Highlights
- Insurance contact centers are adopting Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to support a work-from-anywhere model.
- UCaaS offers several benefits to insurance call centers, including reduced costs, improved communications, and higher first-contact resolution rates.
- RingCentral offers market-leading UCaaS to meet your end-to-end communications needs.
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Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) has been a hot topic in business over the last few years since the onset of the pandemic. This category of cloud-based communications software is foundational to the optimization of cross-platform interactions with clients or dispersed workers because it creates seamless transitions from one platform to another.
Critical benefits of UCaaS for insurance call centers
There are many benefits to UCaaS that apply to the insurance sector, particularly call centers. The following are six of the most critical benefits of UCaaS to consider.
1. Work-from-anywhere capabilities
The work-from-anywhere model has become popular due to COVID social-distancing protocols. It means employers allow employees to work from an office, remotely (such as from home), or in a combination of the two (aka hybrid). To support remote workers during the pandemic, companies had to invest money and resources to equip and train agents.
Combined with an already beefed-up digital infrastructure, UCaaS provides a powerful engine for a flexible work environment. Employees can easily interact with each other and send and receive calls to/from clients from anywhere. Conversations are easily stored with clients across all platforms. Additionally, the ability to work from an office or remotely attracts a larger pool of talented people and makes it easier to achieve work-life balance.
2. Reduced costs
Insurance companies save money in several ways with UCaaS. First, remote workers reduce the amount of power and utility consumption in an office. You may even be able to reduce the size of your office and lease.
Cloud-based solutions are more cost-effective because your organization doesn’t need the amount of hardware and security measures you would with an on-premises system. You likely only need computers and ancillary tools and handsets (or just headsets) for your agents.
Costs for the service are scalable based on the number of users. Therefore, it is easy to ramp up your subscription if you hire more reps.
3. Better teamwork and collaboration
Inspiring collaboration in a dispersed workforce is a challenge. It is the kind of challenge unified communications helps to resolve, though.
Your agents can transition easily from contact with a client to an interaction with a colleague. Thus, if a question or concern comes up, it is quickly addressed.
Managers or team leaders can also hold virtual meetings through video chat or conferencing systems. The optimized security helps protect against disruptions to these conversations.
4. Improved customer satisfaction
Optimized communication is a key component to high levels of customer satisfaction. Insurance clients have preferences as to the types of messages they receive and the channel through which they receive them.
For proactive communication, UCaaS allows you to efficiently send out information, updates, and other items to many clients through various platforms to suit their preferences. When handling customer-initiated contact, your agents can seamlessly move from one channel to another depending on the method used by the client. One agent can interact across all key channels used, such as chat, text, instant messaging, phone, social media, or web/video conferencing.
Transitioning from one platform to another in the midst of the same contact with a client is simple as well. Some channels work best for quick questions and replies, whereas others are better for more involved conversations. If the interaction starts in chat or instant messaging, the agent can quickly shift to a phone call if the client needs to discuss more in-depth. This process can strengthen first-contact resolution rates.
First-call resolution rates should also be improved when clients get routed intelligently to the right person after answering a few basic prompt questions at the start of a call. Alternatively, if a client interacts with one agent and has questions that require transfer, that agent can easily find the right contact from the company’s directory and transfer the client.
The net-net is that an improved customer experience powered by unified communications helps drive retention and loyalty, enables more personalized and targeted outreach, and encourages more cross-product purchases (upsell/cross-sell).
5. Easy app integration
Insurance companies often use other software solutions to manage customer relationships, collect data, and automate communication. Salesforce (CRM), Outlook, Google, and various analytics software programs are examples.
The connection with CRM solutions is especially beneficial given their importance in the company’s holistic view of the customer. Combining communication histories from UCaaS with the profile and behavioral data stored in a CRM gives you the most complete picture of each client’s relationship with the firm. Reps can add notes in the client’s CRM profile to add context around interactions and alert future reps to key details of previous conversations.
It is easy to integrate operational tasks and communication flows with UCaaS. Thus, you can correlate your planned, proactive communication in coordination with the spontaneous interactions that come up during contact with clients. The more you can integrate related tasks, the more seamless your workflows and customer experience become.
6. Increased security
A quality UCaaS provider offers end-to-end encryption that guarantees incoming and outgoing communication privacy and security. This technology is crucial in an industry where customers share personal and confidential information.
Additional physical and virtual security measures are common. UCaaS-powered data centers use multi-factor authentication, which means users must provide two or more pieces of identifying evidence.
With a cloud-based setup, the provider manages security updates. This means that you always have the most updated features and security protocols.
RingCentral offers UCaaS for insurers
It’s clear that UCaaS is a wise investment for insurance firms. It is more important than ever to have multiple pathways to achieve great communication internally and externally. Improved internal communication inspires greater collaboration and a more productive, positive work culture.
Optimized communication with clients enhances the customer experience, improves retention and loyalty, and drives more cross-product purchases. Unified communications also offer advanced end-to-end encryption for security, which is critical in the digital age.
Want to learn more about the capabilities and benefits of UCaaS?
Originally published Apr 19, 2022, updated Aug 05, 2024
