How workforce analytics can improve customer satisfaction – and the bottom line

Now that most life and annuity (L&A) insurance workers use computer systems to carry out their daily tasks, the opportunity for gathering insights into their work, scheduling, efficiency, and utilization is greatly increased. But while most L&A insurers use some kind of workforce analytics, they aren't using them to their full potential.

Call centers are a great example of business units that can benefit from workforce analytics. Supervisors often don't understand their call volume trends, so they don't have the right number of staff in place. And when they're persistently understaffed, they don't have time to train call center agents. Frustrated workers are poorly utilized, have the wrong targets, and leave quickly. Churn is expensive, and customers suffer – most of us have been left in a phone queue for a long time, only for an agent to put us on hold once again or fail to solve our problem.

When used properly, workforce analytics (WFA) can eliminate these issues. WFA can provide L&A insurers with game-changing insights that can improve their bottom line and enhance both worker and customer satisfaction. Genpact has developed a WFA solution that does just that.

Workforce analytics are widely used, but most of the available systems either display poor forecasting accuracy or can't help management make links between prediction and action — for example, what scheduling might work best or who might need more training. Insurers need systems that, at a minimum, help them improve efficiencies and the utilization of resources. And they need to be able to see what impact these improvements have on their net promoter scores (NPSs) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores – otherwise, improvements are meaningless.

Genpact takes a multipronged approach to workforce management analytics solutions. We understand that insurance executives want technology with a user-friendly interface that helps them to understand performance and trends. They don't want to have to dig through the details. They want consolidated data that they can easily model and analyze. And they want suggestions on how to better govern their workforce. To that end, our workforce management system offers:

• Resource forecasting driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning. This can develop and validate volume and work rate forecasts at intervals of your choice, meaning you can set meaningful targets
• Capacity planning and scheduling: The system ingests masses of data to develop shift plans and manage shift bids, alert you to staffing gaps and schedule challenges, and run schedule simulations covering various combinations. So you can be certain you have the right people in the right place at the right time
• A real-time command center: This allows management to respond to a working environment that's constantly changing. Instead of setting fixed benchmarks or immovable schedules, the real-time command center allows for staffing optimization insights across the day, reforested targets per trends, and root cause analysis when there's a performance or staffing issue
• Reporting and advanced analytics: Our system also allows management to deliver the best possible business outcomes by running detailed daily, weekly, and monthly reports. These reports mean that management has the right information to make key decisions about how best to utilize workers to serve customers. And workers get access to certain insights too, meaning they have more guidance to improve their service and to meet or exceed realistic targets. Regular quality assurance analytics means management also knows where and how agents can improve

Insurers that use our workforce management analytics system tell us that:

• They are better able to forecast (for example) call volumes, meaning they can schedule staff for high-volume times and days – so customers don't get stuck waiting on the line
• They have more insight into agent utilization and productivity, meaning they can set clearer targets and send workers where they're needed – so customers get a faster, better response
• Their customers have a better experience. Better-trained, well-utilized agents respond more quickly, boosting NPSs and CSAT scores

Genpact's WFA system brings together our powerful understanding of people, processes, and data to deliver a tailored technology solution that focuses on improving your performance, permanently.