January 2007

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MORE TH>N launches new personalied call centre service

MORE TH>N LAUNCHES NEW PERSONALISED CALL CENTRE SERVICE
Insurer tackles nation’s irritation with call centre industry

- MORE TH>N is the first insurer to offer customers a Personal Customer Manager
- Research reveals that one of people’s biggest irritations with call centres is being passed around to lots of different people 1
- 72 per cent are very irritated at having to explain their situation again every time they speak to someone.

MORE TH>N is the first insurer to offer customers their own Personal Customer Manager (PCM) free of charge, so they have a specific contact at the company together with their email address and direct telephone number. MORE TH>N’s customers will not have to experience the common frustrations of being passed from person to person or having to explain themselves every time they call.

The new service, which launches on 20 January 2007, means that each MORE TH>N customer can have a contact who knows their personal history and background and who will ensure that any queries and requests are dealt with quickly and efficiently. It will be available to both existing and new customers, and contact with the PCM can be made either by email or by phone. If a customer emails their manager, MORE TH>N promises they will have a response within 24 hours.

MORE TH>N has already successfully piloted the service with 60,000 customers. Customers were able to contact their PCM at any time of the day, by phone, by voicemail or email. The results were that all emails were responded to within 24 hours2 and if the customer chose to leave a voicemail message, all voicemails were responded to within 24 hours. Within MORE TH>N, for each pilot customer, the PCM was completely responsible for managing the relationship between other departments at the company and ensured follow-up calls to the customer were made.

The feedback from the pilot was overwhelmingly positive. Ella Richmond, 22, from Nottingham and who participated in the pilot, said: “I work full time in a busy office and I recently moved house. When I came to changing my address, I spent hours stuck on the phone to call centres of many of my utility companies. With MORE TH>N’s Personal Customer Manager service, I simply emailed my named contact at lunchtime and in an hour, he called me to say my address had been changed. I was really impressed with the speed and friendliness of the service, and also the fact that it wasn’t intrusive to my working day. It was convenient and I had a named person to email rather than just a general company address.”

Other customer feedback from the pilot included:
“To have 24 hours or less interaction with real, professional staff is an absolute godsend for those of us used to call centres…”

“You managed to resolve in ten minutes a query that has been outstanding for two months, as well as arranging insurance for my second car quickly and efficiently. Hurrah!”

“What a fantastic service offering. I am really impressed by this service innovation…”.

This launch follows research which reveals that when talking to call centres, almost two thirds of Brits (60 per cent) say their biggest irritation is being passed on to lots of different people and 72 per cent are very irritated at having to explain their situation again every time they speak to someone.

Mike Holliday-Williams, managing director at MORE TH>N, commented: “Although our current level of customer satisfaction is high, with 77 per cent rating our service as excellent or very good, we’re always looking for new ways to do more for our customers. This initiative is putting them at the heart of what we do by offering a truly personal service, so customers’ questions are dealt with quickly and efficiently. It’s clear that people get very annoyed being passed from pillar to post by call centres, with MORE TH>N they can be sure that this won’t happen to them.”

The study also revealed that half of those questioned believe that call centres just do not understand them and over a quarter of people believe that talking to call centres is the most frustrating thing in their day-to-day lives.

Mike Holliday-Williams continued: “One of the key benefits of this new service is that the customer has someone solely accountable for them, who will deal with their query and take ownership of it. It was extremely popular during our pilot and we’re thrilled to be rolling it out to all our customers.”

MORE TH>N has already written to all their existing customers to offer them the service, and it will also be available to all new customers from 20 January 2007. For further information, please visit www.morethan.com.

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