Allianz Global Assistance - Contact Center of the Year

Company: Allianz Global Assistance, Richmond, VA
Company Division/Group: Allianz Partners
Company Description: Allianz Global Assistance is a worldwide provider of travel insurance and assistance with offices in 34 countries and is owned by Allianz, one of the world’s largest financial service companies. In the U.S., the company insures 21 million customers annually and employs more than 600 associates in its Richmond, VA headquarters. Our mission is in our motto: How Can We Help?
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Contact Center of the Year (Over 100 Seats) - Financial Services Industries

Nomination Title: Allianz Partners USA - Contact Center of the Year

Briefly describe the nominated team: its history and past performance (up to 200 words):

2020 has been a unique and challenging year for a Contact Center that is focused on helping travelers. Not only was travel upended by the Coronavirus emergency, we were simultaneously forced to evacuate hundreds of our Contact Center team members from our Richmond, VA headquarters to working from home. Fortunately, despite the fact that our Contact Center team was forced to navigate an unprecedented situation while quickly relocating, they rose to the occasion and continued to provide outstanding service to our customers.

Outline the team's achievements since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):

Our Contact Center is divided into several teams that are focused on helping customers interacting with different parts of our business. Here are some highlights from twoof our teams:

Travel Retail:

We cross trained associates during the pandemic, providing them with the ability to learn new skills and giving the organization added flexibility during an unprecedented situation. This cross training of our associates involved all lines of our business, including those that had not previously interacted.

We created opportunities for feedback allowing for process improvements, instituted departmental focus groups, divisional "voice of associate" bi-monthly sessions and team meetings.

Due to changes in enviroment the working environment caused by COVID-19, traditional work schedules required an additional level of flexibility, so we introduced nonscheduled breaks and lunches and 4 to 10 hour shifts for some associates.

We created a new mentoring program which provided guidance to new associates and we instituted new and fun activities via video meetings such as BINGO, contests, coffeee break meetings with associates and show-n-tell in order to maintain camaraderie while the office was closed.

Travel Claims:

We developed a new prioritization process to speed processing of claims and reduce our claimsbacklog and added additional associates to the queue to obtain state licenses which would provide us with added flexibility. We also added focus groups that identified process improvements and helped eliminate inefficient practices.

Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the team's past performance (up to 250 words):

In our Bankcard Benefits Department, we rolled out a client-sponsored incentive to win gift cards that reflected excellence in claim handling and notation of calls. We created staff engagement calendars that included contest, treats, potlucks and community service opportunities.

Our Quality Team instituted their "Kudos Call" process which aims to highlight associates' "wow" moments that happen during a call. If a Quality Specialist hears something great while evaluating a call, they will email the call to the Qualithy Assurance Team Leader. Here's their process:

-If the Quality Specialist hears a great interaction - (an interaction can be a portion of the call where the customer received outstanding service or a difficult situation was skillfully resolved), then the specialist will write a brief summary of the interaction. This write-up is then emailed to the associates supervisors.

-The Quality Assurance Team Leader then issues 5 "Bravo" points to the associate for outstanding sevice, and these points can later be redeemed for gift cards or merchandise from our recognition platform.

The Quality team implemented this process in 2019 to recognize associates more frequently as they provide extraordinary customer service. We've continued it this year as we encourage and motivate associates and recognize exemplary service and commitment to our customers.

Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):

We have a customer-centric culture that consistently delivers on high expectations for exemplary customer service through rigorous quality assurance, flawless assistance and seamless execution. We focus on continuous process improvement and are dedicated to maintaining an agile environment.

We use sophisticated tools to measure and track customer experience. Among those tools is a continuous Voice of Customer (VoC) program that provides real-time research and actionable insights on customer pain points, preferences and market opportunities. We monitor over 28,000 calls every year to constantly gauge our success and find innovative ways to improve what we do.

In order to better understand our customers’ preferences, we survey more than 20,000 customers each week and obtain insights using Qualtrics, a leading software program used to measure customer satisfaction. The company also monitors phone interactions with customers through a speech analytics tool from Verint and uses the results to train frontline associates to deliver outstanding customer service.

Our latest customer surveys show a year- to-date customer satisfaction level of 96%, which is extremely high and nearly perfect. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) of +77 is virtually unheard of in the insurance industry where the average NPS score is +55.https: //www.npsbenchmarks.com/industry/insurance