AXA Reduces Average Handle Time by 20%+ Using Modern, Connected Verint Open Platform

AXA transformed its retail business (servicing and claims) customer journey with Verint Open Platform and best-of-breed engagement solutions. Now, the leading global insurer is surfacing intelligent insights to drive increased productivity and business growth.

The results

23%
Reduced customer renewal average handle time by 3 minutes within servicing business unit.
34%
Lowered supplier call volume by 34%
93%
Increased first contact resolution from 87% to 93%

About AXA

AXA is a leading global insurance company that looks after millions of customers’ insurance needs across car, home, health, and business. AXA UK is part of the AXA Group, one of the largest insurance brands in the world, with 103 million customers across the globe.

Opportunity

AXA Retail (customer service, claims, complaints, etc.) was recently restructured into a single business unit. Within the business unit’s customer service group, best-of-breed Verint Speech Analytics and Verint Workforce Management had been used for several years.

Meanwhile, the customer service group used a standalone workforce intelligence tool for desktop analytics. This resulted in two separate types of analytics: one for analysis of voice recordings and another for analysis of the desktop. This fragmented view required costly data integrations, as well as added resources to manage and maintain. As a result, confidence in the data was not optimal.

Quality was also an issue. Manual screening of only a small proportion of voice calls was ripe for customer service process flaws and non-compliant interactions remaining hidden. This negatively impacted customer service. David McGuire, Head of Workforce Planning & Operational Insights at AXA explains, “All three business units struggled with excessive average handle times.”

contact center agent with a headset talks to a customer

Proactively reimagine the insurance customer experience

AXA’s goal was to surface meaningful insights across its voice and other channels to improve customer experience and drive efficiency. “By immediately identifying where attention is needed, we can take proactive action to sustain customer sentiment,” McGuire adds.

Other goals included:

Migrate Verint Speech Analytics to Verint Open Platform in the cloud to take advantage of agility and new Verint Da Vinci high accuracy language models.
Implement speech and desktop analytics capability within claims business areas.
Move from its legacy workforce intelligence tool to Verint Desktop and Process Analytics, unifying customer analytics and creating a single view of the customer journey.
Implement Verint Performance and Compliance Scoring Bots (formerly Verint Automated Quality Management) to further automate and improve customer experience.

Solution: Verint Open Platform drives modern, connected future

With the move to Verint Open Platform and integration of Verint Da Vinci AI-powered Speech Analytics and Verint Desktop and Process Analytics, AXA’s retail customer service group now has connected, intelligent, holistic analytics, that drive CX automation.

“When Verint Speech Analytics was redeployed, the call categories were rebuilt as smaller modules to align with desktop processes,” says McGuire. “With robust testing, transcription accuracy reached 95 percent, ensuring greater confidence in the data insights shared with the business.”

During this phase, uncategorized calls were reduced from 20 percent to eight percent, increasing the breadth of interactions and insight.

Other innovations included:

Customer renewal journey within the servicing business unit: Analysis of the end-to-end renewal process discovered, for example, how long it took to accept a renewal and the journey taken by ”hagglers” versus those who just accept the renewal. Using Verint Speech Analytics and Verint Desktop and Process Analytics, the team made recommendations to adjust or bypass scripts to streamline the customer journey.
Home claims customer contact: Analysis of contact and repeat contact found approximately 1,200 calls per month related to AXA’s suppliers, such as plumbers performing insurance repairs on behalf of the insurer. Using Verint Open Platform, the AXA team examined why suppliers were calling and took appropriate action to reduce unnecessary contact.
Implementation of new CRM tool in servicing business unit: The implementation of a new CRM tool led to an unexpected 25 percent increase in average handle time (AHT), which impacted the customer experience. Verint Desktop and Process Analytics revealed that agents were struggling with certain processes and, in turn, had to spend time reading content while engaging with customers. Processes were re-engineered to streamline the CRM-related customer journey and make it easier for agents to complete processes in a timely manner.
First notice of loss process: First notice of loss (FNOL) calls traditionally had long handle times. Using Verint Open Platform, the team broke down the FNOL claim process into individual steps. For example, did the claim feature multiple vehicles? Was there a personal injury involved? Further, use of a ”complexity matrix” led to the introduction of a predictive AHT based on the complexity of each claim, with the insights also informing subsequent resource planning.

“Verint is helping to steer AXA to an agile, adaptive future. By innovating faster, we are driving new insights, elevating CX, and lowering our customer engagement costs.”
David McGuire
Head of Workforce Planning & Operational Insights, AXA

Benefits: Reducing AHT by 23 percent in insurance servicing

Customer renewal journey process within the servicing business unit: Reduced AHT by 182 seconds in two months, a 23 percent improvement.
Home claims customer contact process: Reduced supplier call volume by 34 percent by pointing suppliers to a self-service portal and encouraging this as first point of contact.
Servicing first contact resolution: Increased from 87 percent to 93 percent.
Claims NPS: Improved Home Claims NPS by 97 percent. Motor Claims NPS increased by 26 percent.
Transformed visibility: Captured employee activity directly from the desktop to understand how employees allocate their time.
Improved quality: Presented targeted, real-time coaching and training guidance based upon insights derived from process and speech analytics categories identifying performance outliers.

“Verint is helping to steer AXA to an agile, adaptive future,” McGuire concludes. “By innovating faster, we are driving new insights, elevating CX, and lowering our customer engagement costs.”