For over 140 years, Police Mutual has been helping Police Officers, Staff and their families with a range of exclusive financial products and services. With no shareholders, Police Mutual is run for the benefit of around 200,000 members and the Police Service. At the heart of Police Mutual’s values are its members; it strives to deliver uncomplicated, reliable and common sense services. So when they decided to review their customer service provision, Police Mutual decided to go to expert outsourcer, MPL Contact, for a solution.
“The service provided by MPL Contact has always been excellent. In addition to the out-of-hours assistance they provide, they also provide support during our normal office hours if we are experiencing unexpectedly high call volumes or issues with our phone lines. They are an integral and invaluable part of our operation.”
Pete Marr, Operations Director, Police Mutual
A flexible customer service solution
Police Mutual offers a wide range of exclusive products and services including savings and investments, insurance, healthcare and mortgages. However, one area which they had identified would benefit from extra customer service support was their emergency support for members with vehicle breakdowns, claims requests, legal support and urgent travel assistance.
MPL Contact was duly tasked with creating a customer service solution utilising a team of trained agents to assist callers who have an immediate, urgent need for help.
MPL Contact agents handle calls relating to breakdowns, windscreen breakages, courtesy car requests and transport advice. Each caller must be accurately identified and, depending on the nature of their call, the agent must also establish the scheme of which they are a member, the service or police force they work with, if appropriate, their insurance policy number and their current location. This information is critical in ensuring the subsequent advice and helpline details issued are correct.
In some instances, the agent can instigate an emergency call back to the customer by Police Mutual outside of normal office hours, so it is imperative that all details are accurate and that the situation has been verified as being sufficiently urgent to necessitate notifying on-call staff.
Bureau agent resource for scalable capacity
MPL Contact utilises their bureau agent resource to manage all aspects of the customer service requirement and each agent has been thoroughly trained on the Police Mutual solution, which means that suitably trained agents across additional contact centres in the UK network can also be used to handle calls.
By using this larger pool of bureau agents, rather than a smaller dedicated team, unexpected high volumes of calls can be easily absorbed within the primary contact centre.
First filter approach for call prioritisation
As all of Police Mutual’s products are highly regulated, MPL Contact agents cannot act in an advisory capacity. However, the value of the outsourced facility comes from removing the initial enquiry stage from Police Mutual’s in-house helpline team, freeing up their time to manage complex issues requiring their expert knowledge.
The call handling application allows MPL Contact agents to accurately identify customers needing urgent helpline assistance from those where their enquiry can be handled the next working day.
Business Benefits
- Flexible, scalable call handling resource immediately available
- Network of UK centres absorb seasonal peaks in demand
- Skilled agents free up internal resources by prioritising calls
- Police Mutual’s expert staff can focus on urgent issues
- In-depth reporting on call types by product, enquiry, outcome
