MIB.

The business need.

Uninsured driving costs millions of pounds a year. Since 1946, the Motor Insurer’s Bureau (MIB) has been the UK’s safety net for it, providing financial compensation to those caught up in an accident involving an uninsured driver. It is also at the forefront of tackling the problem, helping police officers check whether vehicles they’ve stopped are insured.

These two core services result in large volumes of inbound and outbound communication for MIB’s contact centre. But the MIB team was increasingly aware that its telephony platform had become outdated. It didn’t offer the multichannel capability that MIB needed, there was very little flexibility, for example to enable home working, and there were growing concerns about its resilience. Crucially too, MIB – which is essentially funded by levies on every motor insurance policy – believed there were opportunities to increase operational efficiency.

As an integral part of an overall technology transformation programme, MIB wanted to move to a cloud-first telephony infrastructure for its 420 staff. This involved replacing its legacy contact centre platform with an omnichannel solution and its back office telephony with Microsoft Teams. Other specific requirements included integration with an existing Pega CRM platform and the seamless integration of the contact centre and back office.

Following a comprehensive tender process, MIB selected Connect as the right partner to take its communication strategy forward. “Connect offered the best all-round solution, combining high-quality products and its own services,” explains MIB resource planning manager Matthew Jardine. “They demonstrated their ability to service multiple channels and deliver the CRM integration that we needed. Further, they gave us the assurance we sought around resilience.”

The solution.

Connect proposed a solution based on the Genesys Cloud platform, which offered all the contact centre functionality that MIB was seeking. The Connect solution also met all MIB’s back office communication requirements, including the introduction of IP telephony and collaboration tools with Microsoft Teams.

Reliability and resilience were assured through the use of Connect’s own network delivering intelligent Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) into the MIB network. This offered the ability to prioritise voice traffic consistently over an IP infrastructure to the Genesys Cloud and Microsoft Teams users – crucial for the effective delivery of MIB’s service to police forces.

Connect’s solution also offered an immediate opportunity to improve the service to the police. Instead of requiring a series of calls – to and from officers, often situated on a busy roadside, and sometimes involving insurance companies – Connect’s solution enables MIB to respond to officers via SMS. That frees up the officers from waiting on line for a call. “Connect’s out of the box solution for SMS has really improved our process,” Matthew confirms. “On average, it’s probably saving us 2.5 outbound calls for every request we receive from the police.”

Having secured the contract in late 2019, Connect had put in place most of the core changes and were moving towards user roll-out when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “We had a great plan for team by team introduction of the new technology,” Matthew recalls, “and we had to rip it up! Instead, we instantly agreed to find ways to enable our staff to work from home. The technology Connect had installed allowed us to be agile.” Within just two weeks of lockdown, MIB had a full, remote operation in place.

Matthew is clear that without the Connect solution, MIB would not have been able to maintain its service levels during the pandemic. But that fundamental achievement aside, MIB has also seen its other goals for the contract met. The new solution allows MIB to provide a faster service to the police, who have been extremely positive about the changes. The reduction in outbound calls has also made that part of the MIB operation more efficient.

Further efficiency gains.

Further efficiency gains have been seen in the claims operation. The combination of the advanced routing capability and enhanced management information allows MIB to make more effective use of the built-in workforce management tools, resulting in an efficiency saving of at least 5% across the whole contact centre operation. Matthew also highlights the greater insights the team now have into total call volumes and patterns. “We can forecast more accurately and plan better, so our operations are more reliable for customers.”

However, the richer insight into volumes revealed that MIB’s use of the system was far higher than expected, meaning there needed to be an extension to the solution. Matthew was grateful for Connect’s flexibility, recalling how he and the Connect account director “collaborated to identify the most cost-effective solution for MIB in the long term.”

For Matthew, that epitomised the relationship he has had with Connect from the start. “I’ve found them to be very supportive and collaborative. They’re patient, willing to compromise where appropriate, and add value. I can’t fault them as a partner or in terms of their skills.”