Datapulse helps Hastings Direct ensure efficient customer service

Hastings Direct, a division of Hastings Insurance Services that provides insurance policies and related products by phone and on the internet, selected UK telecommunications provider Datapulse to improve its claims process and thereby enhance its customer service and business efficiency. The solution was deployed in partnership with Affiniti.

Hastings Direct has three contact centres providing insurance policies and related products. Since the majority of its customer communications are through its contact centres, Hastings Direct needed a reliable communications solution that would enable call recording and call logging to ensure a better customer service and a more efficient claims process.

Increasingly customers are seeking to arrange insurance policies and sort out insurance claims over the phone. Hastings Direct provides its insurance services in this way which is why its call recording system is a very important technical feature at its contact centres. Prior to the installation of the Datapulse solution, Hastings did not record calls made to the 1050 contact centre agents based in Leicester, Manchester and Bexhill.

The FSA code of best practice stresses the importance of firms recording critical telephone transactions, and for them to be able to demonstrate their version of events in some other convincing way. Without this evidence, if a customer raises a query, the FSA rules in the customer's favour by default. It therefore actively encourages insurers to ensure they have good quality recordings of all telephone conversations. Complying with the FSA recommendation was an additional consideration for Hastings Direct in deciding to record its calls.

In order to ensure accurate and complete call monitoring and call-logging facilities, Hastings Direct chose Datapulse to provide its IDVR call management solution. The company also implemented a Call Information Module (CIM) at their head office at Bexhill to accurately log all calls made from the three sites.

The solution

Datapulse deployed an IDVR call recording system at all three sites. This platform provides Hastings Direct with voice logging, quality monitoring and record-on-demand facilities in one system. Uniquely the system can record both traditional and IP calls, ideal for Hastings since only its Manchester site had migrated to IP. It records all calls made to customer facing staff, both services and sales, and stores them so that they can be referenced should a query about a claim arise This protects both the agents and the customers.

As a hybrid solution that can be integrated with both traditional TDM and IP systems, Datapulse's call recording solution is well suited to Hasting Direct's three sites since while its call centre in Manchester has an IP system, its other contact centre in Leicester and its head office in Bexhill have TDM systems but will be upgrading to IP in the near future. The new call recording system will migrate easily to IP when these sites make the move to the technology. The transition caused no disruption.

The quality team at Hastings Direct listen to six calls per agent per month, assessing their responses and answers to ensure they reach a quality score of at least 85 per cent. Many now thanks to the Datapulse solution are achieving well over 90 per cent. Prior to IDVR, the quality team had to listen in to live calls and record on a cassette player. Storage, together with finding the correct place on the tape to track the relevant conversation, were inevitable, time-consuming issues. IDVR makes this process much simpler. Within months of deploying the system, the quality of calls rose significantly, with 80 per cent of all callers receiving an optimum service. The quality monitoring process has meant less errors, consistently high customer service and staff satisfaction since staff now get the the training they need as well as bonuses for achieving high quality levels.

In addition to the call recording solution, a Call Information Module (CIM) was also deployed at Hasting Direct's head office at BexHill. This system logs all calls across all three sites to ensure suppliers are charging the correct tariffs and to check phone usage to ensure staff does not misuse the phones.

Leigh Higgins, Telecoms Manager at Hastings Direct says: "We are thoroughly impressed with the call recording and logging solution from Datapulse. It efficiently records all our calls, stores them and makes them accessible for our staff to retrieve. The real value of the system is that it offers us assurance that in the case of a claim being disputed we have the full call history at our fingertips.

"There are many solutions on the market today but this solution matched our requirements perfectly. We do not have a big brother approach to our agents, we use the technology to ensure the quality of our customer service and agent training is kept high. The feedback from our agents has been extremely positive.

We've also found the IP call recording system to be particularly cost effective. One of the main reasons for this is that the system records the 300 customer facing staff phones in use at the Manchester site but only 150 licenses were required. A significant cost saving on buying one per agent!

Nick Nind, Sales manager at Datapulse says: "Call recording is a vital quality monitoring tool and Hastings has exploited the benefits of IDVRs centralised functionality. Quality staff can obtain and assess agent calls from any site quickly and easily whether that site is IP or TDM - which makes it a future-proof investment