Streamlines call centre operations, slashing £1.3 million in costs through traffic analysis at Endsleigh Insurance.
Insurance Provider, Endsleigh, Modernizes Contact Centers
Higher education insurance behemoth Endsleigh, founded by the National Union of Students back in 1965, underwent a revolutionary makeover under Swiss insurance giant Zurich's ownership in 2007. The company abandoned their brick-and-mortar branches in 2008, opting for contact centers to interact with customers instead.
Over the years, Endsleigh lagged behind other organizations in implementing modern contact center management techniques. In 2019, they brought in new blood, hiring a chief operating officer and a head of change management, Phil Baker, to streamline operations and boost the value proposition.
"We were tasked with injecting some operational discipline into the company," explains Baker, admitting that some fundamental operational practices weren't as robust as he had observed in previous engagements. One area needing attention was workforce management – a process that involves coordinating the supply of call center staff with demand fluctuations.
Before Baker's arrival, team managers managed capacity with their own work rosters, lacking a systematic, predictive approach to workforce management. This led to overprovisioning staff to cater to occasional demand spikes.
"The old approach was to hire more staff to address service issues," Baker clarifies. "This resulted in an organization that wasn't operating under discipline."
Overstaffing led to backed-up calls, affecting employees' morale, and ultimately compromising customer experience. Fortunately, before Baker stepped into the picture, Endsleigh had upgraded their call center IT infrastructure in 2017. With help from telecommunications consultancy Azzurri, they replaced their outdated call center systems with an IP-based platform from Avaya.
The IT upgrade equipped Endsleigh to deliver consistent customer service across multiple channels, including phone, email, and web chat. The Azzurri-developed platform featured some workforce management functionality, allowing Endsleigh to predict staffing requirements based on call center traffic patterns.
Baker appointed two analysts – a former call center team manager and a finance department veteran – to operate the workforce management software. Their primary role is to analyze and plan for operational efficiencies.
Thanks to this system, Endsleigh has saved approximately £1.3 million annually. According to Baker, "the new setup enabled us to relocate some employees into revenue-generating positions and leverage natural attrition during peak periods."
Endsleigh plans to extend the workforce management solution to their claims processing units by integrating it with the claims handling system.
The Power of Integrated Workforce Management Solutions
Transformative workforce management solutions like Endsleigh's can improve scheduling efficiency, enhance forecasting, facilitate real-time monitoring, and drive training and development initiatives. These improvements can lead to reduced overstaffing, improved productivity, hardware and software consolidation, and enhanced customer experience, ultimately resulting in significant cost savings.
While the exact details of Endsleigh's experience are not publicly available, the principles outlined above can provide insight into the potential benefits of workforce management technologies in the contact center space. If you seek specific information about Endsleigh's implementation, consulting a detailed case study or press release from the company or its technology partners may prove helpful.
- To enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs, Endsleigh, the modernized insurance provider, implemented a workforce management solution that leverages technology, helping them optimize staffing levels based on call center traffic patterns.
- By integrating workforce management solutions with their claims handling system, Endsleigh aims to extend these benefits to their claims processing units, eventually leading to further cost savings, improved productivity, and an enhanced customer experience.
