Global Life Insurer Reaches New Heights in Customer Service

In an attempt to better manage its costs and centralize operations, a global life insurer shifted most of the responsibilities for customer contacts to its service representatives (CSRs) in call centers. And as the CSRs roles expanded, customers’ demands for immediate once-and-done responses to their issues – no matter how complex – were also increasing.

Realizing that customer service is directly linked to business success, the company, a leading U.S. variable annuity provider, began looking for technology to support this ever-increasing workload. After talking to CSC, the company selected an approach to boost customer service without replacing its core processing systems.

The company’s back-office systems environment had grown highly complex over the years with acquisitions of other life insurance carriers. The company had a collection of policy administration systems that forced CSRs and back-office users to keep multiple host system sessions open on their desktops at the same time.

Providing Fast, Once-And-Done Service to Policyholders

Rather than replacing its systems, the company decided to unify its data into one Web-enabled interface that presents a single view of the customer using CSC’s Customer Service Accelerator®. It’s the only system that combines call center, business process management and integrated back-office workflow capabilities.

“Customer Service Accelerator met our requirements for giving our CSRs immediate access to all customer information — portfolio and policy information, contact history, producer data and workflow requirements — all in one place,” according to the company’s IT manager.

Customer Service Accelerator was interfaced with CSC’s Wealth Management Accelerator and VANTAGE-ONE policy admin systems. In a matter of months, the company’s CSRs were using the new tool to support a full range of transactions, customer inquiries and back-office processes.

Transferring Smoothly from Telephone System

Not only does Customer Service Accelerator make it easier for CSRs to work with multiple systems, it also provides seamless integration with the telephone system. When callers are transferred, all of their policy and account information pops on the screen so they don’t have to repeat their information.

Since the initial production deployment, the carrier has shortened service response times, increased effectiveness, and reduced holds, transfers and callbacks. Better still, the company gained the flexibility to assign customer requests to the best-available resources.

“Our CSRs are processing calls faster, which strengthens our rapport with our customers and producers,” the IT manager said. “Having each customer’s complete relationship and history at their fingertips allows them to take advantage of all possible sales opportunities. The ease of use has reduced training time and empowered our CSRs to multi-task and take on new responsibilities.”

Lowering Costs with IT Applications Support

Behind the scenes, CSC also provides mission-critical support for the company’s systems through its IT outsourcing services. CSC has managed ongoing maintenance and enhancements for CSC and legacy policy administration systems for nearly two decades.

The company recently expanded the scope of this relationship, utilizing more of CSC’s offshore resources to support its operations. CSC’s global team soon began managing enhancements, maintenance, production support, release management, quality assurance and business analysis for the company’s in-house applications as well.

As a result, CSC’s IT support teams now resolve 25 percent more maintenance tickets annually, cycle times have been reduced, and the carrier has launched 18 new life insurance products and seven new annuities.

“CSC’s personnel are truly an extension of our operations that give us greater speed and flexibility,” the IT manager said. “We’re looking at way to expand our relationship globally to take advantage of the technology and processes across our business.”