Signal Iduna

The ini­tial sit­u­a­tion

Sig­nal Iduna wants to meet its cus­tomers at eye level and focuses on the excel­lent qual­ity of the cus­tomer dia­logue. The tele­phone ser­vice is also in focus. After all, this chan­nel rep­re­sents a direct point of per­sonal con­tact between the com­pany and its cus­tomers. The insur­ance com­pany meets the chal­lenge of con­nect­ing each caller with an appro­pri­ate con­tact per­son with an inter­me­di­ary rout­ing facil­ity.

Back in 2016, IP Dynam­ics installed a Vox­tron Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­ter (VCC) at Sig­nal Iduna on an exist­ing Skype for Busi­ness infra­struc­ture. At the end of 2017, the insur­ance com­pany then decided to inte­grate a mod­ern voice por­tal into the sys­tem. The new voice por­tal aimed to reduce the work­load of ser­vice cen­ter employ­ees, reduce cus­tomer call for­ward­ing rates and shorten caller wait­ing times.

The chal­lenge

• Pre­vi­ously, Sig­nal Iduna was using a sim­ple Inter­ac­tive Voice Response (IVR) sys­tem, where callers could press but­tons (DTMF) to nav­i­gate through a two-​stage voice menu. How­ever, select but­tons are lim­ited as they offer too few selec­tion options.
• The new voice por­tal needed to greet callers friendly, rec­og­nize their con­cerns and, if nec­es­sary, authen­ti­cate them by ask­ing for their cus­tomer data. The exten­sive data pro­tec­tion check was to be auto­mated through the new voice por­tal as well.
• Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful rout­ing, a CRM inter­face was to pro­vide the rel­e­vant ser­vice employee at a glance with all infor­ma­tion given to the voice bot by the cus­tomer.
• The par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge of this project was think­ing through all pos­si­ble dia­logue paths in advance and to map the entire spec­trum of phrases that cus­tomers use to describe their var­i­ous issues.

The solu­tion

• In the con­cep­tion phase, for­mal basics were clar­i­fied, Works Coun­cil approval was obtained, data pro­tec­tion issues were resolved and the rout­ing tar­gets for the new voice por­tal were defined.
• The exist­ing IVR nav­i­ga­tion was replaced by a sys­tem based on nat­ural speech recog­ni­tion. The required tech­nol­ogy was inte­grated using the Dynamic Flow (DFW), IP Dynam­ics’ cen­tral work­flow engine with voice por­tal func­tion­al­ity. Sig­nal Iduna’s CRM sys­tem was also con­nected via DFW.
• By col­lect­ing key­words and phrases, eval­u­at­ing recorded con­ver­sa­tions with cus­tomers and exten­sive test­ing, a gram­mar has been devel­oped that cov­ers all dia­logue paths and the spec­trum of phrases used bei cus­tomers. In this way, the sys­tem was tai­lored to Sig­nal Iduna’s spe­cific require­ments.

The result

• Since June 2019, all calls received by the insurer’s cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment have been routed by the voice por­tal. Every day, the por­tal processes over 5,000 calls. The sys­tem rec­og­nizes cus­tomer con­cerns and, if nec­es­sary, iden­ti­fies and authen­ti­cates them.
• The ser­vice employ­ees are relieved of repet­i­tive tasks and can focus on consultation-​intensive con­ver­sa­tions. Thanks to the voice por­tal, they have more time to offer excel­lent ser­vice.
• The cus­tomers are pleased with the reduced wait­ing times and the direct trans­fer to a qual­i­fied con­tact per­son. In addi­tion, the self-​service fea­ture offers them quick help even when there is a high vol­ume of calls.
• The project was also suc­cess­ful because the respon­si­ble team worked in per­fect har­mony. “The smooth coop­er­a­tion with IP Dynam­ics has enabled us to over­come all chal­lenges and com­plete the project on sched­ule”, says Andrea Schmidt, project man­ager at Sig­nal Iduna.
• The voice por­tal can where nec­es­sary be fur­ther expanded to include addi­tional fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ties. One such pos­si­bil­ity is full or par­tial automa­tion of cer­tain processes through direct phone-​based self-​service fea­tures. Self-​learning AI can also be inte­grated to cover even more appli­ca­tions. And the voice por­tal can of course be scaled to require­ments and extended to include other areas of the busi­ness.

If you are also inter­ested in automat­ing your cus­tomer dia­logue, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.