For claims teams, 2022 has brought a hefty burden of disaster related work. The east coast floods in February and March produced a record $6.3 billion in losses, according to PERILS, the independent catastrophe data organisation. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has reported that more than six months after this event, claims teams are still working to settle about 100,000 outstanding claims.
What can insurance companies learn from emergency assistance providers whose teams are entirely focused on helping customers in their hour of need?
The global firm World Travel Protection (WTP), part of the Zurich Insurance Group, provides emergency help to overseas business customers in situations that can include natural disasters, medical emergencies, disease outbreaks and terrorist attacks.
Brisbane-based Antony Crome (pictured above), WTP’s operations manager, said it’s a “fair conclusion” that insurers’ claims teams need many of the same personal attributes as his emergency assistance staff.
“There are definitely similarities in how you would expect a member of our team to support a customer going through a very difficult situation,” said Crome. “Losing your house in a flood or fire would be devastating and requires a caring, empathetic person to support the customer while they focus on gathering the necessary information to support the insurance claim and reach a coverage decision.”
The Brisbane command centre is one of three command centres run by WTP. The other two are in London and Toronto. Crome said, compared to insurers’ claims teams, there are additional difficulties his contact centre staff need to be ready for.
“Often the customer is far away from home, in an unfamiliar environment, with varying levels of healthcare standards and language barriers, and often away from their normal support network of family and friends,” he said. “Our team need to be able to remain calm and help to guide a customer through the situation.”
The key character traits he looks for in new hires would be valuable in any insurer’s team: resilience, empathy and the ability to collaborate.
“Our recruitment process is handled entirely in-house,” said Crome. “Our recruitment team reviews applications and conducts initial phone screenings, before booking in interviews for candidates with myself and one of my team leaders.”
Apart from the key attributes, he said the phone screenings and interviews focus on relevant experience and transferable skills that may include customer service or call centre experience.
“We have found some amazing people from various industries, stretching from insurance to retail and the travel industry,” said Crome, who said his team includes a higher proportion of female members but added that WTP is “absolutely” led by identifying the right attributes and skills.
He said WTP does welcome former insurance industry professionals to emergency assistance work. He said they do bring relevant skills to the job, including understanding how policies operate and interpreting product disclosure statements.
“This is teachable though,” he said. “So while these skills may be initially beneficial in the role, I am looking for the other attributes as a priority.”
Crome emphasized the need for caring, empathetic character traits.
“A resilient team member is also able to handle these difficult interactions and able to continue on and support the next customer,” he said. “Serving as a 24/7 operation, collaboration is very important as our team needs to work together to manage an assistance case, and effectively handover to each other.”
Crome said any incident, even simpler cases, can be “highly emotional” for a customer when they are away from home.
“The most memorable calls I have listened to from my team are when they have been able to help one of our customers through an initial, emotionally charged conversation and focus on providing the assistance they need,” he said.
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Part of Crome’s role includes crisis management. “When you look for empathetic team members, they are often caring people who are also impacted by hearing what the customer is going through,” he said.
After particularly difficult or traumatic cases, he recommends a debriefing session. “Taking a moment to debrief the situation with their team leader or a colleague is often the best approach,” he said.
The WTP operations manager has had to deal with the impacts of team burnout, absenteeism due to COVID-19, working from home and maintaining motivation and engagement. These challenges are familiar to the insurance industry but for WTP they come at a time when the sudden return to travel has increased workloads dramatically.
“Our team have worked a lot of overtime to look after our customers and keep service levels at a reasonable level,” he said. “Continued recruitment to grow our team size and to provide time to implement regular people development routines like coaching and team meetings, has been important in addressing this.”
He said “daily huddles” where the team can discuss high risk cases and create action plans together to solve them are also important.
