Original Publication: Customer Management Insight - March 2009
The contact center for NTUC Income, a Singapore insurance company, has a lot to brag about. To win the “Best of the Best in Customer Service” award in the recent 2008 Contact Center World Awards, the center had to compete with organizations from all industries across the globe (including the largest mutual life insurer, also a Fortune 100 company in the U.S).
Bolstering the 400-seat center’s customer service performance is its innovative use of technology, for which it won the “Best of the Best” award at the same competition two years ago. Its contact center technology solutions are all developed inhouse, and it is one of the very few companies that do not rely on an interactive voice response system (IVR).
“We are in the people business,” says Pauline Low, head of the NTUC Income Contact Centre. “This means that strong emphasis has to be placed on building relationships and meeting customers needs. We know that many people like to speak to a human without hassle, and this is a basic requirement if we aim for personalized customer service delivery.”
Customers who contact the center want prompt advice, a solution or are in distress following a car accident. Without an IVR, they speak directly to a person [NTUC’s agents bear the title customer service officer, or CSO] who greets them by name in their preferred language equipped with right skill-set to service their needs effectively. “As a result, 98 percent of customers are satisfied with our services rendered — first time, every time,” says Low.
Universal CSOs (trained in modules to man different hotlines) handle calls, emails, SMS, Webchat, and video/co-browsing through eKiosks. Customers are routed to the appropriate CSO through dynamic skill routing.
The NTUC contact center has developed a dynamic IT Infrastructure in driving operational excellence by enhancing frontline automation with Intelligent Computer Telephony Integration (iCTI) and Single Customer View. When a customer calls the hotline, the agent, or customer service officer (CSO), gets an auto pop-up of the caller’s profile, policy listing and transaction histories before they answer the call. “We delight our customer by wishing them happy birthday if it falls within the same month,” says Low.
Intelligent Use of Technology
Single-user interface (SUI) and single sign-on (SSO) gives CSOs easier access and processing to various corporate back end systems for most common transactions. Moreover, 20 percent of most commonly performed transactions are simplified for a one-click completion.
NTUC CSOs can also rely on the straight-through electronic processing (STEP) system for paperless and expeditious processing of a policy application and endorsement. With their Instant Messaging/ICQ and soft phone, the customer service team has in-the-seat access for supervisory guidance or specialist team advice. To further improve customer service, all transaction types are recorded for productivity and quality analysis, coaching and improvements analysis.
Development Partnership
Given the volume of contacts (7,000 per day), routing customers to the appropriate CSO who can handle their particular issue in their preferred language is a big challenge.
NTUC Income worked with a vendor to develop its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and open standard systems featuring an auto CTI pop-up of customer profiles before the CSO picks up the phone, a 360-degree customer view that engages a knowledgeable conversation with customers, multi-dimension skill routing to match an appropriate CSO to the right customer, one-click completion to increase staff productivity, SOA heart beat alerts to supervisors and managers for any critical issue or event. Multimedia radar provides a panoramic view of customer traffic in all touch points in real time for visual surveillance. Virtual contact centers boost staff recruitment and retention. A robust continuity plan offers protection from catastrophic events. And the STEP system offers end-to-end automation for customers.
“Unlike a pizza delivery call center,” says Low, “we are handling more complex products and services. Our goal is to resolve at least 95 percent of customers’ queries within a single call. The remaining five percent should be resolved by a return call from us, usually within two hours. The combination of SOA Web services and open standards has allowed NTUC Income’s back end system to interoperate, integrate and increase its speed of meeting customers’ needs.”
Low says the technology innovations have moved the contact center from cost leader to revenue generator. Intelligent Active Scripts — dynamic sales scripts based on customer profiles and available campaigns — increases the chances of successful cross-selling. Furthermore, the center’s Launchpad Campaign Management, which is available to all insurance agents and CSOs, allows the creation of leads in the CRM database for end-to-end monitoring and closure.
To maintain service quality, NTUC Income customers receive customer satisfaction surveys via real-time SMS and IVR, which allows for a fast feedback loop for service level at individual CSO levels. On top of that, its voice recording and retrieval functionalities allow supervisors to rate service delivery and recipients to access the ratings and comments for further learning and improvement.
The IT infrastructure allows the capture of rich data at various key touch points to allow sophisticated business modeling, such as customer behavioral patterns, and analysis. Insights are generated from the modeling and analysis to form the basis for action plans for continuous improvement. “We are gradually achieving that by improving customer satisfaction, increasing productivity, growing revenue and cultivating continuous learning,” says Low.
NTUC’s CIO oversees the Information Technology and Customer Division (home to the contact center) and chaired the CRMII committee involving key stakeholders, such as the contact center, branch servicing, business managers, direct distribution, information management and the technology vendor. Committee meetings feature discussions on the progress of existing and new initiatives, implementation and learning points.
Moving forward, NTUC Income plans to transform all its branches into contact centers, ensuring consistency in customer experience and service levels at all touch points. It will complement this with real-time monitoring and coaching via its integrated command centre to facilitate immediate service recovery, as well as developing contact centers and hot-desking agents to create a more flexible and scalable workforce.
NTUC Income at a Glance
LOCATION: Singapore
HOURS OF OPERATION: 24 x 7 x 365
NUMBER OF AGENTS: 400
SERVICES PROVIDED: The contact center provides a hassle-free service pertaining to enquiries, servicing and sales, for the composite insurer’s life and general insurance business.
CHANNELS HANDLED: Phone, email, SMS, Webchat, VOIP (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil languages)
NUMBER OF CONTACTS HANDLED: 7,000 contacts/day from 2.3 million customer base.
NOTABLE: With a long list of prestigious awards, the center excels in overall service and technology offerings/innovations, having won gold status in these categories in Contact Center World’s 2008 competition.