Significant Complaint Handling Results for BGL Insurance

Part of the BGL Group, BGL Insurance is a leading digital distributor of motor, home and life insurance products to more than three million customers across the UK.  In 2020, due to the global pandemic, BGL Insurance had to shift its entire business to home-working almost overnight. For its complaint handling function, comprised of the Complaint Handling Team plus 1,100 staff across three different contact centres (Peterborough, Wakefield and Sunderland), this was no mean feat.

Digitising the Complaint Function

Pre-pandemic, customer correspondence took the form of hard copy letters, an approach that simply wasn’t practical in a home-working environment. To ensure a seamless continuation of uninterrupted service for customers, the business recognised the need to move to digital, emailable correspondence as a matter of urgency. The digitisation of the department had already been on the wish list of the complaint handling team but the pandemic escalated it to a top priority.

The business needed to facilitate home-working, whilst ensuring uninterrupted service to customers and maintaining Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) compliance. Any new hardware required was delivered to staff and a new telephony system implemented to enable staff to receive phone calls at home. The complaint management system, Aptean Respond, was already suitable for remote working, so it meant the team would be working with a familiar system.

Enabling Automation

All correspondence templates had to be transferred from hard copy to digital versions but, with 21 brands’ complaints administered under the BGL Insurance umbrella, this wasn’t a small job. Digital templates were prepared for all letter types and uploaded into Respond.

Due to the way Respond is configured, it’s able to trigger the appropriate response for a particular customer, in-line with the information that’s added to the case by the call handler. This adds an extra level of automation to the complaint management process, with handlers able to send emails directly from within the system. Once all the templates were in place, the team carried out exhaustive testing, using test inboxes and the Respond test portal.

It took just ten days for the entire department to go from working in the office to switching to a successful home-working model.

The team then began to investigate how it could optimise processes further still. The business was able to better allocate resources across the complaint handling teams, assessing existing workflows to see how these could change to reflect the move to digital correspondence. It was then that the additional benefits to service delivery became apparent.

Tangible Customer Benefits

Pre-project, the percentage of complaints received and resolved within the FCA’s eight-week timeframe stood at 95%; the business is now resolving 99% of complaints within this timeframe. Before the changes, BGL Insurance was acknowledging 95% of all complaints within five business days. This is now within three business days and the organisation is already acknowledging 97% of complaints within this new timeframe, a percentage that increases to 100% within the old five day deadline.

Thanks to the changes made, BGL Insurance has achieved a 54% reduction in the average age of complaints. It has also improved its outcomes for cases that proceed to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), with FOS overturn rates that stood at 31% of complaints between July and December 2019 dropping to just 17% in the six months to July 2020.

A Real Team Effort

Respond was a key enabler of these rapid changes, with the team at Aptean providing the support and expertise required for BGL Insurance to make the rapid transition to digital correspondence. The combination of technology, people and training ensured the project was a huge success from the outset, delivering multiple efficiencies and service improvements right across the complaint handling function.

Kath Dobb, lead manager - customer relations at BGL Group, concludes: “What started as an emergency situation, has resulted in major improvements to our complaint handling, putting the solid foundations in place to continue to develop complaint handling excellence right across the organisation.”

To find out how Aptean Respond could help your business unlock its complaint management potential, contact us today.