For consumers and businesses alike, insurance is something you rarely think about — until something bad happens. Then suddenly, it's Priority 1. And when that time comes, the provider's ability to deliver a timely and positive customer experience can make or break its reputation, competitive standing and bottom line. The old mantra is true now more than ever: One Customer at a Time.

Over nearly four decades since its founding in 1988, Quincy, Mass.-based Arbella Insurance has earned a reputation among its customers and insurance agents for delivering exceptional customer service. With more than $1B in annual revenue and over $2B in assets, Arbella is a provider of both personal and commercial property and casualty insurance across New England.

Everyone at Arbella — from executive leadership to contact center management to front-line agents — takes pride in providing responsive, personalized, exceptional customer experiences to customers when they need it. But over the years, as customer expectations evolved, Arbella faced the challenge of modernization in several areas intersecting its contact center:

• Some customers had inconsistent experiences across communication channels including voice, email and chat.
• Break points in data capture, synthesis and analysis across multiple backend systems, making it challenging to deliver accurate data-based decisions.
• IVR, chat and internal messaging technologies that were redundant or nearing end-of-life.
• Lack of automation in gathering and assessing CX insights.
• Understanding how AI could accelerate efficiency and CX outcomes.
• The need to modernize an overall IT application architecture built on point-to-point solutions.

"It's essential to have the right processes, training and technical tools in place to maintain the high standards customers have come to expect from us," said Karin Martin, Assistant VP of Operations at Arbella. "Our passionate employees are at the heart of delivering this service, so it's critical we have the right technology to support them, along with leaders who are well-equipped and trained to assist.

Arbella management knew there were many improvements to make. They also recognized they couldn't make them all at once and needed a roadmap to tackle transformation in phases. But where to start? Their first step was to commission the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals, to conduct an independent assessment of baseline strengths and areas of needed improvement.

ICMI conducted a Customer Experience Health Check, a comprehensive assessment of how its contact center was performing relative to industry benchmarks. Internally this was called "Phase 0" of the project, because it identified what needed to be done — but not how to do it. Based on a rigorous standard honed over 40 years, and pressure-tested by thousands of contact center organizations, ICMI's Health Check assessed Arbella's capabilities across 10 best practice areas.

"We needed to understand our current standing versus contact centers across various industries," said Martin. "ICMI concluded Arbella was performing at an average level compared to our peer group. The assessment shined a spotlight on what we needed to address, and in what order."

With ICMI's input, Arbella tackled its strategic transformation in three phases, using a crawl-walk-run approach: Phase 1 (2022-23) involved implementing improvements to workforce management; Phase 2 (2023-24) focused on the consolidation of backend systems supporting customer experience; and Phase 3, currently in progress, involves the implementation of a CCaaS system and omni-channel AI.

In Phase 1, ICMI helped Arbella reorganize, consolidate and cross-train their contact center teams, implement new policies for managing time off, improve forecasting and reduce agent turnover, while maintaining an employee-centric culture aligned with the company's core values. The combination of new policies and processes resulted in a reduction in annual costs and a 20% improvement in service levels.

In Phase 2, ICMI worked with Arbella to define requirements and scope for consolidating

multiple RFPs for contact center software (CCaaS and UCaaS) and office systems (Office 365) into a single procurement process. This helped Arbella shave 6 months off its procurement cycle, saving hundreds of hours and tens-of-thousands in labor costs required for project management and requirements documentation.

In Phase 3, Arbella turned to ICMI to help build a strategy for connecting the contact center and office staff systems, and build a foundation for omni-channel AI. ICMI provided guidance on rolling out the new CCaaS system across Arbella's contact center and instituted ITSM best practices and AI training suggestions.

Across the three phases, with ICMI's guidance, Arbella has achieved savings totaling over $1.7M. The company's 2025-2028 outlook is now among the most modern operating environments in insurance contact centers.