Experian Insurance Services (EIS) is a broker that works with more than 40 different insurance carriers. They enable consumers to get fast and accurate quotes from dozens of major insurance providers on a single platform. Formerly Gabi, Experian acquired the company for $320M in November 2021 to provide a better online insurance shopping experience for their customer base.
As an InsurTech specializing in the digital insurance shopping experience, EIS previously had no way for prospective customers to engage with the company online if they needed assistance at any point in the quoting process. The only interaction channel available to customers was dial-in phone calls, creating a fragmented experience that required the consumer to disengage from their on-screen journey.
EIS, still Gabi at the time, knew it wanted to provide chat for its online shopping experience. So they began initially looking for a vendor that could enable them to deploy chat, but along the way, they realized the digital experience could extend far beyond basic chat.
At the beginning of 2021, EIS selected Glia for its robust Digital Customer Service platform that creates a ChannelLess™ experience for customers, enabling them to seamlessly move between channels to complete their journey online.
“It came down to what was that seamless customer experience,” said Kristen Main, Director of Agency Operations for EIS. “We loved the fact that you could go from chat to voice, that you could see the customer’s experience. The CoBrowsing functionality to really help customers through our online experience. That to us was something we didn’t see with the other companies and we felt like that was really good for the customer experience as well as the employee experience.”
EIS realized the need to roll out Digital Customer Service to its customers, however, it opted to first move its phone system to Glia. Its sales agents had no prior chat experience and they were all tied to their direct phone numbers, so rolling out Glia Call Center first made the most sense. When EIS introduced chat a few months later, the implementation was seamless as the reps benefitted from working out of a single system for phone and digital.
When EIS first launched chat in 2021, they saw about 350 chats per month. Fast forward to 2023 and EIS now handles approximately 13,000 chats per month, a more efficient and cost effective form of support that simultaneously meets its customers where they are.
To further optimize its staffing and digital strategy, EIS knew it wanted to deploy a chatbot that would help answer common inquiries and lower the number of calls and chats requiring human assistance. Instead of introducing a chatbot at the same time as chat, though, EIS opted to continue with its phased approach. The organization waited and learned from the data it was collecting from the chats to better understand what customers were asking for to build a better, more informed chatbot for launch.
Through the first seven months of 2023, the chatbot has handled approximately 9,000 chats, saving the company more than 1,700 hours of FTE work. As a result of shifting its interaction mix from 100% phone to now handling tens of thousands of interactions via chat, AI and other digital channels, the company has realized approximately $2 million in effective savings since 2021 based on the average cost savings per interaction.
With phone, digital, and AI managed through Glia, EIS is able to more efficiently and effectively serve its customer base. While its goal is to deflect as many chats with the chatbot as possible, EIS focuses on when a customer needs human assistance, getting that individual to the right queue at the right time.
With the data captured behind the scenes, EIS is able to direct inquiries to the right team, minimizing the number of transfers. This has allowed EIS to achieve a high rate of first contact resolution and reduce the average handle time by cutting out wasted time transferring customers.
The deployment of chat, OnScreen Voice, and CoBrowsing has been particularly impactful in engaging customers in the sales funnel. By monitoring customer tendencies through Glia’s Live Observation feature, EIS has determined high friction points in its online application process.
While Main has shared some of these application sticking points with her developers to better optimize the application, certain questions can’t be tweaked or removed as they’re required for underwriting purposes.
One of those questions—occupation—is a common area where Main said she often observed consumers scrolling up and down through the drop down unsure of how they should respond. They’ve made some UI adjustments, alphabetizing the list, but she says many consumers still just aren’t sure how EIS would categorize their job. This is an instance in the application where EIS has elected to serve up the Glia “Let’s Talk!” bubble, reassuring consumers that there’s someone available to help if needed.
Through the data they’ve collected and their observations, they’ve determined the ideal times within the application process to serve the proactive bubble—either by page or amount of time without activity. For example, if someone filling out the application has paused on a question for 15 seconds, EIS can leverage business rules to surface the chat bubble, alerting the consumer that they can engage digitally to have their question resolved.
An added benefit with Glia’s ChannelLess™ platform is the ability for customers to seamlessly transition from a chat to OnScreen Voice without disengaging or being transferred to a different representative. Main said it’s common that a consumer will begin a chat engagement but begin seeking coverage advice, which is much easier and more efficient for both parties to discuss via audio, rather than chat.
By unifying digital and phone interactions with Glia, EIS has been able to gain valuable data-driven insights to drive new efficiencies with its approach to staffing the different interaction channels.
Initially, all service-related inquiries were being directed to EIS’s licensed support team. However, they determined many of those calls were billing related, which could be handled by an unlicensed team, freeing up the licensed agents to handle more high-impact interactions where a licensed agent is required.
The insights tab within Glia’s reporting has enabled Main to see how many people she may need on a given day or even at a given hour by call volumes to more efficiently staff each queue.
EIS has also made a concerted effort to cross-train its staff across multiple channels. The organization previously had a dedicated digital team for chat and email, and a separate team taking phone calls. Now, they’re training support staff to be able to handle email, phone, and chats.
On the sales side, EIS had a team behind the scenes assisting on quotes, but they were not interacting with customers at all. Because they’ve determined the bulk of chats are related to sales and quoting, they’re now upskilling this team on the platform so that EIS’s service team is no longer acting as the intermediary between the customer and the quoting team, driving new efficiencies for the business.
“The benefit is expanding knowledge and expertise across multiple teams. We’re breaking down barriers between sales ops and service,” Main said. “What we’re really doing is helping the customer no matter what and so we’re really looking at how we can skill everybody across the board.”
