqwd3JCl17eO60LAKHuGyg&bvm=bv.80185997,d.c2E

Social media: Industry players see social media emerging as one of the most powerful contact channels, second
5
only to email. Since insurance is a highly regulated industry, legislative and regulatory changes will be required
before insurers can use social media to answer specific queries on benefits, eligibility, or claims as they do over the
telephone today. However, the CEC can allow insurers to leverage this channel to better understand a consumer's
expectations when they contact the insurer. In instances where it is permissible, insurers can consider tracking
requests submitted on social forums, contact the consumer through a more traditional channel, resolve the
situation and then post on the network that the issue was resolved. Even a simple message from a consumer on a
social platform that discusses the insurer's efficiency can have far-reaching impact.
Collaborative tools: To effectively reach out to Generation Y and Millennia customers, insurers need to evaluate
innovative options beyond emails and chat. Consumers who are already used to Siri, Google Now or Cortana can
question the effectiveness of a call center interactive voice response (IVR) or that of the final agent who picks up the
call. Options such as virtual avatars can help promote more interactive engagement with the consumer irrespective
of the channel (web or mobile) and provide a more contextualized experience. Techniques such as natural
language processing, voice and text analytics, Big Data analytics and machine learning make these ideas a reality
for insurers to take advantage of.
Levels of customer awareness: To cater to the modern empowered customer, insurers need to develop a 360degree view of the customer that can allow greater levels of customization and personalization. They should be
able to glean insights from the abundance of data on customers, events, and demographics. Customers are used to
personalized offers such as those by leading retailer Amazon. While insurers may not be able to deliver this extreme
personalization, they can maximize data mining opportunities to stay relevant and competitive.

Strengthening Customer Engagement

To achieve its intended purpose, the CEC needs to go well beyond support for issue resolution to promote
marketing opportunities, resulting in customer acquisition and retention. The CEC should integrate modern
technology tools to transform inbound call centers into high-performance omni-channel customer engagement
channels, and should:
Enable customer analytics to enhance customer support: By offering a 360-degree view of the customers
various relationships and interactions across channels, independent of product lines, customer analytics can truly
empower the insurance service agent. Service representatives can gain access to contextualized recommendations
for cross-selling and up-selling opportunities by applying analytics on the customers interactions and buying
patterns to derive a Customer Life Time Value measure. This will help sell the right product to the right person,
thereby increasing customer confidence and building and maintaining a long term relationship with the customer.
Customer analytics can also help in churn prevention by offering human interaction over a digital channelvideo
chat, telepresence, or phone call. Insurance websites often provide a live chat session option for customers for

[5] Deloitte Consulting LLP, 2013 Global Contact Center Survey Results (March 2013), accessed November 11, 2014,
http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-operations/us-sdt-consulting-2013-global-contact-survey-051513.pdf

quick issue resolution and feedback. By merging the customer's history with the customer's social profile, insurers
can predict the churn risk. Armed with this insight, insurers can define strategies to mitigate this risk.
Leverage Next Best Action (NBA) recommendations to drive business growth: This key enabler can help
optimize and personalize every customer interaction regardless of the channel. The NBA can power the centralized
decision hub that guides both inbound and outbound customer communications in real time. At the heart of NBA
lies a predictive and adaptive analytics powered engine (as compared to static analytical models), which can
optimize every customer interaction in real time. While predictive analytics uses past customer interaction history
to anticipate the expected customer behavior and suggest the relevant service or product, adaptive analytics learns
from every customer interaction and continuously improves the success of propositions. A promising technology,
NBA can empower carriers and agents to identify and present the right products at the right time. The NBA concept
across marketing, sales, and service channels is depicted in Figure 1.
Internet of Things (IoT) / Machine to Machine (M2M): A concept which will strengthen future of Contact
Engagement Center by updating Agent systems via automated or semi-automated messages from connected
devices. The future scenarios of risk prevention could come from vehicles, machines or smart homes integrating
with insured risk portfolio. The CEC will be a key component in enabling & sustaining the ecosystem collaboration
among consumer, partner networks & the carrier. Tasks and actions will happen in real time eliminating the
dependence on workflows through multi-party collaboration using M2M interaction and updates being sent to
Agent Console at CEC. Delivering cross touch point customer experiences drives need for new capability and IoT
plays an important role in letting an Agent view real time data from sensors & connected devices. It provides them
an early advantage to coordinate and interact with multiple parties and give customer a better service experience.
IoT and M2M can help changing customer service and agents from reactive in to preventive mode.
n
n
n

Interaction optimization (Call Script)

Retention
Agent Decisioning

Service

n
n
n

Personalization
Targeted Offerings
Testing / Validation

Next Best
Action
Marketing

Sales

n
n
n

Guided selling
Relationship management
Cross-sell/Upsell

Figure 1: . An Overview of the NBA Recommendation

Realizing Strategic Value and Operational Efficiencies

The CEC can enable several operational efficiencies through integrated technology and real time information
updates. The seamless data integration and intelligent, intuitive control can drive faster decision making while
presenting cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. To drive business transformation, the CEC must offer:
Intelligent routing: An engagement center's primary objective is to deliver value to each interaction - whether it is
simple issue resolution, request for more information, or a potential selling opportunity. To achieve this, it is
essential that each request is treated uniquely, and routed to the person best placed to respond to it. While this
may seem easy in principle, in practice, several interplaying factors can render this task complex. A request can
originate from an individual or a machine, on any of the channels made available by the insurer. By capturing the
source and context, and analyzing the meta data, the CEC should route the customer request to the appropriate
recipient. For instance, if the insurer has advertised in traditional media, it is important that leads originating from
that campaign are directed to the customer service representatives (CSRs) who speak the appropriate language. In
addition to the source, the context should also be considered in determining the type and priority of the request.
Insurers can use several strategies to identify the source. These could be as simple as providing different contact
numbers for the different campaigns and recognizing the number the request was initiated on, or leveraging
location based services offered by mobile carriers or internet providers.
Once the source and context are determined, a set of business rules should be applied to the meta data to
determine the priority of the request and the recipient to whom it has to be routed to. For instance, a request
originating from Google Adwords may be assigned a lower priority than a request from a hotline number. The
determination needs to be made at machine speed and acted upon based on set rules. Intelligent contextualized
routing can be achieved either individually or through a combination of IVR capabilities and contact center
technology platform functionality, and will ultimately play a strong part in determining customer satisfaction.
The Desktop of the Future: Simply routing the request appropriately is not enough - the next hurdle in improving
engagement is the CSR's traditional desktop, comprised of several interfaces integrated to multiple backend
systems, local databases or spreadsheets, with sticky notes around the monitor. Transforming the traditional
desktop into the desktop of the future through simplification of the technology landscape and associated business
processes can help insurers:
n

Better engage with the customer, irrespective of the channel such as web, call, mobile, or social media

Enable straight through processing of requests originating either from the consumer, or a machine or sensor
associated with that consumer, which could range from wearables and smart watches to intelligent fire alarms

Derive a 720-degree view of the customer by combining the internal (data within enterprise) and external
6
perspective

[6] Tata Consultancy Services, Data in the Digital EraDriving New Business Models and Results for Insurers,
http://www.tcs.com/resources/white_papers/Pages/Digital-Data-insurers-innovation-business-models.aspx

Realize comprehensive contextualized knowledge management with the ability to record case articles on the fly
and share it with a wider community. Knowledge management will ensure consistency in solutions provided
and reduce call resolution time, resulting in call volume reduction.

Advise the CSR on the NBA recommendation, for a service or sale request

Leverage dynamic dashboards with analytics from Big Data, predictive modeling, voice calls, including
traditional business intelligence reports. The dashboards provide real-time information to enable informed
decision making.

Promote collaboration among CSRs with the ability to reach out to customers through a customer community.
This community could be a forum for CSRs to share their experience, challenges, and learn from a wider team,
eventually leading to meaningful conversations.

Workflow automation: Often, the resolution of service requests involves collaboration or handoff to back office
staff such as insurance underwriters or claim adjusters. With the CEC enabling a robust workflow and case
management capabilities for workflow automation, insurers can:
n

Trigger and assign service requests to the back office users

Enable straight through processing with rules driven workflow processes

Support dynamic case management and collaboration with back office users in real time for expert advice

Ensure better visibility into the back office case status to offer customers accurate information about their
request status and expected resolution time

Seamless integration of backend systems: For efficient contact center operations, it is critical to seamlessly
integrate backend systems. This enables consolidation of business data from across systems to make it available to
the contact center agents in real-time. Service oriented architecture (SOA) can enable real-time interfacing with
channels, back-end systems, and third-party services.
Some of the conventional insurance call center solutions have been integrated with backend applications through
point-to-point or batch oriented interfaces to exchange business critical data. The seamless integration with
backend systems will enable insurers to empower CSRs with accurate and complete information about the
customer to:
n

Reduce call resolution time

Reduce the number of systems of engagements

Enable 'one call' resolution

10

Combined, these will help insurers realize new efficiencies and more importantly, deliver on the promise of
customer centricity through improved customer service.
A large North America based life and retirement commercial insurer struggled to manage their multiple
applications for customer servicing. This led to increased call handling and waiting periods, poor first call resolution
rates, inaccurate and inconsistent reporting and dashboards, and increased training expenses. The insurer required
a unified view of their customer across systems with integrated knowledge management systems. Following the
implementation of a Contact Center, the insurer now offers customers an omni-channel experience with voice,
social, web, and machine interactions. Call resolution times have reduced by 20 percent while the time taken to
bring CSRs onboard has reduced from 6 weeks to just one week.

Ensuring a Successful Transformation

Although the contact center transformation promises to deliver wide-ranging business benefits, there are several
potential migration challenges insurers need to plan for, before they undertake this journey:
Migration is costly; take it one step at a time: The simplification of business processes and backend systems, and
the ability to seamlessly integrate these with the CSRs' desktop systems are some of the most resource intensive
challenges that an insurer must address. Since transformation is a long-drawn out activity, one of the best practices
to follow is to deliver the capability in iterations. Delivering a faade layer that separates the desktop from the
interfacing systems in the initial iterations is particularly essential.
Data management in transition is difficult: For operations spread across business units and geographies, it is
difficult to manage data stacks and ensure that the right information is available at the right time. Defining the right
enterprise data strategy could be the key to address data management challenges such as:
n

Master data management

Data governance and ownership

Metadata management

Data life cycle and archival

Data quality management

Data security and storage

User Experience Strategy: Providing consistent and Intuitive user experience to customers and agents is one
essential part of the overall transformation journey. Providing single desktop, single customer view, reducing
systems of engagement ensuring agents have all the information they need to serve customers. Customers need
open access to information and user experience in collaboration, automation, self-service, knowledge management
plays important role in overall Customer engagement. Agents experience in call guidance, customer stats,
downstream information at right connect point is key to provide transformation solution to customers.

11

Review and revise to ensure compliance with regulations: With the rapid increase in fraud cases, and regular
changes to statutory laws and regulations, insurers need to constantly review and update systems and business
rules to ensure compliance.

Conclusion
In the Contact Center Satisfaction Index 2013, 46 percent respondents stated that their first choice for issue
resolution and other service requests was something beyond the customary phone call. CEC focuses not only on
resolving the customer issue but on improving customer satisfaction and driving customer loyalty through value
creation and active engagement for long term sustaining relationship. CEC enables Organization, agents and
customer service to be more agile and proactive. CEC focuses not only on customer service but also on agents'
productivity. It helps to acquire, retain and train agents and allows them to mine their business book and be
vigilant of their product performance to sell and serve better. CEC bundles collaboration, data, knowledge
management, personalization, automation and user experience to provide cutting edge to Organizations to stay
ahead of the curve. Towards this end, insurers are striving to understand and better relate to customers in their
journey towards risk protection, while actively engaging with them at every step. Though the path is strewn with
challenges and could be relatively long one, enterprises that can make the successful transition from call centers to
CECs will realize benefits at each milestone of the journeywith happy customers, increased revenue, and an
efficient workforce. And the transformation journey starts now.

[7] CFI Group, Contact Center Satisfaction Index 2013, accessed on 11 November 2013,
http://www.cfigroup.com/downloads/CFI_call_center_satisfaction_index_2013-eo.pdf

12

About TCS' Insurance Business Unit

With over four decades of experience in working with insurers globally, TCS delivers solutions and
services to help insurers meet rising customer and agent expectations, address non-traditional
competitors, manage low investment yields, and drive growth in emerging global markets.
TCS has built an unmatched track record in enabling insurers transform, enhance business agility,
improve operational efficiencies and increase customer engagement, while ensuring regulatory
compliance. 7of the 10 world's largest insurers and over a hundred insurers globally partner with TCS.
Our state-of-the-art innovation labs and global solution centers, and cutting edge solutions and
technologies set clients apart from their competitors. We leverage the combined expertise of our
industry trained and certified (LOMA, LIMRA, CPCU and so on) consultants to support the entire
value chain for Life, Annuities and Pensions, Property and Casualty, Health, Commercial and
Reinsurance companies.

Contact
For more information about TCS' Insurance Business Unit, visit: www.tcs.com/insurance
Email: global.insurance@tcs.com

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