Insurer American National closes call center employee knowledge gap by over 90%
For insurer American National, delivering a consistent customer experience is vital to increasing call center customer satisfaction for over five million policyholders.
Indeed, the insurance giant is already hitting the mark in the customer satisfaction stakes. After all, Forbes magazine recently recognized American National as one of America’s Best Insurance Companies for 2022.
Now the insurance giant wants to further elevate its stellar customer experience by upskilling its Service Center Operations (SCO) employees.
That’s why the organization, headquartered in Galveston, Texas, turned to game-based training.
“We are thrilled to partner with Attensi to provide game-based training that empowers – and upskills – our employees.
“Our investment in this innovative training solution provides employees with greater confidence in their role to enhance the employee and client experience.
“We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved together and look forward to continued success.”
Claire Mead, Vice President, Service Center Operations, American National
How it all started
Having initially been introduced to Attensi through the Plug and Play Insurtech program, American National decided to start embedding game-based training across their Service Center, including both Property & Casualty (P&C) and Life & Annuity. The initial training covered three core areas:
· Caller verification
· Call center portal fraud
· Payment methods
How game-based simulations help keep organizations ahead of the game
Training is a waste of time, effort and money if the knowledge and behaviors aren’t retained and applied.
The key to impactful training is making it fun, immersive and active, so that people enjoy doing it and build confidence in their new capabilities. The training also needs to replicate employees’ real-world context to close the gap between theory and practice.
This is where simulated training comes in. Replicating workplace situations, the learner can practice and repeat training until they’re confident and competent in their role.
Thanks to competitive elements from the gaming industry, including point-scoring, friendly competition and personalized achievements, game-based training encourages employees to match their performance against their top scoring colleagues. It makes the experience fun, compelling – and something they want to repeat.
That repetition is what makes knowledge and skills stick and raises performance levels.
Our objectives
To improve customer experience and drive business performance, we highlighted five objectives:
1. Enhance customer experience through more consistent application of best practices
2. Reduce time to competency on new skills, software, and process
3. Reduce fraud risk by training employees on how to identify and address potential fraudulent calls
4. Test game-based simulations as a training concept for wider application across the business
5. Engage employees and enhance confidence to improve the American National employee value proposition
The impact
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Achieved real-world impact with improved quality audit results
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26.7 – the average number of playthroughs per user
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5 repetitions per scenario
Crucially, the knowledge gap was closed by over 90% for both tenured and new employees. This analysis highlights the effectiveness across all levels of tenure, showing the increase in knowledge retained through these simulations.
Post-training employee survey scores
– 94% of employees ‘liked this way of training’
– 94% said training had increased their confidence in verifying calls
– 87% said training had increased their confidence in identifying fraudulent activity
What employees said:
– It activated all styles of learning by having us read, listen and apply what we’re taught.
– It was interactive and allowed us to actually practice with the systems without being on a live call.
– I like to win. I like the points!
– It’s a lot more fun to learn this way instead of just reading pages of information.
What’s next for American National and Attensi?
We believe this is just the first step in a journey of continuing professional development for American National’s employees.
Game-based learning has the capacity and the potential to raise performance and knowledge across every area of business activity.
Attensi has extensive experience across functions within insurance, including underwriting, marketing and distribution, and claims as well as onboarding and broader leadership development.
Although American National and Attensi have already achieved a lot together, we believe that the best may yet still be ahead of us.
