Insurance Company Reduces Payment Processing Costs by over 350%

Summary

A high-volume call center at a Major Insurance Company (MIC) used live agents to process payments over the phone manually. The company chose the Plum DEV tool to build an IVR system that automated phone payments. Using voice automation and the VoiceTrends analytics toolkit, MIC achieved an 89% call containment rate for payment calls, which resulted in a 350% cost reduction and streamlined customer experience.

Company Story

MIC is a global insurance provider underwriting specialty insurance products. MIC is a people-first company committed to creating long-term partnerships with colleagues, brokers and clients. They employ over 5,000 employees, including live agents who handle the company’s customer service needs. These agents answer thousands of daily calls, from product inquiries to claims, payments, etc.

Challenge

MIC's customer service team was receiving an overwhelming number of calls. The live agents struggled to provide the high-touch service that met the company’s value set. Customers were placed on hold longer than desired, and agents were exhausted from fielding all the calls. They needed to do something to create a better experience for customers and employees.

The most frequent calls came from customers who needed to make payments. Live agents spent valuable time processing payments manually, which resulted in extended average call handling and average hold times. This repetitive and redundant task kept the live agents from focusing on more critical tasks and complex customer service calls. 

Therefore, MIC decided that they want to address these issues:

• Automate the payment process and, at the same time, improve customer experience (CX) and reduce hold times 
• Ensure that its IT infrastructure was secure and PCI-compliant to process payments over the phone
• Lower operating costs while at the same time balancing high-touch customer service and a high customer satisfaction rate

Solution

MIC chose the Plum Dev tool to construct a user-friendly voice automation application to handle its inbound payment processing needs. MIC chose Plum Voice because it specializes in interactive voice response (IVR) solutions and offers unmatched flexibility to develop on its agile platform.

MIC’s application was built and deployed in Plum Voice’s secure, PCI-compliant network. This safe environment to process critical customer financial data as it flowed through the Plum Voice platform via a payment gateway to the payment processor. No data is saved on the Plum Voice platform, ensuring another layer of security.

Plum Voice designed, implemented and deployed a complete IVR solution that includes all necessary IVR hardware, software and telecom connectivity, plus management of the critical IVR applications as needed. The applications followed the call script and call flows provided by MIC. 

Plum Dev includes VoiceTrends, a robust analytics toolkit. VoiceTrends enabled MIC to measure automation rates and to track how customers used their payment application so they could adjust the call flows and prompts as needed.

Results

Following the deployment of the MIC payment IVR application, 89% of the payment processing calls were automated. Through this workflow change, MIC realized significant savings:

• The average cost per call featuring a live agent was around $5, and the average cost per call using the payment application was less than $0.15. 
• Annual savings on payment processing calls exceeded 350%.
• Both the integration and transactional costs Plum Voice offered were significantly lower than the other vendor MIC considered - a major payment processing company in the U.S.

There were also security and compliance benefits of collaborating with Plum Voice:

• Plum Voice has achieved Level 1 compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
• Plum Voice’s Level 1 compliance designation is certified by an approved Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).
• Plum Voice systems are scanned externally by an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) every 90 days to ensure no vulnerabilities.
• PCI data entering Plum Voice’s secure hosting environment is handled securely.

Analytics attained from VoiceTrends revealed how well MCI’s payment application worked. It showed that MIC achieved an 89% automation rate and drastically reduced average call handling time and average call hold time while improving first call resolution rate.

Partnering with Plum Voice enabled MIC to significantly improve its customer service offerings and experience while at the same time dramatically reducing costs. With an automated payment application, MIC’s live agents could spend more time providing high-touch service for customer inquiries, and mission-critical financial requirements and compliance standards kept personal information safe.

Contact us today to learn more about Plum Voice products and voice automation solutions for your business.