Tag: fnol outsourcing

Quality Assurance Strategies for Better Call Centers

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January 11th, 2021

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Businesses rely on call centers to streamline calls to improve customer service, capture leads, and boost sales. If a call center’s performance quality is low, it can lower customer satisfaction and hurt profit margins. Businesses can use the following strategies to cultivate a top-notch call center:

  1. Track all forms of communication. Companies communicate with their customers through several channels. Customer support employees may field inquiries via telephone, email, text, or chat. Many call centers focus their attention on voice calls, but these other lines of communication are important for ensuring a quality experience for the customer.
  2. Incorporate coaching into the company culture. If call center employees only receive coaching following a poor performance, this can create tension and resistance to feedback. Implementing coachable moments or providing guidance on a routine basis can destigmatize feedback and improve customer service.
  3. Track and recognize improvements. Employees may feel pressured or lose motivation if they feel like big brother is always watching. If employees only receive critique, they will focus their efforts on staying off the radar rather than providing superior service. Critiques may help employees improve enough to receive acceptable scores, but recognition helps them reach their full potential.
  4. Use selective hiring practices. If a call center continually fails to meet KPIs despite extensive training and coaching, the company may not be selective enough during their hiring process. Identifying traits and characteristics of call center employees that deliver consistent high-quality services can help ensure a call center’s success.

Call centers that frustrate customers are disastrous for businesses. Nearshore call centers often outperform their offshore counterparts due to familiarity with the customer’s culture. This improves their ability to empathize with the customer and eliminates language barriers. Contact the experts at Actec to learn how our nearshore call center services can benefit your business.

4 Things You Need to Know About Call Center Customer Service

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October 12th, 2020

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Call centers are a prominent feature in the business world, particularly for large or growing companies. Providing superior customer service is vital for a business to thrive; it’s also a significant means for companies to differentiate themselves from the competition. Coupled with the fact that most customers will find a new vendor if they receive poor service, customer satisfaction is a critical metric for long-term success. The following are some of the biggest ways call centers affect customer service:

  1. First point of contact. Company leadership doesn’t often get a chance for direct interaction with their customers. They rely on call center employees to serve as the face and voice of the business. Call centers aren’t just the initial point of contact, they’re often the only point of contact. If call center employees don’t deliver quality customer service, the business isn’t likely to have another chance at winning over the customer’s loyalty.
  2. Differentiation opportunity. Businesses need to make sure their call centers provide a smooth and easy experience for their customers, but they can also use these interactions to secure their customers’ commitment. Delivering superior service such as recommending a product better suited to the customer’s needs or addressing common questions that relate to their initial inquiry can make the difference between so-so service and standout support.
  3. Providing service at all hours. One of the biggest benefits of many call centers is that they allow a company to provide around the clock service. When a business’ office hours are the same as their customers’ working hours, it can sew frustration and discontent. When customers call with vital questions or concerns only to be met with an automated recording about business hours, it sours their relationship with the business. It also means they’re more likely to go looking for a new service provider that can offer expedient and timely solutions.
  4. Greater flexibility. Waiting on hold is often an annoying and inconvenient experience for customers. Modern call centers offer multiple channels to reach customer support including by phone, email, chat, text, and even social media. Providing customers with their preferred communication method reduces friction points that can derail a conversation before it even begins.

Actec understands that providing superior customer service is a dynamic element to make your business stand out from the rest. Contact us to learn more about how our nearshore call center services and flexible text and chat support can help your company achieve that goal.

How to Leverage Data to Improve Claims Processing

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April 20th, 2020

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Insurance companies don’t often have frequent communication with their clients until a claim arises. While most insureds are fine with this limited interaction, how their insurance providers handle claims is the single most meaningful and telling interaction they have. If an insurance company mishandles the claim or fails to bring it to a satisfactory resolution quickly, they run the risk of losing a customer.

What Claimants Want

High-quality claims processes have three things in common: they’re fast, they’re efficient, and they’re transparent. Customers are no longer willing to accept vague or murky answers regarding where their claim is in the process. They also expect an error-free claim to receive their settlement quickly. Delays, mistakes, or confusion all cause insureds to reconsider their insurance provider.

Better data and automation can help insurance providers streamline their claims processes. The following are some of the ways insurance providers can utilize data:

  • Automatic first notice of loss (FNOL). First notice of loss occurs when the insured first reports the incident to their insurance provider. However, many vehicles come equipped with telematics that can detect accidents and injuries. While some vehicles will dial emergency services in the event of an accident, insurance providers can use this same technology to trigger a claim on the insured’s behalf. Vehicle sensors and video imagery can give insurance companies an idea of the extent of the damage to make sure the most relevant adjuster receives the claim.
  • Drones and satellite imagery. Similar to using vehicle telematics to initiate FNOL for car accidents, insurance companies can pull data from drones and satellites following major storms to identify damage to the insured person’s property. When the customer calls to report the loss, their provider can already be several steps into the claim to expedite the process and improve the insured’s experience during a stressful time.
  • Greater accuracy on repair timelines. When insureds file a claim for a vehicle loss or property damage, the first question on their minds is how long it will take to fix so they can resume their lives as usual. Insurers can pull from historical data to see how long certain repairs will take based on the type of damage or loss the insured reports.
  • Reduce fraud. Fraudulent claims increase costs, which increase premiums for all customers. By harnessing data from social media, insurers can identify fraudulent claims. Utilizing AI can also red flag cases that score high for fraudulent behavior.

Most insured don’t think about their insurance provider until they need to make a claim. How smoothly and quickly that claim processes play a significant role in customer satisfaction and retention. If your claims processes are frustrating customers or costing your insurance company business, Actec can help. Contact us to learn more about improving claims management.

How to Solve the Top 4 Challenges in Claim Status Inquiries

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October 7th, 2019

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Monitoring the status of a claim is important to ensure it funnels through the correct channels without time-consuming errors, denials, and more. However, providers often report that monitoring a claim’s status is a heavy burden as it takes up considerable time. While one claim only requires around 14 minutes and costs an estimated $7.12, medical providers made 737 million claim status inquiries by phone, fax, or partial electronic means in 2018 alone.

The following are the biggest hurdles for providers, practices, and billing teams when it comes to claim status inquiries:

  1. Manual inquiries are costly and time consuming. Looking at the statistics above, manual claim inquiries cost billions of dollars and took up millions of work hours.
  2. Claim status inquiries don’t yield actionable results. Many claims follow their course as they should, which means providers waste their time following up on claims that aren’t at risk of denial.
  3. There are often limits to how many inquiries a provider can place on one call. This means providers must make multiple inquiries, taking up even more time.
  4. Lack of visibility makes prioritization difficult. Providers can’t intrinsically know which claims offer the highest yield, which can mean they give unnecessary time and attention to lower priority claims.

The simplest way to shorten the amount of time and money spent on claim status inquiries is to automate the process. Compared to manual and partially electronic claims, fully autonomous claim status inquiries cost $1.89 per claim and only take up around five minutes of the provider’s time. This means with 100% electronic claim status inquiries, the healthcare industry could save as much as $2.6 billion per year.

Improving the claims process from start to finish not only improves customer satisfaction, but it also helps save time and money for the provider while boosting transaction rates for the insurer. Insurance companies will receive more claims on a faster timeline, which translates to more cash flow. To learn more about improving the claims handling process, contact the experts at Actec.

Notable Trends in First Notice of Loss

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February 11th, 2019

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Many changes are transpiring in first notice of loss. These trends are in the area of pricing, technology, customer behavior, regulation and staffing practices. Companies will have to adapt to survive.

Pricing
Companies need to balance reducing expenses against ROI of potential investments. This has become important due to the need for FNOL processes to be flexible, available on multiple channels, and responsive against the need to maintain profit margins in an environment where premium growth is slower.

Technology
Companies continue to seek better data analysis tools and predictive modeling in order to improve underwriting practices and detect fraud. Better technology is also important to reduce claims cost and increase consistency while providing access on more channels.

Customer Behavior
Connectivity is important to meet customer demand of better pricing, better customer service and increased accessibility. Companies need to be able to understand their customers better in order to enhance the FNOL experience, which is often a key touch point with customers.

Regulation
Since regulatory intervention and scrutiny is on the rise, companies need to increase key aspects of the FNOL Process:

  • Greater transparency
  • Improved reporting capabilities
  • Streamlining compliance processes

By being proactive when addressing multiple regulations, companies can eliminate the risk of fines and penalties due to compliance issues.

Staffing Practices
The aging workforce is leaving behind a skills gap that is difficult to fill. Most companies don’t have plans in place to meet their future staffing needs nor do they understand the intricacies of recruiting the millennial workforce. Businesses have to start creating recruiting policies today to ensure they have a skilled workforce that will be able to handle FNOL processes quickly and efficiently.
With the changes in pricing, technology, customer behavior, regulation and staffing practices, many businesses are finding it difficult to maintain an efficient FNOL process. Contact Actec today to learn how they can help you manage this vital customer touch point.

Popular FNOL Blogs

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December 11th, 2014

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First notice of loss is a crucial component of loss mitigation and claims management for a wide variety of medium to large-scale businesses. What does your notification and claims handling process look like? How actively engaged are you in your loss control and claims handling procedures?

Most businesses lose money simply by failing to pay enough attention to these important aspects of doing business in the 21st century. Read some of these popular FNOL blogs to learn more.

Outsourcing First Notice of Loss Solutions

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March 20th, 2013

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First notice of loss presents an area of great opportunities for many medium and large-scale businesses to improve their bottom line. Decreasing risk and shrink while increasing quality of life for employees is a trade-off where everyone wins. But if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it can be deceptively complex. Understanding the necessary protocols, staffing a facility with trained professionals, and following up on issues around the clock demands a skill set that most companies lack. For precisely this reason, the practice of outsourcing FNOL solutions is both a logical choice and a sound investment. Leveraging purpose-built professional call centers to field first notice of loss claim intake and handling allows businesses of many sizes to become more agile and adaptable.