Sales optimization through service excellence

Insurance companies’ exclusive sales organizations [AO; Ausschliesslichkeitsorganisationen] are facing challenges: The demographic development has given rise to a diminishing pool of potential new agents who can take on one-on-one communication with customers. At the same time, the service needs of existing customers are expanding as their expectations include individualized and proficient sales consulting. To close this gap, the company needed to have effective and high-quality telephony solutions in sales that assist with both customer acquisition and customer retention.

To ensure that agents have the maximum amount of one-on-one time with customers, the exclusive sales organization [AO] relies on support from GoBV: Agencies can select from various GoBV service packages to close the phone service gap, or they can sign up for additional lead nurturing.

The difference lies mainly in the service hours covered. GoBV's back-office telephony employees can process all calls going to an agency ⁠– not only calls from customers but also those from prospects, as well as personal, third-party, and corporate calls. In the best case, customer representatives convert the customer inquiries they handle for the AO into a sale.

GoBV also provides outbound calling services for the AO.

The previous software solution for back-office telephony, i.e., the routing and processing of customer calls by GoBV, originated from proprietary software development, was based on Microsoft's dot.net technology, and facilitated a basic mapping of individual process details by each agency. Soon, however, a problem arose: This solution provided little flexibility and was not scalable in terms of technology and industry specifics. On the technical side, the solution provided individualized process information for each agency, which at the time could be mapped for the small number of connected agencies – a small handful compared to today's number. All the same, the number of agencies rose steadily, and servicing them soon reached the technical limit. In addition to the technical constraints, there was an industry-specific limitation as well: Insurance processes are often complex, with necessary checks and dependencies at many steps, which must be taken into account when executing the processes.

However, the customer reps had only received one training session or were trained “on the job” in how to execute the processes; only rudimentary user guidance existed on the system side. Errors that were made also impacted the customers negatively. On the system side, a network of several peripheral systems, forming data silos due to a lack of interconnectedness, made the handling more difficult and created cumbersome process flows.

Since there are diverse agency types, the agencies’ processes are vastly different. The growing complexity of insurance processes and the increasing customer requirements in product sales consulting presented another difficulty: Practices such as grouping customers into different categories often varied from agency to agency, making it difficult to map accurate processes.

As a consequence, GoBV needed a technical solution that would make it possible to map and meet the diverse requirements of the individual agencies. In addition to being flexible and scalable, such a solution also had to ensure a high degree of process quality and reliability.

By selecting the BSI Customer Suite and the GoBOT App, GoBV decided on a state-of-the-art and flexible solution that centers on customer experience and sustainable sales consulting.

The web-based application makes it possible to design and manage processes individually by agency. The result? The service customers receive is top-notch because the products and services they are offered are specifically suited to them and because all necessary steps are managed in the background. At the same time, the BSI Customer Suite is seamlessly integrated into GoBV’s existing IT landscape and uses the existing data from the company’s existing systems. What played an essential part in GoBV’s decision in favor of the Customer Suite was the solution’s intuitive and configurable user interface, which makes it easy to use and enhances user acceptance. The well-thought-out release logic, combined with effective text creation automation, provides significant case-processing support. In essence, it was the multitude of essential benefits along with the innovative and customer-focused approach that made it possible for BSI to win over GoBV.

To make the BSI Customer Suite implementation easier for GoBV’s customer reps, Bearing-Point, the consulting company, and Gothaer Solutions GmbH, the in-house IT service provider, supported BSI and GoBV in this project. In addition to the needs analysis and rep training and support, this approach was to identify sales strengths, in particular, to ensure that the processes would be designed accordingly. The rollout was not only successful because of the step-by-step implementation but also thanks to the collective solution-oriented mindset of all partners involved, which is based on many years of collaboration. Bearing-Point, for instance, provided strong support in terms of configurations, release planning, and other concepts during the time-critical phase before the launch of the app.

The BSI Customer Suite’s flexible and modular architecture allowed the team to adapt it to Gothaer’s specific requirements and goals, thereby generating instant added value for GoBV and all agencies.

During this process, BearingPoint contributed its vast experience in the insurance industry and its expertise in state-of-the-art CRM solutions to support GoBV in the digital transformation of its service and sales processes. In the overall context of the partnership, support from GOSys also played a critical role in the success of the project. By the same token, Gothaer Solutions’ in-depth technical expertise with architecture and system logic similar to BSI’s, as well as the CTI integration were drivers of the successful implementation.

To use the system similarly for sales and service, the team first redesigned and configured a multitude of processes. With this new design, the team was able to identify many improvements to processes and process step dependencies, therefore ensuring more targeted and streamlined processes. When reps provide sales consulting to customers, the options require up to 500 steps, which must run parallel to it in the background. Therefore, it was critical that the solution would allow GoBV to handle the inquiries and concerns from customers and prospects efficiently and in an organized manner.

At the same time, BSI's solution puts the person at the center. As soon as Customer reps put themselves on “Ready” in the phone system, they are available to take calls. A VDN phone number is stored in the system for each agency: When a rep receives a call through this number, the system retrieves the relevant agency record. System users have the most up-to-date information at all times: How to answer the phone; whether they may handle existing customer inquiries and concerns only or those from new customers as well; which processes the agency has available to it; or essential information about the agency.

At any given time, customer reps can only view information that has actually been activated for them and that they may use. At the same time, the solution is suited for both service and sales activities: In addition to service requests such as data changes, customer reps can perform sales activities as well ⁠– and they can generate commissions by making sales during their consultations. As a matter of fact, since the rollout, GoBV’s customer reps have been able to close up to two-thirds of the inquiries and concerns they have handled for the AO with a sale.

One of the reasons is that the system supports its users with an assistant and is therefore almost self-explanatory thanks to meaningful fields and tile names. In addition, tooltips help with the proper handling of processes. With the support of this user guidance, GoBV ensures consistently top-notch customer service, which both customers and AO benefit from. The enhanced service quality is also reflected in the shorter processing time, which the company was able to reduce by a considerable proportion after the rollout with context-oriented technical support. For the customer reps, this means they have up to 38% more time to communicate with customers, which they can use for potential upselling and cross-selling. In addition, with the new BSI solution, reps can process multiple requests relating to different topics from a single call.

When a sales consulting call ends, the software creates an email for the relevant agency based on the rep’s earlier entries documenting the conversation. Not only does the subject line of this email state whether an action on the part of the agency is still required or whether the case has been closed: But in the future, this automatically generated email will even be saved in the CRM as a communication. Currently, this step is still done manually. Overall, new mandatory entries with additional information content, a clearer structure, and a large number of auto-texts have increased the quality level, and agencies greatly benefit from that.

The implementation of the BSI Customer Suite has also generated positive user feedback from a steadily rising number of GoBV reps who work on the system and service close to 400 agencies. In a survey, they were particularly positive about the instant availability of frequently used processes and essential information, as well as the speed at which they can assist customers with their inquiries and concerns. In addition, not only does the logic of only being able to view information that has been specifically activated ensure more security for users when they use the system, but it also ensures top-notch support for AO customers.

The two topics of industry specifics and flexible modification by configurative means were the focal points of Gothaer’s selection of the BSI Customer Suite. A large number of processes mapped for insurance companies were already part of the standard BSI Customer Suite ⁠– these processes can now be adapted or added to on an agency-specific basis.

The project also meant a new work approach for GoBV: Where the internal Gothaer Solutions GmbH previously created solutions for IT issues, the BSI Customer Suite approach relies on a low-code/no-code approach. This means that processes can be set up through configurations and without the IT department and/or programming skills. Users can now share ideas for improvement directly, which means that all processes can be implemented in-house; to date, more than 90 percent of changes have been implemented purely by way of configuration, indicating almost limitless scalability.

With its low-code/no-code configurability, in particular, the BSI Customer Suite provides extensive and prompt opportunities for enhancements based on industry-specific feedback. Going forward, the project team will continue to focus on the topic of sales and remain in constant dialogue with its contracting agencies.

The Gothaer Group is also considering relevant upgrades of other existing BSI systems to the latest BSI Customer Suite, for example, BSI CRM.