Travelers Protection Services : web-based call center

Leveraging TPS website by integrating a call centre facility

What was the situation?

Travellers Protection Services was using a legacy call-centre system with no direct interface with the few online websites they had at the time.
The online sales made every day were keyed back in by an operator the following day.
There were several points of major frustration:

  • Poor customer service: Delay of 24 hours before the call-centre could handle a call from someone who purchased a policy online. If someone phoned regarding their policy purchased online before the policy was entered in the call-center system, the operator was unable to assist, which was always an embarrassing situation.
  • Big scalability issues: TPS had a strong strategy for online development (which we also developed for them). However, it couldn’t be implemented until the call centre could receive the web sales in real time. It was unthinkable to manually re-key the hundreds of policies which we are aiming at selling online.

    What we did

    Solving TPS main frustrations was obviously our main focus. As we developed the TPS new online strategy, we were in a unique position to address all their call-center issues at the same time.
    Call-centre systems are usually desktop applications (i.e. a windows application). However this doesn’t lend itself too well to integration with a web system.
    So we developed an innovative web-based call-center application, running on the same database as all the various insurance website we developed for TPS.
    The application is obviously completely secured and password protected.
    Our clients really appreciate the fact that we can provide a complete end-to-end solution to their business problem. For TPS we therefore supply the server hosting infrastructure needed to run such a complex system.

    What was the result?

    All the main frustrations were addressed:

    • The manual re-keying is now a thing of the past: The person who was performing this task is now employed performing more added-value jobs in the business. It is beneficial to both the staff, who gets to perform a more challenging role, and to TPS who gets more out of their hard-working staff.
    • Any policy purchased online is now available immediately to the call-center operator, meaning that they are always ready to help customers should they call.
    • A direct benefit from using a web-based system was the flexibility added to TPS disaster recovery plan. Should anything happen to the main TPS offices (fire for example) the call-center application would not be affected at all as we are hosting the whole application for TPS. The result is that TPS can be back supporting clients in a matter of hours. All they need is a phone and a web connection!