Standfirst Limited in-house IT skills led Abbey Insurance
Brokers to use managed services for its call centre monitoring and
recording systems, which were introduced to ensure it conformed
with new financial regulations.
As part of its efforts to comply with the new legislation, Abbey
Insurance Brokers decided to introduce monitoring applications to
ensure calls coming into its 14 high street branches and two call
centres were being routed effectively and handled as quickly as
possible, no matter where they originated from. It also ensured
that such activities could be audited to demonstrate
compliance.
A second call-recording system was likewise deemed necessary to
ensure staff supplied customers with accurate information and to
provide a mechanism to assess training requirements. But the
challenge, according to Brenda Houston, compliance and operations
partner at the firm, was that “we only have three IT staff out of
an organisation of 225 and they mostly run reports and manage new
agents going onto the system. They wouldn’t have known how to
implement and manage projects
of this size.”
So after taking on BT to provide consultancy, Abbey decided to
purchase systems that the vendor had developed for it and to have
it undertake day-to-day running and maintenance of them.
Because the applications are based at Abbey’s head office in
Carrickfergus, County Antrim in Northern Ireland, the vendor deals
with such tasks remotely, but does provide on-site engineers, if
required. Houston concludes: “The new technology has helped us to
increase our business – by about 25% –since it went in because we
can actively ensure that customers are dealt with effectively. We
know to
bring more staff into the system during busy times and our staff
training has improved, so this has greatly increased the
productivity and efficiency of the business.”