201403 LOMA Customer Service Conference - Customer Engagement It's Not About The Numbers

Presented by:Presented to:
THE NOLAN COMPANY
5.3 Customer Engagement:
It’s Not About The Numbers
People, Process, and Technology
Steven M. Callahan, CMC, ChFC, CLU, FFSI, FLMI
March 28, 2014
Insurance Practice Director
2014 LOMA
Customer Service Conference
Earning Customers For Life

2 LOMA Customer Service Conference: March 26 – 28, 2014
5.3 Customer Engagement: It’s Not About The Numbers
Agenda
• Introduction
• A personal story
• Industry challenges
• Call center tactics and counting (“the numbers”)
• Reintroducing some critical points made by other speakers
• What is gamification and what is it not
• Facts and examples
• Specific to insurance
• Implementation thoughts
• Sources of additional information and solution providers

First my “Think Outside the Box” story
I like to watch movies
I also travel a great deal
Notice any similarities?
I’ve found myself enjoying fewer and fewer movies – it’s becoming like a bad dream.

Recently, I was given a surprise “movie night” for my birthday
My less than
enthusiastic
response was
ignored
Leather recliners, fancy appetizers, specialty drinks, seat side service.
Much like how Las Vegas redefined itself –
the theatre is changing the movie experience to fine dining.
Engaging the customer by redefining the service.

It’s Not About The Numbers: Session Goals
• Continue to build on customer engagement as the key competitive differentiator.
• Introduce gamification in the call centers and elsewhere in operations.
Ø What is it and why do I care.
Ø How can it be used in insurance operations.
Ø How does it impact employees and customers.
Ø What are some examples.
Ø What are the first steps to exploring this as an option at my company.
• Answer any questions and invite future contact for those who decide to try it.

Our Industry faces challenging times
6
Investments
Regulation
Market Exits
Technology Complexity
Competition
Life Insurance Ownership

In a world where communications have come a long way
Simple:
Complex:
Prior to Social Media,
exposure to consumer
dissatisfaction
somewhat limited
Phone
Paper
Service Delivery Resolution
Phone
Paper
Claims Delivery Process Resolution
Phone
Paper
Email
Text
IVR
Internet
Claims Delivery Process
Self-Service
Resolution
Chat Video
Transfer Vendors

13
24.7
16
24.9
21.5
0
10
20
30
Silents Boomers Generation X Millennials iGeneration
With accelerating customer Complexity
Generational Differences
New Social Dynamics Ethnic Diversity
The Digital Generations
- powerful consumers

5 Generations of varying Communication and Technology needs
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Millions
GI Swing Boomer Gen X Millennials
High TechLow Tech
Increasing Customers Demands
• Immediacy / 24x7 access
• Transparency
• Personal service relationships
• Language
• Driven within and outside the
industry
Impacting customer interactions as well as associate interactions…

“… a modest increase in
customer experience will
increase customer loyalty
and boost revenues by
approximately $298 million
for a $10 billion insurance
provider.“
Forrester Research, February 17, 2010
“Nationwide Insurance
found that a 1% increase
in customer retention
increased annual
premiums by $1 million”
Insurance Tech. - CRM in Global
Insurance, Datamonitor, 2008.
“Reducing customer
attrition by 5-10% can
increase annual profits by
as much as 75%,
according to a study by
the Wharton School.“
Eight Strategies for First Rate Customer
Service, Cisco Innovators, January 2008
And where today’s customer has an international megaphone
Tens of thousands of positive service touchpoints
a day, and yet one bad interaction…
And suddenly your
company is at the top of
the tweets list telling
thousands followed
quickly by a Facebook
“Unlike” Fan Page. Today’s Customer

Yet our focus, as Eric noted, remains numbers and productivity

With Engagement and “satisfaction” a desired result not key focus
The numbers keep the focus on how
many, how fast, how long, on
schedule, watch for the buzzer, etc.
But what about Disney’s David
Mulvey’s “Big 3” measures?
- Will they come back
- Will they recommend you
- Did they get value equal to cost?

When you return, it is likely back to the enduring “Big Challenges”
vScheduling against cyclicality
vProductivity and blending
vTraining and accurate, accessible documentation, old systems
vMeasuring first call resolution
vTurnover and recruiting
vLegacy / disjoint technology
By the way, the above list is from LOMA’s September Policyowner
Service Conference and Call Center Workshop session I moderated.
Do you have others?

As Disney’s David Mulvey suggested, ask “Why do we care?”
Low ratings on buyer experience
(below Comcast too I wonder?)
Low perception of innovativeness
Poor comparative financial performance
Declining agency force
Underserved middle market
Downward slope on policy sales

And as Ask.com’s Eric McKirdy pointed out, we better care…

So what exactly is gamification?
Gamification is the use of game design techniques & mechanics to help train, solve
problems, and engage audiences by encouraging players to behave in certain ways in
order to gain or win in-game incentives leading to more difficult and useful challenges
(quests).
It takes jobs that are tedious, routine, or stressful and uses game mechanics to enhance
parts of the job in a way that turns it into a form of “play” with intrinsic rewards and
recognition.
Another way of wording it is the integration of game dynamics into a company’s website,
services, community presence, marketing content, or sales campaigns in order to drive
up participation.
Key elements of effective gamification include:
• Achievements that are frequent based on intermediate goals
• Cascading information that is obtained as new achievements or levels are reached
• Collaboration within a team and department that rallies solving shared problems
• “Epic meaning” , or having goals that matter
• Optimism, the game is winnable with ongoing positive feedback in small doses
A few of the big solutions providers: Playvox, Bunchball, and Verint

And what is not gamification?
Gamification is not considered to be:
• a “game”
• monkey business or wasting time at work
• a fantasy land or strange role playing game with dragons and zombies
• a virtual farm or a repetitive pirate game (aka Facebook)
• veiled or manipulative or in any way misleading employees
Instead, the use of game mechanics has been proven to::
ü Increase engagement
ü Influence and even modify behavior
ü Motivate participation
ü Educate without appearing to do so

Simply put, it is meant to change the service staff’s mindset:
Turn this Into this
Or turn Eric McKirdy’s this Into this

Game Mechanics have a multitude of tactics that encourage play

Game mechanics motivate customers or staff to build the business
Each activity adds value for the business but also provides the “player” with points,
leveling up, rewards, or discounts.

It transitions “work” into a form of “play” that achieves goals
Game Work
Tasks repetitive, but fun repetitive and dull
Feedback constantly once a year
Goals clear contradictory, vague
Path to Mastery clear unclear
Rules clear, transparent unclear, in-transparent
Information right amount at the right time too much and not enough
Failure expected, encouraged, spectacular,
brag about it
forbidden, punished, don’t talk
about it
Status of Users transparent, timely hidden
Promotion meritocracy kiss-up-o-cracy
Collaboration yes yes
Speed/Risk high low
Autonomy high mid to low
Narrative yes only if you are lucky
Obstacles on purpose accidental

Did you know that online games are not a “Gen-Y” phenomena?
v Average age of gamers in years: 37
v % of gamers older than Fifty: 25
v % of youth playing computer & video games: 97
v % of female gamers: 42
v Social vs. Competitive Games: >3:1
v Avg. of hours/week played in World of Warcraft (WoW): 22
v # of articles in WoWWiki: ˜250,000
v Rank of WoWWiki compared to all Wikis: 2nd
v Rank of Wikipedia: 1st

Gamification applies across industries

Sell more wings, broaden market awareness using gamification

Grown Green Giant vegetables in your Farmville Farm

Brand recognition and travel datapoints using gamification

Military simulation games used to recruit into the Army

Sales gains using gamification to internationalize a “hunt” game

And is expected to grow at an accelerated rate
• In mid 2013, Gartner predicted that by 2015, 40% of Global 1000
organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform
business operations.
• Gartner also predicts that by the end of 2014, 80% of all gamification efforts
will fail to meet business objectives due to poor design.

In fact we all already are involved
Frequent Flyer Programs Intuit - TurboTax
EVs & Hybrids – Prius, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt
Shopping
Rewards

Across a great many parts of our life
Ranking books and authors
Status
Medals and Recognition
Software
Training

Health care uses gamification to help people improve their health

Specific to insurance it can be applied across the enterprise

More than I’ll read on gamifying key business activiites
Customer education:
• Educate customers on risk exposure
management, safe driving measures and
safe maintenance of vehicles, personal
financial planning, smart investments,
retirement planning and coverage selection.
• This could be a serious game or a quiz
hosted online, mobile or a social channel.
• Upon completing the game, customers
should be awarded badges.
Customer feedback:
• Insurers must develop innovative means of
collecting feedback from customers through
gamification.
• Any meaningful feedback that customers share
about carrier products or services can qualify for
incentives.
• A gamification approach might help to encourage
customers to provide feedback compared with
traditional feedback forums.
Customer retention:
• Retention of customers is among the critical goals
for an insurer; gamification can create a sense of
belongingness.
• Nexercise18 aims to cement user activity levels
like burning calories and reward them with points
that can be redeemed on “healthy choice” deals.
• Insurers can create similar initiatives that focus
on reducing hazards that will help with retention.
Employee collaboration:
• Enhance collaboration and maximize business
knowledge sharing.
• Incentivized employees can go social. In the
insurance context, an SME could assist a
junior staff member on a complex transaction
and earn the status of a top contributor in the
carrier’s collaboration platform.

Even the traditionally numbers oriented performance and process
Performance management:
• The goals and key performance
indicators must be captured upfront
and fed into the design of the platform.
• A leaderboard dashboard can be
seamlessly linked with activities that
contribute to performance goals.
• Other leaderboards can be used to help
employees qualify for badges but not
contribute to the actual KPIs.
• Typically, leaderboards contain a visual
dashboard that reflects the activities for
the logged-in user.
• The progress bars provide real-time
feedback and influence behavior by
indicating progress against goals.
Process improvement:
• Tools are deployed to track tasks and daily
assignments to engage employees better
than traditional task tracking systems.
• A call center representative who attends to
the first call resolution from customers can
be motivated if he is allowed to track his
SLA through a gamified platform.
• Reps track performance relative to the
other team members and also receive
badges for completing tasks on schedule,
receiving customer testimonials, accurately
capturing all relevant information, or
helping a fellow employee by answering
queries.
• This should drive productivity gains and
encourage collaboration to share best
practices across the call center team.

Sample Leaderboard for Service Staff

Leaderboard scoring criteria

Go slow: Recommended Steps
• Silent base lining
Ø Measure the starting points for what you will be incenting
Ø Skills, knowledge, productivity, quality, speed to resolution, collaboration, etc.
• Assess your current staff
Ø Tenure
Ø Demographics
Ø Training gaps
• Benchmark service and expense levels
Ø Transaction costs
Ø Turnover and costs
Ø Other demands on resources and funds
• Evaluate competitive positioning needs
Ø Market strength
Ø Key competitors
• Design gamification strategies
Ø Physical versus virtual rewards
Ø Performance & training targets
Ø Collaboration / mentoring
• Assess available Infrastructure & support

Gamifying a function

Some good books and interesting resources
• Bunchball • Gamify.it • Lithium • Shufflebrain • SCVNGR
A list of 90+ gamification case studies with ROI:
http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/gamification-stats-figures/#.UzVJW01OXV0

Gamification platforms

Thank you for your time.
If anyone decides to investigate gamification, please let me
know as I would love to learn how it works for you and would
be delighted to provide assistance.
Have safe travels home and don’t
forget to fill out the assessment form.

Steven M Callahan, CMC®, FFSI
Insurance Practice Director
Steve_Callahan@renolan.com
206-619-7740
www.linkedin.com/in/stevencallahan
@stevenmcallahan
www.renolan.com

201403 LOMA Customer Service Conference - Customer Engagement It's Not About The Numbers

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