It’s common knowledge that digital communication tools like an intelligent SMS messaging platform can have a significant impact for businesses working in insurance. After all, they can help your company keep its lead in an increasingly competitive insurance marketplace, transform your customer experience and improve the efficiency of your claims-handling process.
But let’s not overlook how an intelligent SMS messaging platform can also help your business win in yet another important way—by making the work lives of your claims adjusters happier and easier.
Hi Marley spoke with Plymouth Rock Assurance’s Vice President and Chief Claims Officer Aaron Wheaton about how digital communication has helped his company’s adjusters up their customer service game by closing claims faster, more efficiently and with far less stress.
Helps Adjusters Deliver “Wow” Factor Through Fast and Efficient Customer Service
“Adjusters want to take care of their policyholders and claimants,” said Wheaton. “They want to move their claim along and make sure that they resolve it as quickly as they can.” And with digital communication tools like Hi Marley, Plymouth Rock’s adjusters are now equipped to do exactly that.
With Hi Marley, the claims team can offer strong customer service not only over the phone, but also through texting—a more modern channel and one that many of Plymouth Rock’s customers are clamoring for. The platform provides Plymouth Rock’s adjusters with the tools needed to more efficiently and effectively handle claims, which ultimately leads to happier customers.
Since adding Hi Marley, Plymouth Rock has experienced a reduction in voicemails, as well as in inbound and outbound calls. As a result, adjusters can shorten the time to resolution and wow their clients by communicating with them through their chosen method—some via text or email, and others over the phone.
Adjusters have also responded positively to the increased flexibility they’ve gained since adding texting as a communication option.
“We value efficiency and encourage our team to use the tools that help them resolve claims quickly,” said Wheaton. “But we also understand that, in certain scenarios, some customers feel more comfortable speaking over the phone, while others might prefer texting. We have the flexibility to meet customers where they are, in their preferred channel, based on the unique circumstance of any given claim.”
Aligns With Adjusters’ Own Digital Habits
It was easy for Plymouth Rock to get internal buy-in on a communication platform because adjusters were already texting outside of work on their own time. Plus, in many cases, the adjusters were already demanding similar text-based support experiences from brands that they personally do business with, so using texting as another way to communicate with Plymouth Rock’s clients made a lot of sense.
“This was an easy one for us,” Wheaton said. “We were confident that the team could adopt texting into their workflow, even more so with a well-designed tool and an intuitive and seamless user interface.”
And the adoption of Hi Marley came at an impressive speed.
“We piloted Hi Marley a couple of years ago,” said Wheaton. “On day two or day three, I was walking through our claims floor and asking people how it was going. Every response I got was, ‘You can’t take this away now.’ That’s what you want to hear from the team because then you think you have a winner on your hands.”
Shines a Deserving Light on Top Performers
With Hi Marley, Wheaton has gained far easier access into the conversations his adjusters have with Plymouth Rock’s customers. He also no longer needs to “walk the floor and listen in on every conversation” for cues on which adjusters are excelling or need assistance. With real-time access to every text message sent to Plymouth Rock customers, he and his leadership team can monitor the tone of the interactions, as well as proactively identify when supervisor assistance is needed to resolve a more difficult or complex matter.
On top of this increased transparency into customer interactions, Wheaton can use Hi Marley to make near real-time decisions to assist his team with providing better customer support. He said, “We can run analytics on the conversations and the questions that customers are asking. We can start to build or change processes based on what’s being requested of our staff. We can find friction points a whole lot easier.”
Wheaton also noted the discovery of a few adjuster success stories that had gone unnoticed before Plymouth Rock implemented Hi Marley. One adjuster in particular who had always been good at her job, but wasn’t “the loudest in the room,” quickly adopted Hi Marley into her workflow and soon became what he called a “power user.” With access to the transcripts of this adjuster’s text conversations, Wheaton could almost immediately see how her customer support approach when using texting differentiated her from her peers.
Wheaton said, “She was already efficient. She became more efficient. She was already taking care of her customers, but she became better at that. For us, it provided insight into what this adjuster was doing on a day-to-day basis, and we discovered that she was doing an even better job than we realized. We can’t monitor every phone call, but Hi Marley lets us quickly go in, read a transcript and see the great work that the team is doing.”
“That’s a win,” he added.
