Today, many insurance companies face the challenge of providing smooth customer service in a remote working environment – a situation created by the COVID 19 pandemic.
While most companies have been operating remotely for some time, Rod Lester, Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand at the National Institutes of Health and Healthcare Research (NICE), says there are still many challenges for the industry to ensure that customers receive the highest level of service.
Lester said: “Over the past eight weeks most businesses have tried to move away from the traditional way of working and be 100% at home or both. “Our organization has helped many government agencies, including federal and state governments and large and small businesses, to achieve home access.
Once the organization has moved to a fully remote workforce, the next step is to understand how to effectively manage this work in a home environment.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear that traditional technologies can’t effectively monitor the actual behavior of agents,” he said, “to determine if they’re effective and efficient at doing things.
“Then human interaction is lost because face-to-face communication is at risk during this pandemic. Many organizations are finding that their intermediaries have become virtually isolated and disconnected”.
The biggest challenges for the insurance industry are visibility and understanding the family situation. Ensuring that customers receive the highest level of service; and finally, ensuring that employees remain engaged and motivated.
Lester added: “Organizations that can address these three key challenges are able to do so more effectively at the family level that we see. “I think that even though Australia is considering re-opening, distance working is probably not going to end. I think it’s an old fact that it will be a long time before we can work again the way it worked at the end of last year”.
Whether cloud technology and AI technology are the future of the insurance industry
One solution that companies can use, according to Lester, is cloud technology – allowing agents and employees to access the latest information without having to go to the office.
Lester claims: “When you’re dealing with hundreds (or even thousands) of agents, you can only monitor your employees effectively at the enterprise level if you implement cloud-based technologies that really encourage engagement.
Part of this shift to cloud-based technology, according to Lester, requires the ability to monitor employee engagement while working from home.
“So we can actually see what they’re accessing. Are they accessing the right systems? Are they actually doing what they’re supposed to do during the day?” Lester explained.