20% reduction in elapsed time to process claims
Customer care service levels improve 33%.
Strategic Intent
Capitalize on healthy growth potential, increase profitability and gain a competitive advantage by improving processes and procedures,reducing labor expenses and providing high-quality customer service
Situation
- Privately-held U.S.-based multi-line property and casualty insurance company
- Major product lines include non-standard automotive, homeowners’, flood and liability products
- Automotive product remains non-profitable after three years of existence
- Homeowners’ line generates profits, but the strain of rapid growth has stretched the organizational infrastructure
- Employee growth exceeds revenue growth, cutting into profits
Issues and Barriers
- Inadequate work processes, reporting relationships and skill levels jeopardized customer service for new policyholders
- Goals and metrics do not adequately address productivity or service
- Work processes contain high levels of redundancy and non-value-added activities
- Inaccurate performance standards make valid capacity planning impossible
- Overall productivity ranges from 40-60%
Key Implementations
- Redesign all existing processes and procedures
- Define “stretch” goals for all key performance drivers, including turnaround time, abandoned calls, cost per claim paid, productivity and processing errors
- Develop capacity planning models
- Develop accurate quality and productivity standards
Results
Brooks International enabled the company to combine Claims, Customer Service and Order Processing to facilitate speedy and effective customer handling. The results of the engagement include a 20% reduction in elapsed time to process claims and 33% improvement in customer care service levels. Additionally, the following improvements are realized:
- Supervisory spans of control increased 25-30%
- Cost per claim paid is reduced by 10% in non-standard automotive
- Accurate capacity planning and increased productivity contributed to $3.2 million reduction of labor expenses and realization of 400% ROI for this initiative in first year.
Client Perspective
We could not have made these process and behavioral changes without Brooks. Now, as a result of this success, other units in our company are anxious to embrace change rather than running from it.
—Senior Vice President, Corporate Services
