dissatisfaction to delight

a leading private Insurance player was grappling with customer management issues, like high churn, non renewal of policies and over reliance on advisors for customer engagement. High attrition among advisors was leading to a sizeable segment of 'super high-net worth' customers being 'orphaned' with no engagement process in place.

advisors played an important role in the policy renewal process by sending reminders to their customers and facilitating receipts for tax purposes. Beyond this basic level, there was no other engagement process in place. So when advisors left, there was a negative impact on renewals. Policies of such customers were termed “orphaned policies”, with no plan B to manage them.

diagnosis: over- dependence on advisors

thinksynq identified over dependence on advisors and lack of handover process as a huge vulnerability for the client. When the advisors left, they took away customer details, and critical time was lost when one advisor left and the next was not yet assigned.

there was also a clear gap in understanding the customer and his total portfolio, which had been at the discretion of the advisor. The company communication was sporadic and impersonal, thereby affecting customer connect and satisfaction.

a deep dive into the reasons for the steep rise in churns and non-renewals, established that “orphaned customers” were the prime reason. As they formed a significant percentage of the company's customer base, it was top priority to engage them to ensure churn control and revenue growth. Handling such customers by the field was considered but dropped due to high costs. Reduction in referrals coming in through advisors was also adding pressure on acquisition costs.

the company was in urgent need of a solution to manage “orphaned customers”. The process called for quick initial contact, periodic communication for higher engagement and a cost effective and scalable channel. The thinking was also that customers would not find the change disruptive and this engagement would lead to improved retention and loyalty.

solution: virtual account management

thinksynq partnered with the client in conceptualising, building and executing a first-of-its-kind process in the Indian Insurance industry for increasing retention of high value customers - 'Virtual Account Management'.

the product is essentially a holistic outbound customer management solution implemented and supported by a robust automation solution for managing the customer lifecycle. The IT solution provided the right customer view, enabling the call centre agent to engage with customers at appropriate time.

thinksynq set about a controlled pilot test activity for a small subscriber base of 5,000.

Post this experiment, the following were clearly established:

spot the right challenges faced by the customer which data analytics doesn't reveal and develop solutions for the same

map the intervention requirement and stage in the customer lifecycle to make every contact meaningful

scripting the call right to ensure both call effectiveness and enhancing customer insights

balancing feel good calls with business enhancing calls

process change requirement based on customer need for proactive issue identification and right resolution both in terms of time and quality

the right metrics to chase for measuring effectiveness

the test run showed that this approach eventually led to improved customer satisfaction scores and retention.

customer responses also validated the crying need for the Virtual account management programme and gave the client confidence to commit to the process.

with this impetus and positive feedback, thinksynq built more features into the solution to help scale up and increase customer delight and call agent effectiveness.

building the second pillar

with the learnings of the test run, thinksynq helped the client build an application which ensured the following: regular updating of customer profile from various interaction points including in-call. This ensured that decision makers understood key customer insights like user profile, competition entrenchment, customer preferences and fear. This feature enabled the company to adopt a customised approach to engaging customers on a mass scale.

providing the call agent with all relevant information in a simple understandable form with intelligence built in for a call guide on real time basis to make the call standardised and situation specific.

most critically, thinksynq knew that the people side of the process had to be as strong. With its wide and deep knowledge in managing call centres, the team ensured that the VAM representatives were well skilled and continuously trained. So they consistently perform on a higher level than conventional service personnel.

results