1. Introduction

    This leading auto insurance company specializes in providing property and casualty auto insurance in the United States. Their goal is to provide affordable car insurance with low down payments and affordable monthly installments so that everyone can have access to a good auto insurance policy.

    Their company is built on a customer service philosophy and strives to provide caring, professional, knowledgeable, responsible, and dedicated customer service to help make insurance affordable to every driver, no matter what their situation. With a large segment of their customer base being Hispanic, they also wanted to provide customer service in their customer’s language of choice.

  2. The Challenge

    The auto insurance company utilized agents in their in-house contact center in the U.S., which was quite expensive. In addition, they did not have any Spanish-speaking agents to communicate with their growing Hispanic customer base. They knew customer service was critical to their company’s success, and they knew they needed to keep costs down to continue providing affordable auto insurance. They needed to make a change.

    The auto insurance company searched for six months to find an outsourced contact center partner with specific experience in the auto insurance industry. They also wanted to find a partner that could provide bilingual customer service agents to service both English and Spanish customers. And finally, they were searching for a vendor that would help them lower their operating costs while continuing to provide excellent customer service.

  3. Solution

    The auto insurance company ultimately chose Centris to support its customer service needs for three main reasons. First, Centris has vast experience providing customer service to the auto insurance industry. They understand how to handle all of the various contacts related to the auto insurance industry and how to handle sensitive calls when someone has been in an accident.

    Second, with Centris’ contact centers in Mexico, they would have an experienced group of agents that could provide customer service in both English and Spanish. And finally, with the nearshore contact center model, they would instantly see a substantial reduction in their operating costs.

  4. The Approach

    The auto insurance company wanted to take things slow and try Centris on a smaller scale before moving forward. Initially, Centris would train 25 agents for 30-45 days to handle first notice of loss calls. The representative from the auto insurance company noticed the Centris agents brought a passion for their job that had been lacking in their previous agents. The Centris agents prioritized the customer experience and took the time to empathize and connect with the customer during the conversation.

  5. The Result

    • After only 90 days of providing first notice of loss support, the company requested 20 additional Centris agents.

    • The customer service functions included entering new customer information and processing payments. For the next several months, agents were added to support more of the company’s customer needs. What started as 25 agents has grown to 120.

    • It is expected the insurance company will double the services Centris provides over the next 18 months.

    • Additionally, Centris will begin to monitor QA for the company’s internal contact centers across the U.S.

  6. Summary

    Centris provides bilingual customer service agents with experience in the auto insurance industry to this company for 50% less than what they had previously paid. The auto insurance company was able to achieve 3-million-dollar in savings by moving some of their U.S.-based contact center work to Centris’ nearshore contact centers in Mexico in just the 1st year!

    Centris agents brought passion and expertise to the job, which impressed the company during the initial testing phase. They decided to add more Centris agents to cover more customer service functions.

    Auto Insurance Industry Case Study