Picking the right roadside assistance service provider
When disaster strikes, your roadside assistance partner needs to be able to respond quickly.
As insurance businesses close the books on another devastating hurricane season, it is again time to assess losses, plan for the next season, and evaluate opportunities to minimize future claims costs.
When such disasters strike, policyholders expect insurance agents to be by their side during the aftermath. But how can insurers ensure their service partners are able to meet those same expectations?
A hurricane or other significant event that causes a business outage is not the time to discover whether or not a partner has planned for the worst and can quickly scale services to meet increased demand.
Why the right partner matters
This is especially true in the case of an insurer’s roadside assistance service provider — a company that, very literally, must be able to help policyholders anywhere, any time, and whose services can greatly impact overall customer satisfaction.
Roadside could be last on an agency’s list of partners to review for their ability to maintain service continuity. But when a policyholder’s car breaks down, that individual expects immediate attention, and roadside assistance providers need to respond quickly. And, because a request for roadside help can often be a policyholder’s first and perhaps only contact with an agent, the roadside event can become a defining moment for the driver’s brand experience.
As a matter of course, agents and agencies should expect that their roadside coverage partner emphasizes business continuity as a top priority, ensuring they can be there for policyholders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — rain or shine. As an extension of their brand and acting on the agency’s behalf, a partner must also provide a seamless and consistent customer experience. When a localized outage occurs, ensuring coverage for policyholders nationwide is not significantly impacted is paramount.
With this in mind, agents and carriers should hold their roadside assistance partners to the same high standards they strive to deliver to policyholders. But what does that mean in practice?
No. 1: Plan for the worst.
For starters, proper planning must be in place; a business outage is no time for on-the-job training. Full operational redundancy, specially-trained customer service associates, and connectivity to emergency services are important. As is the historical expertise to understand outage scenarios and anticipate the worst. A roadside assistance partner should also factor fluctuating call volumes into staffing plans. If the company has too few associates available, the result is often a stressful environment for employees and an unsatisfactory experience for drivers waiting on hold.
When an outage interrupts normal operation, protocols, policies and procedures should already be in place, developed from prior experience in similar situations, to maintain service continuity.
No. 2: Foster the ability to rapidly scale services.
In addition, it would be wise to verify that a roadside assistance provider has the capabilities to scale services quickly to meet shifting demand. A good question to ask is, “What happens to service when customer calls must be quickly rerouted?” Requests for roadside help can number in the tens of thousands of calls a day. If one contact center goes down, other fully-redundant centers must be able to take those calls.
To pull off that uninterrupted service, IT infrastructure must be in place to seamlessly transfer call volume that would typically come into the downed contact center to other geographic locations to avoid interruption in service. The ability to quickly scale roadside assistance services in the remaining centers to meet increased demand means that an outage in the Midwest won’t affect policyholders in Florida, for instance.
No. 3: Focus on employees, so they can take care of policyholders.
Lastly, in a driver’s most urgent time of need, it’s important to consider the human condition and recognize that human empathy is just as vital as technological enablement. Customer satisfaction surveys typically find that in a stressful event, consumers appreciate the human connection.
That personal touch must be a conscious goal, not an aspirational hope. Investments in continuous training as well as growth and development opportunities for contact center associates its vital. At the same time, a solid partner will equip associates with dynamic customer relationship tools and innovative omni-channel capabilities that give drivers freedom to seek help via their preferred communication method.
Additionally, a company that rewards empathy, curiosity and initiative will help contact center associates feel empowered to successfully handle the wide range of roadside and accident calls received — and stay cool under pressure. Allowing contact center associates to become a driver’s ‘hero’ in their moments of need reflects positively on your brand.
Moving on down the road
It is easy to forget that roadside assistance is likely to be the first — and, in some cases, only — interaction your policyholder may have with you. As such, roadside assistance has the potential to be one of the most powerful contributors to your policyholder’s overall satisfaction and retention.
When you have a partner that successfully plans for unexpected business downtime, rapidly scales services in a time of need and focuses on employees so they can take care of policyholders, you will be able to effectively convert moments of stress into moments of trust even during an outage.
George Horvat is chief operating officer at Agero, where he’s responsible for the company’s network and contact center functions. To reach Horvat, send email to AgeroConnect@agero.com
These opinions are the author’s own.
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