- Automation expert Brad Hoyle shares how leaders can scale their business by optimising and automating processes
- BizCover’s team serve 10,000 customers per service agent through utlising the latest digital technologies
- BizCover’s automated platform has transformed the two-week process of buying insurance into a five-minute online interaction
Having a great product is essential to a great business. But it’s the ability to scale that product to the masses without losing its quality which makes a company truly remarkable.
“A great product is no longer enough. To create a sustainable business, you need to value growth and customer satisfaction in equal parts,” says automation expert Brad Hoyle who is the Ops Excellence Manager at BizCover.
“Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation are needed to drive this next-level service. It’s about reducing inefficiencies while scaling your ability to deliver your product.”
Building a world-class operations centre
BizCover is the online solution for small businesses looking to get insurance.
Starting in Sydney in 2008, the business quickly grew to include operations in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
The product was sound.
The typical insurance experience was extremely slow and manual: customers had to fill out a lot of forms and brokers would take a couple of weeks to come back with maybe one quote and the customer had no idea if they were getting a good deal or being looked after.
BizCover automates this process by moving the experience online, allowing customers to compare quotes and buy insurance.
“Our customers can fill in their details, get multiple quotes and purchase directly – this transforms a two-week process into a five-minute online interaction,” says Hoyle.
While the product itself was scalable, it meant that the operations supporting it will need to keep up.
Brad Hoyle was brought on in 2016 to scale this product and build a world-class operations centre.
“The journey started with revolutionising how our CRM fitted into the wider tech stack and business operations to build one unified solution,” says Hoyle.
“We are customer obsessed and every project or initiative that we take on has to be focused on delivering an improved customer experience or solving a pain point in their insurance journey.”
Gaining efficiency by automating processes
One solution that Hoyle’s team employed was utilising Salesforce products to remove the time-consuming, low-value interactions and automate entire processes.
For example, any failed payments now go through an entirely automated process to notify a customer across multiple channels, providing them with self-service options which allow them to choose when to retry and process the payment without any agent involvement.
This has the dual benefit of allowing BizCover agents to focus on high-value interactions as well as increase BizCover’s customer base without adding any additional full-time service staff.
“We can now proudly say we have over 10,000 customers per service agent across Australia and New Zealand,” says Hoyle.
BizCover has also invested in new channels with the launch of its AI-powered, digital employee, Frankie.
Built through Salesforce’s Einstein Bots platform, Frankie helps both current BizCover customers and prospects online.
Hoyle says his team are also upskilling their workforce to succeed in this new landscape.
“A great example of this is that we have transitioned one of our customer service superstars, returning from maternity leave, to train Frankie and constantly optimise its performance based on customer feedback,” he says.
Gaining efficiency by optimising processes
While the previous efficiencies were gained by removing processes from BizCover agents, Hoyle’s team also optimised the processes that still require a human touch.
“Our Agent console presents agents with key information to simplify the interaction so that they can easily solve the question at hand,” Hoyle says.
“This demonstrates to our customers that we value their time.”
They also changed the way work is allocated to the BizCover agent when customers call the service centre.
“We’ve designed the Omni channel routing engine to not only remove the burden of manual work allocation but to ensure the most important work items are prioritised– and no customers are left behind,” Hoyle says.
The results are reflected in the company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), which is consistently leading the Insurtech space.
For 2022, BizCover achieved an unrivalled NPS of 72+ from more than 17,000 customer surveys – well above the industry average.
Key takeaways
As the demands of customer expectations reach the digital age, companies will need to scale up their processes without compromising quality to achieve sustainable growth.
A product or service that customers love is just the start. Rather it’s the ability to optimise processes and build an operations centre that supports the product that will enable success.
Hoyle says one way to ensure that your plan to scale up your operations is to keep your customers at the centre of the decisions you make.
“Don’t go tech heavy on solution design without involving your frontline employees in your projects,” says Hoyle. Your staff can be your best resources to understand customer pain points and common requests.”
