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TransUnion Live – The Latest Challenges and Opportunities for Insurance Call Centers

While many insurance companies have introduced self-serve, web- and app-based customer service options, the latest research shows phone calls still play a critical role in their multichannel outbound communication strategies. Watch our on-demand TransUnion Live where we explored the latest insights regarding challenges and opportunities pertaining to the insurance customer call experience. To download some of the data we referenced in our discussion, visit transunion.com/call-experience-insurance.

    Full Transcript Below

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Well, welcome everyone to another episode of TransUnion Live on LinkedIn. I'm Andrew Goss and I'm excited to be joined by my esteemed colleagues, Michelle Jackson and Jonjie Sena. Welcome, you two.

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    Thanks Andrew.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yep. Well, we're here today to discuss the latest research about challenges and opportunities pertaining to the insurance customer call experience. Now, before we get started, I have a quick housekeeping note that I always have for the audience. We welcome your questions related to today's conversation and the comments area on your screen. If they're applicable and we don't get to them today, we'll do our best to respond to you afterwards. Now, let's get started. Now, first off, I think it's best to get the lay of the land when we start these conversations, and I kind of do this every time. From a high level, what are some of the key trends impacting the insurance industry as we begin the new year 2024, and how are insurers adapting their strategies to remain competitive in today's always evolving environment?

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    I'll start with this and I think it's important before we dive into all the nuances of the insurance industry, is to peel back one layer and think about evolving consumer expectations because it's really pertinent when we're talking about call center experiences. So we've all heard across all industries how consumers are looking for more personalized, more secure, more streamlined experiences, and a lot of focus within the insurance world was put into the digital channel and streamlining the quoting process, more self-service options on websites, but not as much focus in recent years had been put on streamlining that experience and the phone channels. So then if we think about what's been happening in insurance of late, the insurance industry has been dealing with unprecedented challenges related to profitability and inflation, rising loss costs and claim costs. As a result, having to increase premiums in order to cover the cost of claims.

    Subsequently creating lots of shopping instances as consumers are getting increased bills at their renewal and calling and looking for better coverage, better premium, all while insurancers insurers are trying to address expense issues and trying to figure out how to optimize efficiencies where they can. So now if we drill down into the call center, you've got consumers who are looking for that really positive, really secure experience and then you have insurers trying to balance all these challenges and looking for ways to optimize increase answer rates, reduced costs. So it's really about needing to find ways to reduce the amount of times outbound calls that are going unanswered, not reaching the right party while doing it in a way that makes it a positive experience for a consumer.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Yeah, let me layer on that. I think it's an interesting dichotomy of what the child gets are, and you're almost balancing this idea of efficiencies and experience, right? I mean everybody going remote is one aspect, pushing everything online going self-service streamlines the activity, but it also takes away from what was traditionally a more one-to-one engagement as some of the phone channels have been. And the impact of that has a couple of things in the context centers we are seeing, and not just in insurance, but sort of changing agents in terms of the number of agents and number of qualified agents. So there is as part of that reduction in impact on the people that you call. The second thing is the push to online and digital channels make absolute sense. In the research we've seen for the insurance vertical, the number one way people go in are first probably the web, and we've run a survey on how the customer experience is.

    What's interesting is as people start going down the one-off areas, I have a problem that's not solved on the web, that's not standard or you're looking for very specific information of a personal nature. They don't go on the web, they don't provide or will not provide that in some cases and they want to hit zero and talk to a live person. So that's the balance that I think we're going to face as you simplify and move offline. And yet there's a need for the customer experience that it is exactly what I need as a customer and it's me and you deal with me the way that I want to deal with you is really I think that's the balancing act and I think we'll explore that as we go deeper into here of what those two fighting forces look like because kind of an opposite extremes in some ways simplify, but make it personal. They kind of cut against each other. That's the push and pull.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, very interesting stuff and I think that's a good entree to where I was headed with this next question that I was thinking about is, and I think about this of what is old is new again, given all the technologies available to insurers, and Michelle touched on it, excuse me a little bit earlier, from mobile to web and way beyond areas I'm probably not even thinking about, right. Talk about that void that phone calls still fill and how they're used across the policy lifecycle.

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    Sure. So again, there has been such a push to streamline, particularly when you think about kind of that point of point of sale and being able to create these self-service moments for consumers looking for insurance or looking to update a billing address or renew their policy or even submit a claim. But if you kind of go back to the premise of insurance, it is complicated. Some people get to a certain point in their quote process and we're talking about some of the most important assets in their life, their homes, their cars, and not everyone's an insurance expert and they want to talk to an individual. I recently went through this myself. Mind you, I've been an insurance my entire career and I still don't trust myself to pick the right coverage. And I was going back and forth via email with an agent about getting a new policy issued and every time she would call me, my phone would pop up as spam blocked Carl.

    So I wouldn't answer her so that she would have to email me and say, Hey Michelle, I'm trying to get ahold of you. And it's like, I know Christie, I didn't recognize your number. And just this process of going back and forth just creates this terrible experience. And phone is still dependent on in so many scenarios because when it gets to that certain point in the process, people just want to talk to each other and make sure that they're getting the right coverage, they're doing the right thing when it comes to getting a policy issued, getting the right coverage and payment information, renewing a policy and maybe needing to add a up and coming driver, a driver in your household turning 16. And the most important part, particularly in insurance is when you're talking about servicing a claim. And in the worst case scenarios, those natural disaster type claims is when people are standing on the side of the road in the moment they just had a car accident or gosh forbid something happened to their house or they were impacted by a tornado. Those are the times where people are still looking for that personal connection and the phone channel is so heavily relied on in those scenarios.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    I think you've provided a whole lot of categories that are really common from what we see. Like you're talking about shopping and sales people that need to get this or shopping around looking for edits, you're talking about people who were in accident and claims and need to get in touch with adjusters. You have account servicing type. These are all happening all the same time and the needs of each of those people are probably a little bit different and when your contact is also pretty important. And I think knowing the difference and providing the context back to the people that you are reaching out to helps provide that capability. I think one of the other things that we're seeing for solutions that address this is giving enough context as you make outreach your example of people trying to reach you, you want the call but you don't take it anyway.

    The more information you provide, the more you empower the consumer to decide is this something I actually want to do or need to do? And I think that's the power of this. I also don't want to overstress that the phone call is the only thing. The phone call at the end of the day is just one aspect of an omnichannel reach out. They're going to do web, they're going to do phones, they're going to do text, they're probably using apps. And so you kind of have to consider that holistically and the more information you provide, you're actually shaping how people respond by giving them the information that they want. And some people will self-select, they will answer because they need that quote or they will just say, hell no, I'm done with all these sales calls for my insurance company. That's not a bad thing. That's a call that's answered that didn't want to talk to you. So both those cases I believe are positive in terms of get the ones that want to talk to you and less we're the ones that don't.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, all interesting stuff and apologies if this we recycle some of the conversation, but I think it is important to look at some of the biggest challenges when it comes to outbound calls from insurance companies to consumers. Michelle touched on the not knowing who your caller was, but let's delve a little bit further into that.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    I can take a pass at this and Michelle, we could tweak it from an insurance point of view, but let's back up a little bit. A phone call in many ways is something that every single consumer deals with. And if you have a phone today, you know what a robocall is, what an unknown caller is, and that's the general problem. So if you sort of focus in on the insurance consumer, they're facing the same thing. So robocalls, it's still the number one consumer complaint in the us, 50 billion in 20, 22, 40 billion lost by scan from phones. If that's the case, who's going to pick up? So that's one of the challenges that you've lost the trust. But the other aspect of it is even when you are a legitimate business and you're making a call, I'm going to go back to the example Michelle Hatch, she's waiting for the call from her agent to finish up something.

    We've seen that 25% of those calls from legitimate businesses that are calling back for a call you want are still getting flagged or tagged. And unless you do something about that, you're not going to get through. So that increases the angle and then I think you start running into, well what should I do? Do I call more often? Do I not call? I think that challenge is an interesting one and there's things you have to decide on how you create a call strategy. Here's a fascinating thing I'm seeing in other verticals that might make sense within the insurance side. So if you look at the financial services or collections, there are already rules that say, you know what, you're only allowed to call seven times in seven days. In other words, stop harassing people. You don't have free reign to just dial people as you wish because we have data that shows after a while after the third, fourth, fifth call, they're just going to stop answering. So that's one aspect of it. And so the idea of this is how do you meet people where they sort of want to be contacted so that you provide the experience that they're looking for and yet arm them with the ability to engage with you the way that they want to.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah. Michelle, do you have anything else to add? If not, I've got another question that kind popped out here. Yeah,

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    Not to take it the negative direction, but I think one of the other challenges that are showing up in the insurance industry, and Jonjie you could probably speak to this, is the fraud aspect of this. So people kind of taking advantage of folks when they're inopportune times. So one scenario where this has popped up in insurance is in light of natural disasters. So people have just gone through something and fraudsters are basically spoofing calls from an insurance company coming across as I am your insurer calling you because I know something just happened to you. Give me your personal information and we'll send you a check right away because we're trying to help you. Turns out they're not the insurer. There's somebody pretending to be the insurer and taking advantage of an unsuspecting consumer just to get personal information. So I think those are the extreme cases, but unfortunately it's something that seems to be trending and happening in all verticals is that fraud aspect

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    And there's multiple variations of that fraud you described. One is the helpful agent that's not really the agent that takes the information, but sometimes it goes the other extreme. It's like, Hey, we know you're having a flood. We know this area has issues. Unless you pay the $500 today, we will not apply the flood rider on top of this. So there's all of these things that have happened, it's really unfortunate, but you get it on both sides. And so it's either scare the people into acting or sweet talk them into behaving in both cases, both negative and I think helping the consumers understand if it's in fact coming from who they think it is or who it should be is part of the challenge I think that we could help address.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, I think those are a lot of negative slash blockers in terms of getting a consumer to answer the call. And when it comes to hard data, do we have hard data around answer rates and then how can companies address these trends we're seeing in answer rates?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Yeah. See, the issue with answer rates is that it sort of depends on the use case and the company that you have, but we ran a survey for the insurance team and what we were trying to get is for the verticals, we tried to talk to a couple of the insurance, the people that own contact centers and try to get a gauge on it. And the numbers are a little bit mixed. You'll see that it's a little bit of a bell, not quite, but it looks a little bit like a bell curve that some people say it's the same. Some people say it's getting worse, some people say it's getting better, but the net of it is call volume from what we saw was actually still going up and answer rates were actually worse than they were six months or a year ago. That doesn't quite answer your question.

    Is it 12% or 70%? But what we're seeing from a trend point of view is calls still matter. They're still getting made and the answer rates are unfortunately dropping for a couple. So the angle if you leave things the way they are, but I think the way that we look at this is that's just leaving it to chance. If you could influence by educating consumers and informing them that this is who you think it is, it's a follow-up from the call we made and it's me, your customer, and I can assure you that this has not been spoofed, I think you could reverse that or increase it. Let me throw one other thing that's really fascinating. We keep talking about answers and answer rates and if you're a contact center, you live and die by the answer rates. Sometimes that measures how effective your agents are.

    In some cases where we provide some solutions that help improve how a business, an insurance company engage with consumers, it's not always that you see a rise in rates. One of the sort of initially paradoxical to us is we help provide solutions and we saw the answer rate drop a little bit. And so when the answer drops a little bit, you're like, well, is it working or it's not. What you see though is the conversions are going up. And so what happens is by providing more information, you get two things happening. You get the people that wanted to take the call, Michelle and her policy will answer. You get the people that don't want to talk to you that is on your lead list, but you're just calling cold call to upsell. They don't answer. So people self-select. And so what you start to see is did the call drop, did the rate actually drop or did you actually reach a different group of people that answered and the ones you didn't want selected not to in either way. That's a positive, that's a positive. So increase for the people that you want, decrease for the people that you don't want or don't want to talk to you. And so you're asking a very nuanced question and that's the reality that we're seeing across the board.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Got it. I'm just going to take a quick break here for a second and just let everyone in the audience know, again, remind you if you joined a little late, we're happy to take any questions from the audience. So please put it in the comments area there that you see on the screen and we will go through them and take a look and answer them if we're able to. So back to the conversation here, I have lots of questions in my head. What are we seeing as far as calls being blocked or mislabeled and how can companies address this as well?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Michelle, I can take this. This is kind of across the board and I'm not sure I had the specific numbers only on insurance, but like I said, when we ran the survey for insurance, we did see that calls there was more blocking and tagging in their minds compared to six months or a year ago and call volumes were rising. But I think the angle that we want to take a look at is just, well, how do you address the improvement that you're looking for? And so we need to take our eyes away from just the simplicity of the answer rate and say, what is it that you're trying to do? I want to reach people, but I want to reach the right people. I think beyond the actual calling, getting insights on the people that you want to target, the people you want to call, you want to know, are these people likely to answer?

    You want to know if I'm going to call them and they have four phone numbers, which numbers should I use if I dial and they don't use the phone during particular times, how could you use a time of day or day of week that they're active, that they're more likely to pick up? And I think that just improves the chance of a contact. That's really the first step that has to happen. Now, once you have that, you then have to make sure that now that you're dialing the right person, that you're not going to get tagged or blocked. Like I said, 25% of legitimate calls we've seen were incorrectly blocked or tagged. And by providing some of the solutions in the industry that register and vet actual legitimate businesses, we've seen that drop really by about 90, a hundred percent in terms of inaccurate blocking. It's never a guarantee, but it's a dramatic improvement. So there's things to be done there, know who you're calling, prioritize, make sure you have the right contact, make sure that you're registered with the different analytics engines that provide these blocking and tagging capabilities, and then provide information context so that the consumer that gets the call knows that it's, you knows it hasn't been spoofed and you're starting to see logo show up and call reasons that just dramatically improves the engagement for everybody.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah. And Michelle, do you have anything else to kind of add specifically on the insurance side?

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    No, I think one of the most important factors in this, in the insurer's mind is the business they're in is really the business to provide for consumers in a moment of need, right? You're there to be the protector when something goes awry. And the importance of there are solutions out in the market that do just this, is to build trust in calls being valid and phone numbers being valid, not being spoofed, being legitimate business reasons that are really imperative to think about when we're doing the business we're doing within insurance.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    I love that talk track, Michelle, as you were describing, I was seeing images of the umbrella that protect people of the hands that mey people. So again, I'm picking on some of the logos, but it's a wonderful talk track of what insurance provides. And at the same time we're talking about bothersome, harassing unwanted calls. And so one of the things that we're, as we move away from just answer rates, let's talk about that idea of we are here for your most important calls to protect your life type talk track. And I think part of that, what we're seeing is it's not just phone calls and volumes of phone calls. It's engaging and doing it in a consistent brand. If your phone call shows that it is the hands, the umbrellas, the protection for you, and you can see it, it's similar to what you see for the ads on tv, wonderful insurance ads on tv.

    You see them, you see them in magazines, and if the call looks just like the app and these different things, you're actually enhancing that brand of protecting consumers. And so we have seen, now this is the part I was describing on other verticals that I see applying some of these technologies for brand building and for brand consistency for loyalty building. And that's the idea of marketing and getting that brand forward as you engage with customers. It's a form of reassurance and I think that makes perfect sense for insurers as people that provide a service, but also in your description of people that are here to protect and help.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, and I mean going back to what Jonjie  was talking about earlier in terms of meeting the customers where they want to be, I actually did a contact form over the weekend for something not insurance related, and I noticed that the first time ever, I've seen what date and what day of the week and what time is best for me to call you back. And I thought that was really smart and I had never seen that before. So yeah, something went off in my head when Jonjie  started talking about that. So speaking of not meeting people where they want to be, and I think this will probably touch on areas that I'm not even aware of, but unanswered calls, how does that impact organizations?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Oh, this one's an easy one. Michelle, you want to take this one first or

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    Yeah, I'll start with particularly insurance examples and then feel free to layer in some insights from other verticals. I mean the most critical time, again, going back to that claim scenario, every minute is impactful again in that situation of something bad has happened and you are trying to be there because that is the service you've provided. And in a time of need when somebody is waiting for help or waiting for a tow or waiting for somebody to come do a repair, or in the worst scenarios in life when there's been a death in the family, the biggest objective is to resolve that claim, resolve that problem as quickly as possible, as seamlessly as possible, and the best experience as possible being that it's not always the positive experience or a good experience. So the sooner that you can make those connections, people getting ahold of who they need to get ahold of just reduces claim cycle times and really helps keep that negative time in a consumer's life as positive as it can be. And that's so critical for insurers when it's coming to customer experience scores and whether or not they decide to stay with that insurer or decide to move on because they had a bad experience.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    And I love the consumer-centric perspective that you provided there, Michelle, because at the end of the day, this is what we're doing providing the service. But even on the flip side of that, remember a phone call is two sides. You have the consumer that has an issue and you have the insurer on the other hand. So negative reactions on the customer experience and the consumer have an impact. They have an impact on your favorability in your brand. But it goes beyond that when calls aren't answered, the impact to the enterprise, there's some pretty ordinary tactical impacts. It means we're less efficient, it means I have to dial yet a second, third, or fifth time, it means I now need to dial you seven times instead of once or twice, it means I have to call back. And so the efficiency of the contact center, and we talked at the start about reducing costs actually rises when people don't call up.

    What we've seen when we talked to some of the contact center, the morale within the customer, the agents themselves that are dialing just confession here, very early on as a grad student, I actually dialed for dollars to get people to pick up to do alumni contributions, toughest job in the world, especially when people push back. So no answers or getting just dial after dial or reaching the wrong people is really an issue that affects the agent morale. And we talked up front as you reduce some of the experiences and the strong and some of the contact centers. So there are obviously some dramatic impact there at the business level, at the insurance beyond the customer dissatisfaction. I guess I'll add one aspect, one more aspect. So we talked about the consumers, we talked about the enterprise. Sometimes somebody else is causing the problem, they're actually fraudsters that are dialing. And the issue with that, it's not you as the insurer, but as a consumer, if I think it's coming from you, I'm still blaming you. And that's I think one of the challenges that people face if they can't address this whole, sometimes it's not your fault, but it's still your problem to help solve. It's a difficult situation, but I think there are solutions that help make that a little bit easier.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Okay. Well that's interesting and I know we're doubling down on some of our conversation here, but I think it's good to reinforce it. And I also wanted to give recognition. We've got a question coming in from Bailey Cook, and we'll get to that in a second, but there's a few other questions I wanted to get to before we got to that. So I'm going towards the solution side here now. So we're singing from the same song, right? Call authentication is a big term, tossed around what exactly do we mean by call authentication as it pertains to today's conversation and why is it so important?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Well, I'll try to answer it at a high level and we'll dig down if we need to. Right? At the highest levels, call authentication is really the, it's the requirement to make sure you could validate that a call is in fact coming from who they say it's coming from. Again, we talked about spoofing, we talk about customers not knowing where it's coming from. The idea of authentication is making sure that the person that dials and as it's presented to the consumer is in fact the right thing. Now, the way that this is being solved in industry, there's actually a technology standard called stir shaken, stir shaken, authenticates. A call applies a digital signature to the call so that you can determine if it's been spoofed or not. And if you understand how digital certificates work, this is very similar to something like when you go in a browser and you want to buy something through e-commerce, get that little padlock that says this is a secure site.

    Fundamentally, stir shaken has taken that concept and applied it to phone calls so that it is secure. Now, here's the reality. It's a technology that is international in nature. It's being deployed. Oh, by the way, TransUnion helped write these standards. These are standards are actually defined by TransUnion. They're being implemented in multiple countries, and so they help reduce that aspect, but it still doesn't solve everything because where most of that focuses on is really at the network level. It's making sure that when you make the call and it goes through the phone, companies can detect where it flows. And so they could say, yeah, this is good. The problem is this isn't ubiquitous yet because the networks aren't all modern. And so there are extensions to this that we've provided that actually. So we do two things. We know that the network has some level of digital authentication going on, but you also have to make sure that whoever owns the phone number and making the dial that they are who they say they are.

    You have to vet them, you have to make sure that they own that phone number, and you have to understand that it originates on their network. And so understanding who makes the call, making sure it flows in the telecom network securely, and then presenting that to the end user is one aspect of this. It gets more complicated. It doesn't always flow all the way through. And so how do you do that when somebody does the right things, they sign their calls, they send it onto the network and gets lost? Well, part of the solutions that we provide actually as people make calls and have the service, we deposit tokens in the cloud that tell us that a call was made. And so when a consumer gets the call, we then have the ability to say, oh, did they actually make the call? Is there a token available for it?

    And if it is, then we know that that call showing up at the termination was in fact made. The converse is if you get a call there, but they didn't make the call, it was probably spoofed. And so I feel I've muddled a very long answer to a simple question, but it's making sure that whoever signs the call is who they say they are, and it is presented appropriately to the consumer. And sometimes that means stopping the call, not letting it get through. Does that make sense or I'm not sure if I need to sort of simplify some aspect of that.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, I think that's a good explanation. Stir shaken from a high level, once we get in the details, I think it gets pretty technical so we can go down that route with anyone on a separately. Right. Michelle, you have anything else to add to call authentication?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    No.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Okay, Kim, we're moving on. I think, again, this is the positive side. What can we do to address these challenges? What are some of the key opportunities for outbound call strategies and what can they do to start improving their call experiences from an insurer standpoint?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Well, there's probably a lot of steps that we talked about to improve your performance. I think that you first start with understanding how do you actually make phone calls? What do you use them for? What phone numbers do you have? Do you apply? What type of campaigns do you apply when you make outbound calls? This is really important because the way that phone calls work, every single one of the large mobile operators actually have analytics that look at phone calls and they're looking at patterns, they're looking at volumes, they're looking at how frequently calls are made, and they're trying to determine is this probably a good call or not? And so if you erratically call all over the place, it actually is very hard for these systems to understand how you're doing and are you behaving in what is typical for you? And so what we've seen people do is they keep track of all the numbers that they have, they dedicate to special types of campaigns and services.

    It helps develop a profile for many of these analytics engines to sort of understand what's expected and what's not expected. And the more you keep that consistent, the easier is for them to apply. Two, you actually have to register and vet your information with the people that provide vetting capabilities. And there's a couple of providers in that space, TransUnion included, to make sure that you are who you say you are, and you have the right to use that phone and you are using it for some of these campaigns that you have. You need to get that out into the ecosystem. Your phone call doesn't end the minute you dial, it goes through multiple phone companies. And so sharing that information and distributing is very important. Now, we talked about authentication. That's probably the next step. You need to make sure that you authenticate the call so the receiving end actually knows it's coming from somewhere legitimate.

    And if you can authenticate the calls by signing these calls using some of these technologies, you have the ability to start doing the cooler. Things like branding the calls to add context. So it's a spectrum of make sure you have your back stuff working, you have the right information, making sure it's authentic by using authentication capabilities and providing context. Now, it's not all technology. Sometimes there's ways that you also need to do your own dialing strategies. Don't call too often, 17 calls isn't going to make the answer rate better. We've seen it in the data that we have. In fact, in some industries that they ban you from doing that. So there's a series of those. We have many resources that actually walk through here. The five things you should do to set that up, I think we're happy to share that with other people. And that cuts across many of the verticals that we've seen, not just for insurance.

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    Yeah, I think another important aspect or opportunity, particularly for insurers, because if you think about insurers are not necessarily contacting their consumers or their prospects on a highly regular basis, you usually only think about your auto insurance every six to 12 months, your home insurance or rental insurance, maybe every year, maybe not your life insurance policy, usually only when there's a big life event. So even before thinking about having a call strategy and setting up and authenticating yourself, it's really getting your data cleaned up and making sure you have the right information. People are constantly moving, changing phone numbers, changing names, and there's even this precursor step of just kind of cleaning up that data house and making sure you have the proper and most current information is probably another big opportunity.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    That's a great call out.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Yeah, no, absolutely. And I am going back to maybe I'm getting contacted more than others. I stay in the same place a lot. I'm going to interrupt some of the questions that kind of were coming to mind. To me. I think this flows well. And if we can't address this right now, that's fine, but I'll bring up the question that's coming in from, as Bailey Cook says, a protective life insurance company. And I'll quote them and then I'll maybe interpret it a little bit. But what is the industry seen as the best way to authenticate that the insurer has a valid parties on the line in a world where your social security number is no longer so secure? So I think just it's a question of authenticating in a world where sometimes your information is out there, right?

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    Oh, this is probably going to be different types of answers. A lot of what I've described, the call authentication happening sort of happens at the network level and they make sure that the person dialing the number, it's flowing through the network and it hasn't been spoofed so that when it shows up on a phone, it gets presented. And so stir shaken and the enhancements that I talked about with sort of an out-of-band validation is a very strong part of answering that question. But what it doesn't necessarily get to is, I think where the question might be, which is, well, how do I know that that's the person I exactly intended to reach? So a lot of what we have, at least when you terminate on a mobile phone, we think that's the right person. We know that this is Andrew's cell phone, and so we have that.

    But what it doesn't do is to say, actually, you reach Andrew's person, and it was, Andrew actually has that phone right now. That's not where these standards are. So I think that's where some of the verification questions, the KYC queries actually have to supplement that by verifying, no, unfortunately there's no one thing. This technology doesn't ensure that somebody else answered Andrew's phone, right? That's not where this goes. But what it does is it dramatically minimizes the problem when it's not who they say they are, but it doesn't mean that you've plugged the entire hole. I hope that kind of addresses the technology works, it's just that you might have to do additional steps that go beyond the technology, which are very typical KYC and verification strategies.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Okay. No, it made perfect sense. So thank you for answering that, Jonjie, back to some of the questions that I had, and this is actually the last one that I had, but it's sort of a fun one, and I like it because let's all grab our crystal balls out of our desk here if we have 'em looking ahead. So we're kind of looking back at some of the data, what it was telling us from 2023, but looking ahead and talking with our customers and partners, what are you hearing about insurance company's future call center plans?

    Michelle Jackson/VP Insurance, TransUnion:

    I could take a stab at this and Jonjie, please weigh in. So going back to kind of where we started is the past couple years have been tremendous for insurers, just a lot of issues going on, trying to plug and put out a lot of fires. But I think even before all that started, there's this realization that there was this massive investment in digital channels improving website, improving online quoting, improving self-service where it makes sense. And their insurers were realizing that there was still this major gap in the phone channels. And while call volumes were increasing throughout the year just related to digital strategies and whether they were directing consumers that way or there was just an increase in organic call volumes, just in light of the macroeconomic trends, there is a realization that there should be some investment made. And our survey of insurers did show that that insurers were looking to improve that phone experience, whether through some of the solutions and capabilities we're talking about or other just again for that trust, that brand awareness, that customer experience, and that cost efficiencies where they need to make sure that they're getting the right people when they need to, reducing the call volumes and doing so in a very consumer friendly manner.

    Jonjie Sena/VP Product, TransUnion:

    I'm not sure how to add on top of that, Andrew, but I'm going to take a slightly different stab at it. I think we've talked about a lot of technologies that not just TransUnion, but the industry provides to help improve authentication and verification. And this an improved customer experience. I think that's still very nascent in terms of how that's been integrated. I think to Michelle's point, the digital journey really hasn't been end to end. Many of these, one of our questions in fact was how well have you integrated voice into the other digital channels? And the short answer was not very well. People have them, but they're not integrated. And so that's, I think people adopting these types of technologies where I see this happening. But if you fast forward, I think the hope we have is that if these type of technologies get the foothold that we're starting to see and people start adopting them, I hope nobody cares about this anymore.

    Because what you're hoping to do is these technologies, these authentication protocols that are in place, these KYC end-to-end means you can start trusting phones again. And so we are no longer back to measuring what, what's your answer rate? What's, because now when a call gets through, you have the context you need, you have the assurance that it is who's calling, and that to me is the end goal. We're not here to push product. We're trying to move and change the customer experience because at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is improve that outreach from a business to a consumer. So that's maybe a little too looking forward, but that's the goal. You get there though, by some of the conversation we had today. There are solutions in place that help you identify who to contact, when to contact, what number to use, how to authenticate, how you verify legitimate customers, what to present to a customer. All of that gets you there, and that's available today.

    Andrew Goss/Host:

    Great. Is there anything else, Jonjie and Michelle, that we want to get to? Otherwise, I think this is a good point to end the conversation.

    Okay. Always the lead question at the end of an interview, so I really appreciate it. Michelle and Jonjie, thank you so much for joining us. Much more interesting conversation than one would think. And I thank both of you for that, for this enlightening conversation. And I hope our audience had some really good takeaways from this that they can put to use after the conversation. And speaking of our audience, thank you so much for joining us and taking time to listen in. If we didn't get your question today, or if you think about something after the fact, please put 'em in the comments. We'll be monitoring and we'll get back to you as long as it's relevant to today's conversation. And we talked a lot about this study that we worked on last year, the enterprise call experience in 2023 insurance. If you want to take a look at that, visit transunion.com/call experience insurance. And we'll also put that on the screen shortly in case you didn't have a pen and paper ready. And that concludes today's episode. We really appreciate it. See you next time on TransUnion Live.