With the influx of new regulations, increased customer expectations, and heightened market competition – it’s not surprising that the wider insurance market is battling new challenges in a fast-paced world. With the launch of the FCA’s new Consumer Duty just around the corner, keeping customers at the heart of products and services while maintaining compliance is all the more vital. I’ve seen first-hand how speech analytics can help to effectively deliver the experience customers deserve, yet only 12% of insurers actually use analytics technology to monitor customer interactions.

A step towards effective compliance

As Head of Desk for our Property Claims division, I’ve heard my fair share of ethical questions about speech analytics and seen a raised eyebrow or two in the past. After all, a person’s voice is a very personal thing, and speech analytics will pick up tone, pauses, emphases, speed and keywords, and use this data to provide a business with the bigger picture. Despite these concerns, speech analytics plays a key role in improving the overall claims experience for customers while adhering to all regulations. It helps identify any problems and address them, at pace through agent quality monitoring and call scoring. Speech analytics can also uncover best practices to help shape more effective employee training programmes.

Cracking down on fraud

The last few years has seen a rise in fraudulent claims. In 2021 alone, suspicion of claims containing a potential element of misrepresentation or fraud rose to 20% (businesswire, 2022). Understanding how potentially fraudulent calls are flagged and handled by claims handlers in real-time is paramount. Using speech analytics, not only can the handler understand that the claim may not be legitimate whilst they’re still on the phone, but data from these calls can be collected and analysed to pinpoint trends.

It’s all about customer happiness

Let’s face it, customers are in the driving seat, we know that they switch insurance provider at policy renewal if they’re not happy with their claims experience. Knowing what our handlers are saying is therefore vital. By monitoring all calls, mistakes are flagged straight away, giving our team leaders the opportunity to rectify where things haven’t gone to plan and turn a potential negative claims experience around.

Since the deployment of speech analytics, we have greater control of our customers experiences too as our handlers are given the right support through the analysis of their calls. We also use the technology to pinpoint where our team members have gone above and beyond for the customer.

Be ahead of the curve

Across our insurance industry, only 1 in 20 calls are monitored for quality and compliance – and many insurers are missing out on the opportunity to improve their customers’ claims experience. By adopting speech analytics, insurers open the door to better insight and can identify areas of improvement – retaining more customers and avoiding regulatory fines.

To find out more on how we’ve implemented speech analytics into our claims operation, please get in touch with our Head of Desk for property claims, Laura Harvey at laura.harvey@davies-group.com.