RSA completes move to UK-only call centres

RSA has completed the repatriation of its call centres from India, with all customer-facing roles now based in the UK.  

Last October the insurer announced it was closing its overseas call centres and creating 350 jobs in the UK.

But only 170 roles were created after RSA changed its sales, servicing and claims procedures to save time.

Over the past nine months, 80 staff have been recruited to the insurer’s Sunderland and Liverpool sales and services teams and 90 were recruited to RSA’s claims teams based in Halifax and Peterborough.

RSA customer service director John Elliott told Insurance Times: “We’ve made our customer service processes more effective, which is why fewer roles were recruited in the UK.”

For example, home insurance scripts that were 19 pages long are now only two and teams went through a training programme that focused on technical skills and customer engagement.

“This has led to an increase in the number of enquiries dealt with on the first call and a reduction in the number of calls being transferred,” Elliott said, adding that RSA’s NPS had improved from 19 to 59 in the 12 months since it changed its customer service processes.

NPS is a customer loyalty metric and anything over 50 is considered to be excellent.

“We’re really evolving from insurance being a transactional purchase and increasing our value proposition,” Elliott said. “It’s about increasing engagement and value for the customer.”

Customers, name your price

The insurer has also introduced a ‘Name Your Price’ initiative for its personal home products that flips the traditional process of purchasing insurance on its head.

“Instead of a customer selecting a policy and finding out what they are covered for we ask a customer up front how much they would like to pay for their home insurance and tell them what that price would cover them for,” Elliott said.

“We can then have a conversation to make sure that everything that the customer wants covered is covered. That way there should be no uncertainty when it comes to the point of claim.”

The initiative was introduced to combat the 20% of household insurance claims that were being rejected by the insurer because customers thought they were covered for something when they weren’t.  

“It’s about being transparent. We want customers to be clear from the outset and have a choice on what they are covered for,” Elliott explained.

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