Zurich was rated a close second in its category by risk managers, and 4th in class for claims handling. Actec handles all after-hours, weekend, holiday, and overflow calls for Zurich, and celebrates this triumph of efficiency and outsourcing FNOL in the insurance and risk management industries.
Category: Outsourced Call Center
Three Articles on Understanding and Leveraging FNOL
First Notice of Loss can be crucial to smooth business operation. Understanding the various aspects of FNOL and how to leverage it by different means (such as outsourcing) is crucial to maintaining visibility into company operational and organizational success. Here are three of our recent articles that explore the matter:
Custom Reporting, Inquiries, and FNOL Outsourcing
Not all incidents require a claim to be filed. Actec is a primary source for collecting and disseminating any type of critical information, including custom reports, such as sprinkler impairment notices, product recall reports, questionnaires and surveys. Actec also takes care of a variety of inquires and information requests including referrals to PPOs or other vendors or claim office contact information. Routing these high-volume, but low-yield, calls to a dedicated contact center greatly increases the efficiency of your claim management staff. Many different types of claim management, call reception, issue resolution, and resource management can be outsourced to a companies like Actec. And outsourcing claim management, first notice of loss (FNOL) or even just process reports and questionnaires can substantially increase profitability and decrease strain on a company’s central organizational structure.
Actec Publishes Article on Claim Intake Accuracy
Sometimes it’s best to leave a job to the experts. For many companies that may mean outsourcing their marketing department, their accounting, or their facility maintenance. For some, it is a matter of professional claim intake. Whether it’s after-hours or full-time, claim intake outsourcing solutions can drastically improve the productivity profitability of a business while simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction. It’s a situation in which everyone walks away happy because each member of the process is entrusted in the field of his or her expertise. For more on the importance of outsourcing claim intake and FNOL (first notice of loss), check out our article at http://www.articlesbase.com/outsourcing-articles/claim-intake-accuracy-key-to-successful-fnol-execution-4097724.html.
Actec Publishes Article on FNOL in Inclement Conditions
When utilizing FNOL (first notice of loss) operations, it is critical to stay technologically astute, harnessing all available venues to maximize the client experience. This is seldom more apparent than during times of inclement meteorological conditions, which will be explored in a specific case below. Data must be integrated across all contact methods, including telephonic, e-mail, fax, and direct web entry, for consolidated reporting and may be filtered by contact method if needed. Individual notices should immediately transmit via automated e-mail or fax to any number of recipients, based on the location, type of report and other criteria. Scheduled summary reports must also be available, allowing regular electronic distribution of reports daily, weekly, monthly, or by custom period to multiple recipients based on level of management within an organization. For more, read the article.
Long-time Customer Marriott’s Claim Intake System Going Offline for Major Upgrade
Marriott Hotel Corporation is taking down their claim intake system for FNOL intake starting 1/13 and lasting until 1/18. But worry not – whenever we utilize another company’s FNOL intake system, we always use “CLAIM”, our proprietary intake system, as a backup. By setting up our system as a fail-safe, there will be no downtime in claim handling. Outsourcing claim intake is a huge benefit to many companies. Whether we utilize your system or ours, claims are always managed promptly, allowing for their timely and proper closure.
Recent Case Study Results: After-Hours Call Center Solution
The Problem:
When a human resources administration service company developed an in-house absence management system, they wanted their previous after-hours call center vendor to enter claioms directly into the new application. The vendor refused, offering instead to develop a custom intake solutiong – at the client’s expense. Without an intake service, the client risked alienating their most important customer accounts. The client came to Actec with two absolute requirements – use the newly developed application and start within nine days.
The Solution:
Each of the client’s accounts – primarily large, Fortune 500 companies – requires special handling, from caller authorization to terminology. This was not provided on the custom intake system. Therefore, training and manual documentation was extremely critical. Within seven days, Actec was trained on the client’s system. Actec then prepared workstation manuals and developed backup intake forms to use during the client’s nightly system maintenance downtime. With an intensive week of training, manual preparation anc connectivity and user setup, we opened our phone lines right on target. The client extended coverage to daytime overflow.
Factors contributing to Actec’s success were:
- Intake Specialists could call on their familiarity with a broad client base in the absence management, FMLA and disability arena – minimizing training time.
- Utilizing extensive experience to provide intake services on client applications.
- Agile organization showed the flexibility required to implement a complex client on a short timeline.
Outsourcing Call Overflow to Maximize Your Call Center Effectiveness
Do you have high ASA’s? Do you have high abandonment rates? Your call center is the first contact that your customers have when problems strike. As with most call centers, there are times when your occupancy rates are at 90% – and no one is available to answer the phone.
You could return the call an hour later or the next day, but that may be too late, and they may have already contacted an attorney. This will increase the cost of your claims dramatically and will simultaneously reduce the effectiveness and level of customer service provided by your organization. This is why many of today’s contact centers employ outsourced call centers staffer with claims professionals to improve the customer experience.
By leveraging a contact center for overflow, nights, weekends and holidays, you will improve the efficiency in your organization by as much as 40% while greatly improving your customer experience. All of which impact the bottom line. Today, many high quality call centers outsource FNOL (First Notice of Loss) for overflow and non-peak times.
Insurers with longer than average cycle times of 14.8 days are rated in the bottom 50% in terms of customer satisfaction. – J.D. Power and Associates
At 80%+ call center occupancy your people are busy, turnover increases due to burnout, customer service is poor, and many calls go unanswered. At 50% occupancy your people have some down time, customer service levels are relatively good, and most calls are answered. At 20% occupancy, almost every call is answered, ASA times are short, customer service is superb; however efficiency is low and the cost per claim is astronomical.
Finding the right outsourced call FNOL solution can allow your call center to improve efficiency and reach maximum effectiveness.