Sterling Insurance is a company that offers a wide range of services
From brokerage to help people find the right policy and price for their car and van insurance, through to its Goodwood Classic Solutions that provides insurance to owners of classic cars. Meanwhile, Just Kampers Insurance has been providing specialist campervan insurance for over 20 years.
The hub for connecting with existing and future policyholders is Sterling Insurance’s contact centre in the historic market town of Bishops Stortford, on the Essex border.
A key element in converting prospects into policyholders is the ability to engage with them as soon as possible after they express an interest, whether that is requesting a callback directly from the Sterling Insurance website, or via an aggregator site. With the company experiencing high demand, ensuring every potential customer receives a well-timed call was proving to be a challenge. Its incumbent dialling system was preventing them from being able to redial a number if initially unsuccessful in speaking with the potential customer.
The solution to the company’s dialling challenges came in the form of Mitel’s MiContact Center Outbound, provided by VSL, a Mitel Silver Solutions Partner and business connectivity specialist, who have been working with the Broker for more than 15 years. A part of the wider Mitel MiContact Center suite, the outbound solution provides highly advanced predictive dialling, call scripting, CRM and extensive campaign management technology from Noetica.
Noetica is a branded Mitel OEM solution provider and a Platinum Preferred MSA Partner. This multi award-winning British company develops software products for the global contact centre market and has been active within the insurance industry for more than 20 years.
Floor Manager at Sterling Insurance, Peter Cook, has been with the company for 28 years and manages a 100 strong sales team, as well as 40 people working in the renewals team. He explains:
“We are now able to identify and prioritise calls based on their urgency and aim to respond to the hot leads we receive from aggregators very quickly, sometimes with-in minutes”
Peter Cook, Floor Manager at Sterling Insurance.
Cook also notes how the system has enabled the company to implement a call recycling strategy: “Now, if an outbound call is not successfully connected it is automatically recycled and rescheduled to be automatically dialled again.”
This much improved response time and call recycling strategy has enabled the company to achieve a massive uplift in its figures, as Cook shared in an example: “An aggregator provides us with contact information in an instance where we are positioned first and second in policy searches made by customers, by being quicker to respond and making a competitively priced offer we have been able to win more business.”
As well as transforming outbound dialling, the company is taking advantage of Noetica’s Interaction Studio. Basic ‘scripts’ have now been replaced by a comprehensive yet intuitive interface that every agent uses to guide them step-by-step through every interaction, to achieve the best possible outcomes. “It has not only added a greater level of professionalism to our operations, by displaying the specific scripted app with accompanying branding relevant to the call but has also boosted the trust our affiliates have in the consistent high-quality of our customer engagement,” adds Cook.
Another area that Noetica’s campaign management functionality has improved is the confidence the contact centre manager has in the company’s strict adherence to its rules relating to abandoned rates, call holding and wait times etc. In fact, since implementing its new outbound solution, Sterling Insurance has more than doubled the number of calls it attempts to make each month and this can scale even greater during the winter when demand is at its greatest.
Since the pandemic, the company has introduced a hybrid working initiative that affords its employees the ultimate flexibility to choose where and when they work. The new system supports this approach, with staff being given a laptop and softphone through which they securely log on, access the system and receive calls automatically routed to them directly from the dialler. Cook adds: “We have also seen an increase in staff motivation, efficiency and performance, not only through being more progressive in our approach to working practises, but also through our improved ability to connect them with people eager to have better conversations and ready to purchase a new policy.” Cook concludes:
“The difference between how we operate today, compared to before is truly night and day. It really is a fantastic system.”
