What makes a Great Workplace?

“Great Place to Work Certification™ isn’t something that comes easily – it takes ongoing dedication to the employee experience,” said Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place to Work. “It’s the only official recognition determined by employees’ real-time reports of their company culture. Earning this designation means that Activus Connect is one of the best companies to work for in the country.”

How has Activus Connect created a Great Workplace year after year?

It begins with our simple purpose to positively impact lives. That includes our clients, their customers, and our Ambassadors. At Activus, positively impacting lives means putting people first by living and breathing our core values – passion, integrity, respect, authenticity, and fun. We pride ourselves on transparency and expertise as we help brands transform customers into loyal brand advocates. As a company, we’re inspiring forward by giving our time and energy to each and every Ambassador, brand, and customer experience.

We also aspire to support our Ambassadors’ career growth, which fuels our company’s growth. We offer opportunities to advance through promotion, mentorship, individual career development, and coaching at every level within the business. This framework of continual learning and mentorship provides exposure to many different areas within the company, keeping our employees engaged and motivated.

CX professionals are choosing more work-from-home opportunities to better manage the demands of their personal and professional lives. Work-from-home careers allow individuals to have more control of their schedules and spend time with family and friends with more intentionality and purpose.

Thoughtful flexibility allows highly skilled individuals to balance their personal lives with what they do professionally. Companies like Activus are leading today’s market by cultivating human-based processes that efficiently meet business needs while empowering the workforce to have an active voice in how they best work.

The benefits of a healthy culture are numerous.

According to Great Place to Work research, job seekers are 4.5 times more likely to find a great boss at a Certified great workplace. Additionally, employees at Certified workplaces are 93% more likely to look forward to coming to work, and are twice as likely to be paid fairly, and have a fair chance at promotion.

Having supportive leadership of an engaged and happy workforce is a powerful formula that promotes a healthy culture.

“This certification is direct validation from our employees that a healthy culture permeates throughout our business,” says Felix Serrano, Chief Executive Officer. “I continue to be humbled to represent a diverse and experienced customer experience outsourcing team, working exclusively from home across North America.”

Wrapping Up

People are opting to choose work that they believe in, for organizations that care and that fulfill an inherent sense of purpose. On the other hand, individuals leave their jobs for various reasons, such as lack of advancement opportunities, feeling unfulfilled, and conflict in navigating personal and professional obligations. As such, it’s crucial to create an environment where employees can grow and succeed within the organization, which will ultimately lead to a loyal employee community that wants to stay and contribute to elevating experiences across all aspects of their lives.

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There is good news: research shows that flexibility around home working initiatives results in increased productivity, happier workers, and all the associated organizational benefits.

The American Sociological Association conducted a study on workers at a Fortune 500 company to determine how work flexibility impacts job satisfaction, employee burnout, and psychological stress. The results were definitive, according to Phyllis Moen, one of the researchers behind the study.

“Our research demonstrates that workers who are allowed to have a voice in the hours and location of their work not only feel better about their jobs but also less conflicted about their work-to-family balance,” she said in a press release. “Crucially, these workers are also more efficient and more productive on the job. In other words, workplace flexibility is beneficial—not detrimental—to organizations.”

To help organizations materialize these benefits, the following tips offer some simple, practical changes that workers should apply to their remote work environments, which will quickly result in elevated home-based productivity.

Establish A Dedicated Home Office Space

While the tendency to work from the couch in a pair of sweats is alluring, it’s also an instant productivity killer. Dedicated home office spaces are essential when working remotely as they limit distractions and provide a similar environment to a regular office, helping to maintain a vital work routine.

Ideally, a home-based workstation needs a desk and a comfortable chair with easy access to power supplies and a router. Adding an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, a standing desk option, and a second monitor to the setup can really help to stay focused, reduce stress, and maintain good posture.  

At the very least, it’s important to work from a room with a closable door to prevent general distractions and interruptions during conference calls or customer interactions.

Ensure the Room Has Proper Lighting

Workplace lighting has a huge impact on how people work and how they feel. Good lighting can improve mood, energy, alertness, and productivity, while improper lighting can have the opposite effects.

In a study conducted by the American Society of Interior Design, 68% of employees reported issues with the lighting situation in their offices, which should be a wake-up call for companies looking to increase employee satisfaction.

Now that home working is essential for many employees, it’s important to work in well-lit environments by making a few changes to the home office. Sunlight is a great starting point, so try to get set up in a room with lots of natural light. If that’s not an option, there are several sunlight lamps available to simulate natural light, while also having positive impacts on seasonal affective disorder and depression.  

The minimum setup should include overhead lighting and an optional desk lamp to help simulate a traditional office environment—it’s the little touches that make all the difference.

Maintain A Clutter-Free Environment

Once the home office is set up and the room is well lit, it’s time to get decluttering—get rid of those stacks of papers, loose stationery, empty food containers, and tangled cables as they have significant negative impacts on productivity.  

Research shows that messy workplaces could actually be bad for your brain, revealing steeper rates of cognitive decline in untidy workers when compared to their more organized counterparts. Overall, clutter-free environments help reduce stress, increase focus, and spark innovation, which in turn, helps improve productivity and performance.

Start by removing everything from the desk, wiping it down, and only returning the items that are essential for the job, like the computer, monitor, webcam, keyboard, and mouse. Keep things like business cards, batteries, or loose change in a drawer somewhere and assign a specific place for any important documents that you might need.  

Additional furniture such as shelves, file cabinets, and stationery holders also helps free up important desk real estate, while under-desk cable tidies keep messy wires out of sight. Ultimately, minimalism is the answer to avoiding drops in productivity.

Invest in an Uninterrupted Power Supply

One of the biggest concerns over work-at-home initiatives is that communication and seamless collaboration are at the mercy of the employee’s power supply and internet connection. A great way to eliminate most of that risk is with an uninterrupted power supply (UPS), which can keep computers and internet routers operational during unexpected power outages.

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 To find out more about how Activus Connect maximizes productivity in a virtual environment, contact us and ask how our SmartVirtual™ approach is elevating customer experiences.

The post Quick Tips for Boosting Productivity in a Home Working Space appeared first on Activus Connect.

First and foremost, it cannot be understated that we absolutely believe that large providers are doing the right thing to combat this pandemic and protect their employees. Contact centers that house hundreds or thousands of workers are completely unsuitable during this global crisis, so sending people home to work is the only rational and ethical call to make.

It’s great to see the BPO industry taking the necessary measures to ensure people’s safety, but the question is whether or not traditional brick-and-mortar providers can maintain solid WFH service delivery over the course of 2020 and beyond.

Large-Scale Operational Hurdles

For many U.S. brands, much of their CX/BPO concentration is offshore with mega centers in India and the Philippines, mainly due to a low price point and high availability of talent. This approach creates a density problem, meaning brands are amplifying their risk with a single point of failure — if the mega center shuts down, what’s the backup plan?

As working from home is now essential in most countries, mega centers operators are handing in-center computers to employees to use at home. To configure these workstations for WFH, IT teams will be maxed to capacity. Meanwhile, downtime and call queues will increase as a result, resulting in a huge hit to customer experience. Additionally, one of the basic requirements for work-from-home operations is stable, affordable, reliable, high-speed internet, which becomes more of a factor offshore and increasingly complicated in the tier 2-3 cities where many mega centers and their employees are located.

While providers tout successful WFH implementations across the board, only time will tell if they are stable enough to last.

Employee Suitability for WFH

Contrary to popular belief, not everybody is suited to work from home. Big contact centers commonly employ a majority of Millennials and Gen Zs, and many of them will likely struggle to work from home on a long-term basis.

Dedicated work-at-home employment is very different from the hustle and bustle found in a large contact center. It requires a deep commitment from a specific type of person who can work successfully in a self-managed and often isolated environment.

The most valuable characteristics and skills we’ve seen in our Ambassadors are a working knowledge of computers and modern devices, being at ease with autonomy and isolation, strong organizational and time-keeping skills, and an active digital social life on several platforms.

While working from home might feel like a benefit for contact center employees in the short term, you cannot expect all of them to successfully adapt to a WFH lifestyle for extended periods of time. Many outsourcers are unaware of this risk, as it’s still very early days for their WFH operations.

Bringing Balance to the Equation

Risk is at an all-time high in the service delivery space, and brands are looking to balance their own risk as much as possible, either to prepare for long-term disruption or the emergence of a similar crisis later down the line.

Large BPOs and CX providers may claim to have virtualized thousands of seats, but their clients risk exposure if providers fail to sustain their new WFH operations. Essentially, these brands need a business continuity and disaster recovery plan that doesn’t rely on the promises of a single large-scale provider.

One of the ways that brands can protect themselves is by spreading the risk out and mitigating losses by partnering with more established WFH CX providers. Pure-play WFH providers in the United States employ geographically dispersed teams, ensuring business continuity during times of crisis, and removing that single point of failure in physical locations.

By inserting a pure-play WFH provider as a champion challenger, brands can balance their portfolio while assessing how providers compete. Aside from offering an additional layer of protection, it’s also a great strategy for measuring how each provider handles specific CX requirements.

With Q3 and Q4 on the horizon, retailers, utility providers, telcos, and other industries will be gearing up for peak season, which could be a huge challenge for organizations if their CX service isn’t up to scratch. From our viewpoint, the only way to prepare for this and ensure business continuity during times of crisis is by balancing CX delivery with dedicated WFH partners, eliminating the single point of failure that comes with large contact centers.

The post Eliminate the Single Point of Failure to Reduce Outsourced CX Risk in 2020 appeared first on Activus Connect.

This is why the work-at-home model’s attributes have become so evident. Recent struggles are forcing even former skeptics of its potential.  Bricks-and-mortar has by all accounts been punished by the onslaught of COVID. The time for a more practical way of delivering customer experience with virtualized agents is now.

Let’s look at the facts. For the foreseeable future, there is no viable way for traditional contact centers to operate as they have.  Until the COVID pandemic has been at least stabilized, it is hard to imagine any executive will want to assemble large numbers of employees together in an interior workspace, where the risk of contagion is too great. And ongoing regulation may prevent this from happening, in order to limit the virus’ spread.  The cost of screening agents, supervisors and managers is also significant, as is augmenting the facilities needed to prevent the spread of infection (like more hand-sanitizer stations, increasing the frequency and depth of cleaning and taking on the space needed for social distancing agents from each other).

But, as we all know,  business goes on even in disruptive times.  Consumers have questions that need answers, and the companies that they buy from cannot come up short.  It is times like these that enterprises need to exceed customer expectations for service.  But, with bricks-and-mortar operators clearly limited over the course of COVID, the possibility of harnessing a motivated workforce that can operate from home simply makes sense.

Home-working ticks the right boxes for enterprise contact center managers as they attempt to ensure the right quality service to end-users.  With agents working exclusively from their residences, the risk of exposure is effectively zero.

To be clear, this is not to say that a home-based brand ambassador will not be exposed to COVID in the course of their daily lives. But, they will not be in a contact center work environment.  And, if the home-based agent workforce is virtualized across the United States, enterprises can access the largest possible pool of talent, one that brings linguistic capabilities, functional expertise, and vertical familiarity.  This contrasts sharply with traditional facilities, which are certain to see their agent population diminish over the short term in the face of self-quarantining and ever-increasing regulation on the numbers of people assembled in one place.

So, how best to take advantage of home-working for an enterprise that wants to ensure the integrity of the loyalty of its consumers?  Practically speaking, while this is a way of delivering customer experience that is operationally straightforward, recruiting, training and deploying a virtual labor force is not something that can be done in short order.  Therefore, it is imperative that interested executives work with a provider that not only offers work-at-home solutions, but one that has the experience needed to ramp up the best possible agents quickly. This is vital to maintaining the high-quality levels of service that end-users expect.  It is essential to find the right partner that has the processes and technology in place alongside talent that will drive the best possible outcomes.

We collectively await the conclusion of the COVID nightmare. In the meantime, work-at-home is the key to getting through the current customer experience challenge.

The post Work-at-Home is the Only Solution for Managing CX During COVID appeared first on Activus Connect.

Thanksgiving into Black Friday and over the weekend, national news outlets highlighted snow accumulations, cancelled flights, stranded cars, etc, etc. Today, as I again glance at the Weather Channel the headlines read: “Parts of Northeast Slammed with 20 inches of Snow, More to Come” and “Yep, 2 More Storms to Come, California in Store for Rain & Snow”- weatherchannel.com.

For many, seeing and hearing the forecast is informational, and if you live here in FL, it makes for validation on why the Sunshine State is perfect this time of year.  If you work in the US-based Customer Care Outsourcing industry, weather events of this magnitude are horrific in that they cripple an outsourcers ability to support their clients, and their client’s customers.

Most business processing outsourcers operate Brick and Mortar facilities and weather events mean that valued employees are unable to commute to work, creating a service gap that has broad reaching brand implications.  For the customer calling in on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, their mission is often to obtain information or request support which ultimately leads to a sale.  When long wait times or poor quality resulting from tired call center employees (who have been on back to back calls because of short staffing), impacts a Customer Experience, everyone losses.

No Brand Ever Has to Be Impacted by Weather Again!

Understandably, we are biased, but the reality is that there is no reason for a Brand to be impacted by weather events, staffing challenges or more importantly by the reputational damage that occurs when a valued customer doesn’t receive the level of support they expect.

For the few contact center organizations that understand the value of a remote-based labor pool, and whom have invested in the proper infrastructure (people, process and technology) – this week’s weather events likely had NO impact to the brands they represent (kudos to our industry colleagues). Everyone else went into contingency planning mode and is still, likely, in contingency execution mode.  Valued employees have likely spent days huddled on conference calls, personally calling absent agents, begging for overtime and likely doing the equivalent of a rain dance but this time, to get the bad weather to stop.

Remote-agent solutions, what at Activus Connect we refer to as “SmartVirtual” and what legacy BPOs refer to as work-from-home, is the ultimate solution for superior Customer Experience.  Geographically disbursed teams that mitigate the chances of a “single point of failure”, teams unimpacted by weather events and who have the ability and inclination to provide authentic brand experiences, all the time.

The post And Just Like That, The Weather Is Tipping The Customer Experience Scale appeared first on Activus Connect.

Scenario 2: Customer calls into the contact center have increased by 150% in the past few days. The weather channel is spewing out hurricane facts like an overheated computer. Insurance Company management is proactively contacted by Activus Connect, their customer experience provider. Their always-on customer and behavioral analytics platform flagged an increase in a specific type of call, “Do I have flood insurance?”.  Activus Connect has written a new script for these calls, and their Ambassadors have been brief real-time via their Smart Virtual™ communication platform. Additional Ambassadors have been queued up for just-in-time support and additional messaging recommendations have been shared with the Insurance Company Management team. Crisis averted, Insurance Company Management is able to breathe a sigh of relief and Activus Connect keeps on elevating experiences. Sales are increasing, new policy quotes are rising, conversion rates are up, and revenue for the day is optimal.

Which customer experience do you want your clients to receive when they call into your company: scenario #1 or #2?

“Number two, of course!” you say. Unfortunately for most of the insurance providers, they live in scenario number one as approximately 1% of customer service calls are reviewed even during a sudden spike.

“Our clients savor their customer experience. That is how we differentiate ourselves from our competition—we go above and beyond the expected. We’re people-centric.” States Activus Connect’s Co-Founder, Minerva Serrano.

Serrano continues, “The positive value of AI-enabled conversational analytics across all aspects of the customer journey—from sales to billing to claims—is paramount to the success of the organization. It drives customer loyalty and increases revenue.”

Overall, insurance providers haven’t addressed the subject of conversational and behavioral analytics because they haven’t had to. Customers’ behaviors are changing with the advent of digital, the ease of comparison shopping and the expectation of a more personal experience. Industry innovator, Activus Connect’s bundled conversational analytics helps their insurance clients determine their customers’ needs and wants before the customer can even articulate them.

“The keys to CX (Customer Experience) quality in insurance, according to Forrester, stem from effectiveness, ease, and emotion. Typically, this means having a combination of digital and human access.” At Activus Connect, this is how we are establishing ourselves as an industry leader. See CMS Wire’s article on how “The Insurance Industry Plays Catch Up With Customer Experience” for more information.

Serrano reiterates, “Measuring every call allows us to tell you what your customers are saying. This enables us to tell our clients how to be more strategic and deliberate in their customer experience.”

Very few insurance companies are using these tools. Many are still using outdated practices which is a costly decision as uncaptured revenue is drained from your organization with each customer call. Don’t you want to know what your customers want before they do? Your shareholders do.

At Activus Connect, these essential tools are provided in our base platform:

• Customer sentiment, or conversational analytics, allows insurance companies to understand what their customers are saying, what’s important to them and how to meet their needs.
• Compliance enables our clients to maximize sales while being legally compliant. This ensures all legal disclosures are provided, which reduces risk mitigation. Analytics-based compliance tools are an absolute way of maximizing every sales opportunity.
• 100% quality assurance monitoring, it’s about ensuring that you know how your valued Ambassadors are always performing. How they are treating your customers, and whether they are representing your brand in the way you would expect.

Activus Connect, a people-centric company, provides this suite of analytics-based enablement tools. Insurance companies who partner with Activus Connect, automatically get an advantage over their competitors in the marketplace because no other contact center providers offers such a robust level of CX enablement at no additional cost. This is why we are considered an industry leader. We provide the tools that brands need to have a competitive edge, all included in our base platform.

Do you want your organization partnering with an industry laggard or innovator that can help increase revenue?

Written by award-winning author, Kim M. Clark

The post Insurance Companies Need a Strong Dose of Conversational Analytics appeared first on Activus Connect.

We asked three women on our team questions around these topics. Their answers are so insightful and speak truthfully of the organization that we aim to be. We have amazing women!

Jennifer Strader
Head of Operations
16 years in contact centers
16 years working remotely

What has been the most significant benefit since you started working remotely? 

Working remotely was not just a benefit for me. At the time I started working in the industry, I was parenting two children with special needs that were demand unpredictable.  The ability to work from home allowed me to have a more rapid response time to my children’s schools and medical needs by being nearby. Additionally, I was more available simply from an hours-of-the-day perspective. No commute meant no lost time in productivity by spending time driving or public transportation daily. I had a lot more time spent “hands-on,” both as a parent and an employee.

Why is gender equality and diversity important to you? 

From a personal perspective, gender equality and diversity have impacted me directly. Without the mentoring leaders that I’ve had throughout my career, and that have been willing to see potential rather than perceive liability, I wouldn’t have gained the sense of self-worth that I have today. I would have missed the opportunity I’ve been given to positively influence as many lives as I have through everyday interactions that expand beyond the little microcosm that is my own personal world. To me, ensuring gender equality and embracing diversity are essential needs for a healthier society. In our increasingly real-time digitally connected world, various differences in opinion, life and economic circumstances, religious and political views, and personal and spiritual values are amplified and non-insulated. Diplomatic solutions to our challenges can only be achieved through intentional acts of non-bias and demonstrating greater tolerance for our individual differences.

What challenges have you overcome to reach where you are today?  

With being a woman in a competitive business that also has unique family demands that diverge from the “norm”,  I’ve been driven by anxiety to be necessary and bring value, to exceed what’s expected, to prevent challenges or at least prepared to adapt and overcome in order to be perceived as an employee that is not dispensable. I’ve had to “unlearn” that my value as a member of society and my ability to take care of what I hold most dear is entirely dependent upon the level of sacrifice I make for my job. The heightened awareness and progress toward gender equality and inclusion have enabled me to begin learning to care for myself a bit more and recognize that there are more people like me than unlike me in this world.

Chris Herron
Head of Project Management Officer
18 years in contact centers
8 years working remotely

What has been the most significant benefit since you started working remotely? 

The biggest wins for me are being able to pursue my career, earn a good living wage to support my family and at the same time, not give up the opportunity to raise my son instead of sending him to childcare.

Why is gender equality and diversity important to you?  

Gender equality and diversity, especially in the workplace, create some sort of social cohesion. Jobs, where men and women are given the same opportunity, can really shape people’s values and behaviors towards any gender or race. I think it also broadens everyone’s mental and emotional ability to accept new things, adapt to changes, and yearn for improvements. With a diverse pool of talent, the increase in productivity, creativity, and innovation is limitless as every single one of these unique individuals has something new to share. As a woman of Asian descent, I am able to bring to the plate in the organization a part of my culture of kindness and family-oriented values from the Philippines, which ultimately, are the pieces that really shaped who I am as a person.

Do you have any advice to give to the future generation of women who are endeavoring to develop and advance their own careers?

I live by three simple things in life.

• First, embrace who you are.  You do not have to redefine yourself as your uniqueness can be as valuable as the skill set of an executive of a Fortune 500 company.
• Secondly, Family is everything. As you advance forward in whatever path you take, treat the people around you like they are your family. And they will take care of their job and the company as they would for their own family.
• Lastly, Be grateful. Appreciation is defined as an act of acknowledging the good things in life. The more that we focus on these good things, and be thankful for them, the more that we attract positive energy and attitude. And with this, we make good decisions and create deeper meaningful connections with the people that we work with, and that can ultimately inspire and motivate everyone in your workplace.

Dawn Nash
Head of Learning and Development
15 years in contact centers
15 years working remotely

What has been the most significant benefit since you started working remotely?

The most significant benefit has been self-esteem and personal growth. I worked my way through the ranks and have learned so much over the years. Had I not been remote, those opportunities and late nights could have come at a significant cost – working remotely seemed to just fit with my goals and ability to have a work-life balance.

Why is gender equality and diversity important to you?

I have two daughters. One of my daughters is an athlete – I know I am her mother, but I watch this kid and think, “wow, she really has something.” She makes me proud. But what I know is that for her to move forward, in sports, academics and even in any career focus (especially in sports), she will always battle for a place at the table – regardless of her knowledge or skill. I see it time and again in this industry; as a manager, I manage a significant number of women. I want to help them with their goals and growth – because it’s going to take all of us even to create that seat that my daughter will earn.

Do you have a role model, someone that you look to for motivation and inspiration (male or female) that has helped you to get to where you are today?

Over my working career, I have run into quite a few people that I have been inspired by. The one that has made the most change in my life is our very own Jennifer Strader, who I have looked up to for years. She’s a pusher (in the best way, of course). She challenges you, pushes you, and she’s even seen the possibility when I thought there was none. She can spot potential, crack codes, and she has a unique way of communicating that brings a person forward and up. She is not afraid to blaze a trail. There have been others along the way, Beth Beard and Donette Feliciano, both very steady, all strong forces to be reckoned with. And there is my mother – who was a woman in a man’s world until she retired.

The post An Interview with the Women at Activus Connect appeared first on Activus Connect.

As far back as I can remember, I have always been self-directed, driven and assertive – qualities I inherited from both of my parents.  Dad (Pedro) and Mom (Minerva) were not only amazing parents but they set high expectations of their five children – a college education was not optional.  My mother received her degree in Marketing and my father, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Kansas University.  Times were different in the 70’s, and despite my mom’s decision to dedicate herself to child rearing she was unequivocal in her expectation for us.  Dad had a successful career in the Oil industry, in jobs that afforded him the opportunity to work in Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, doing what he loved most.  My father always set the example, he encouraged me to pursue a career, to be independent, to set goals that stretched my abilities and to establish myself as a leader.

After a 14-year career in Finance, I had 3 children and decided to take time out from my career to spend time getting my family off to the same strong start my parents had given me. During that time, I faced many of the same transitional challenges that so many working moms do when they take a step in a different direction. Fueled by a desire to do more, I took the leap into entrepreneurship, by starting my own businesses in direct sales and network marketing. For me, working from home allowed me the balance between being a Mother and a businesswoman. It was through these businesses that I found a true passion – encouraging, teaching, and growing other women into successful business people.

While going through my personal journey, I watched my husband, Felix, as he developed his career in Customer Service outsourcing. We met at a very young age and a fun fact is that when we got married, we both worked at call centers. Digressing, I watched Felix go from an overnight call center agent working his way through college to the CEO of a multinational Contact Center outsourcing company and I came to appreciate the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) industry.

We reached a point in our lives, both personally and professionally, where we were both ready to do more. To build a legacy for our family, to make a difference in people’s lives, and to take a different turn in our journey. I had complete confidence that we could combine our talents and experiences to build a business that stood for something more, a business that could provide better people experiences, superior customer experiences while doing more for society – this was now our new mission in life. This is the moment Activus Connect was truly conceived.

Building a new business has been an exciting journey and as we worked on our business plan and brand strategy, it became clear that we were doing something more than starting a business –  in achieving success we would also be paving the way for a host of new Women and Minority entrepreneurs. I recall the moment, very clearly – it was a sense of clarity and awareness that one of our core differentiators was rooted in trailblazing a path, across an industry that sees few women in executive leadership roles, even fewer Latina women in these roles and practically unheard of for the majority owner of a BPO to be a woman entrepreneur.

I feel humbled and honored to be leading a business that gives back to the community, to be able to inspire other women like me to follow their dreams and ambitions regardless of their background, to be the “mom boss” that they want to be.

As an executive leader at Activus Connect, I am using my experiences to continue to build a company that provides opportunities for women and men who want to have meaningful careers while still having a great work-life balance.  Together, we are doing our part to cast a new example of what a people-centric, experiences based, socially committed outsourcing business can look like. With this vision we have created a new standard in Customer Experience outsourcing.

The path of a trailblazer is never linear, it’s rarely easy and yet there are few things in this life that are more meaningful.

The post I Started a New Company! My Journey to Women and Minority Business Ownership appeared first on Activus Connect.

They’ve already been traumatized by an unforeseen negative event and must quickly engage with their insurance companies to provide detailed information, then wait for a claims adjuster to review their case and determine the level of coverage based on their policies.

At the same time, insurance companies are constantly challenged with fraudulent claims, and the costs associated with fraud and the detection and prosecution of fraud creates costs that impact the price of insurance and the profits of insurance companies.

While the claims management process is complex and painful for many insurers and policyholders, data generated from IoT connected devices in homes and vehicles are helping change the game and improve outcomes dramatically.

The model is quite simple. IoT sensors collect massive amounts of data, which is useful not only when losses are detected, but also useful in helping policyholders live more safely thus reducing the odds of unfortunate events.

Here are a few examples:

Sensors in automobiles detect crashes, and can even show specifically where damage is done;

The same sensors can alert authorities, sending police and medical assistance within seconds which reduces loss of life and other health consequences, while also providing immediate, trusted information for insurance claims;

These same sensors can also be used to improve driving awareness and habits (letting drivers know when they are speeding, when they are drifting into another lane, when they are otherwise engaging in unsafe practices;

These same sensors can also connect to automation systems (slowing, braking, disabling a driver who is intoxicated, etc.).

Sensors in smart homes can detect fires, fumes and other dangerous conditions, and can automatically alert homeowners, fire departments, police and others based on policies set by the consumer and their service providers, dramatically improving response times and reducing risk;

Sensors can also detect water leakage and drive immediate action to turn off faucets or have system issues repaired in real time;

Sensors can detect falls in the homes of older adults, can detect motion in the home, and doors opened and closed, which can impact healthcare insurance costs as well as home insurance costs.

The innovations are infinite, and they are changing the way not only insurance companies operate but how they deliver customer service.

“Customer satisfaction can be difficult to maintain in the high-stress claims management process,” said Felix Serrano, co-founder and CEO of Activus Connect said. “IoT devices can improve customer satisfaction by providing insurers with data in real time when a loss is detected, and can help expedite the claims process, benefitting both the insurance company and their customer.”

Activus Connect leverages cloud technologies to create a network of expert agents, or “ambassadors” who are highly skilled in different areas. “In the modern world,” Serrano said, “these ambassadors representing insurance companies now have much more data at their fingertips to be able to guide a customer through the process.”

Serrano envisions a world where the insurance company contact their customer first.

“Here’s an example. A smart car’s sensors detect a collision that causes airbags to deploy, and its GPS system sends the location of the collision to local authorities. Even as the police and first responders are on their way, the insurance company’s automated system is alerted, and a message goes to an ambassador who instantly sets up a claim for the customer.  The expert claims ambassador has detailed and trusted data which they can review, and then can contact the policyholder given that customers’ preferred method of contact.”

Serrano says blending big data automation together with human compassion is the key to success. “Machine generated information is a blessing to advanced brands and their CX partners. But there is nothing more important at a stressful time than a competent professional with a friendly voice and genuine empathy.”

“AI enabled analytics is fundamentally changing the insurance industry by providing actionable information about things like customer journey experience and compliance,” Serrano also explained. “Where customer experience insights help to reduce customer effort and compliance helps ensure more effective sales efforts, resulting in better conversion, quote to call and revenue per call levels.”

According to a study by McKinsey & Company, data-driven technology in claims management can minimize the time for a filed claim to reach completion leading to a 30% reduction in processing costs.

“The information available as part of an enhanced claims processing solution reduces time – and cost – for the providers and the consumers. This can lead to more competitive pricing and greater profits, while improving coverage and service. This also provides a built-in rewards system for safe drivers and conscientious homeowners, which we’re seeing across a number of mobile applications and other programs coming out of the world’s top insurance companies,” Serrano continued.

Not all customers will buy into programs like this, with many concerned about privacy issues. Customers may feel that giving insurer access to the data from their connected devices puts their privacy at risk.

“Trust is becoming increasingly important when it comes to CX,” Serrano said. “We’re finding that customers need to understand the balance between the risk and the benefit of allowing insurers access to data generated by their devices. It’s important for insurers to be transparent about the use of IoT data, and insurance companies have a very positive opportunity to engage with their customers as new connected offers are rolled out. These innovations cannot be mandated, they must be provided as an option in order to be successful.”

Originally published by Industrial IoT News

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Geico, for example, introduced “Kate” – a virtual assistant who connects with customers through their mobile app to answer questions via text or voice recognition.  Kate is programmed to answer general insurance questions, as well as specific questions about a customer’s account, and helps customers with everything from knowing when their next payment is due to checking balances and fetching documents. For issues that cannot be answered by Kate, customers are transferred to live agents who provide highly personalized services and are available 24/7.

Allstate innovated with drive-through claims centers which offer half hour appointments for appraisals, but when their customers wanted more, they rolled out the QuickFoto appraisal app. Now, customers simply send a few pictures of the accident to a claims adjuster through the app, and the claim is processed within less than one business day. When questions arise, expert agents are connected with customers and have access to the information they provided, so those questions can be answered quickly and precisely.

Liberty Mutual created a special application for Amazon Alexa; customers with Alexa-enabled devices instantly connect customers to answers about insurance, estimates, or to an agent, activated by three words: “Alexa – Liberty Mutual.” 

State Farm rolled out the extremely popular “Drive Safe & Save” application, which helps drivers keep their insurance premiums low without sacrificing full protection for their vehicles. The platform uses a telematics device to track customers’ driving patterns and connects to a Driver Feedback app that shares tips on how to improve their driving. Customer satisfaction ratings for State Farm continue to reach all-time highs over the last few years.

There are dozens more innovations insurance companies are implementing to keep their customers happy and their bottom-line results healthy. Regardless of the automation provided by technologies, they all share one important aspect in common: no insurance company believes they can build and grow their brands without awesome humans – expert agents – or what we like to call Ambassadors ready to engage as friendly, highly trained, empathetic and efficient helpers.

Ambassadors can help throughout the lifecycle – from customer acquisition (by answering questions and guiding inbound callers through the qualification process and by providing attracting offers) to claims processing and customer retention. Ambassadors can also drive up the chances that happy customers will refer their friends and share positive experiences with others, which is so key in this hyper-social world.

Activus Connect’s AI-enabled Ambassadors help our customers drive great results, including during times of distress when geographically dispersed experts are available in locations where fires, floods, earthquakes and other disasters occur.

We provide outstanding data analytics enabling insurance companies to follow trends, and understand how certain behaviors drive the best results, and how certain agents are delivering conversations that matter.

We are also able to scale up for periods of enrollment for medical insurance, for example, tailor our coverage for specific events, and train and coach Ambassadors with information that makes personalization possible in seconds.

We help ensure insurance companies can deliver innovation in CX in harmony with all the innovations they are creating to remain competitive, and are inspired by the opportunity to provide meaningful conversations especially when their customers may be under duress and appreciate even more a calm, understanding and efficient expert available to help them through. In the worst of situations, we often find the best of people, and at Activus Connect – we call those people Ambassadors as part of our cultural DNA and value system.

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