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Engagement

The journey review came before the automation

Humint Labs redesigned an insurance service journey across voice, web and email, reducing manual handling while extending the value of the Microsoft platforms and workforce already in place.

Industry
Insurance
Delivery
A contact centre operation across voice, web and email service channels. Approximately six months, spanning a customer journey review and five build elements.
Measured delivery results

Service and operational gains

-60%Manual Data Entry

Measured across the agreed voice, web and email service scope after delivery.

-40%Customer Enquiry Time

Measured across the agreed voice, web and email service scope after delivery.

20%FTE Redeployed

Capacity released from manual service handling and redeployed within the operating model.

+25%General CSAT

Customer-satisfaction result for the agreed service scope after delivery.

Enterprise delivery

What your enterprise receives

A connected service transformation that improves customer flow, reduces manual handling and makes the existing technology estate work harder.

  • Journey and operating baseline

    A clear view of customer effort, service risk, ownership and manual touchpoints across the end-to-end journey.

  • Connected channel design

    Voice, web and email workstreams designed as one service rather than disconnected channel improvements.

  • Microsoft-aligned automation

    Automation integrated with Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365 so established records and workforce practices remain useful.

  • Implementation roadmap

    A practical sequence for delivering, measuring and extending service automation without a disruptive platform replacement.

How Humint Labs gets it live

  1. Step 01

    Diagnose the whole journey

    Map the customer, process and technology constraints across all service channels.

  2. Step 02

    Deliver connected workstreams

    Build the channel and automation components against the systems of record already in use.

  3. Step 03

    Measure and extend

    Use service outcomes and operating evidence to prioritise the next automation release.

The Challenge

The operating challenge

An insurer ran customer service through a contact centre across voice, web and email, on an estate where the interactions were tied closely to two Microsoft platforms. Five things were named as the problem at the start of the engagement, and only four of them were systems.

Microsoft Dynamics held the customer and case records. Microsoft 365 carried the correspondence.

An IVR fronted the phone lines and a chatbot sat on the website. The issues recorded were the IVR and the call flows behind it, the processes themselves, manual workflows, a chatbot whose scope was limited, and shared mailboxes.

Customer frustration was visible, and the cause named internally was a range of internal process inefficiencies rather than any single product fault.

What we found

  • Customer interactions were intrinsically linked to the operation's use of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365. The two platforms were not adjacent to the journey. They were the journey.
  • The IVR and the call flows behind it were named as a problem in their own right.
  • Processes appeared on the problem list alongside the systems rather than underneath them.
  • Manual workflows were named, and reducing manual touchpoints across the journey became the stated focus of everything that followed.
  • A chatbot was already in place. What was recorded was its limitation, not its absence.
  • Shared mailboxes were named as one of the five main issues.
  • The review was a design thinking review of the customer journey. It ran after data collection and before any solution element was named.

Where the bottleneck sat

The bottleneck was the end-to-end journey. The delivery reduced manual touchpoints across IVR, web, email and shared mailboxes so work could move through one designed service flow rather than simply shift between channels.

Design rationale

The delivery began with data collection and a customer-journey review. That work identified process as a core constraint, then shaped the five implementation workstreams across voice, web, email and the existing Microsoft estate.

What was at stake

Satisfaction was moving with the internal process, which is a harder thing to fix than a system.

The movement in customer satisfaction was tied to internal process inefficiencies rather than a defect in one channel or platform. A satisfaction problem caused by the way work moves between people and systems has no equivalent boundary, so automation has to change the journey itself rather than simply produce the same journey at a higher speed.

Build

Our Solution

Humint Labs designed and delivered five connected workstreams across the existing insurance service estate: IVR refinement, an expanded AI virtual assistant, extraction of inbound email and form data, shared-mailbox automation, and RPA into Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365. The delivery improved the customer journey without requiring a disruptive platform replacement.

Scroll diagram horizontally

How the five solution elements sit between the contact channels and the systems of recordThree contact channels feed five solution elements, which converge through robotic process automation into Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365. The journey was designed around the existing technology and staff training.Before any element was namedData collection, then a design thinking review of the customer journeyContact channelsSolution elementsSystems of recordVoiceIVR and call flowWebChatbot in place,recorded as limitedEmail and formsShared mailboxesIVR refinementExisting asset, reworkedAI virtual assistantConversational AIML extractionEmail and form dataShared mailbox automationAI drivenRobotic process automationOperates the incumbent systemsMicrosoft DynamicsCustomer and case recordsMicrosoft 365Correspondenceauthorised write pathBuilt under a constraint to reuse the existing technology and training
Contact channels, solution elements and systems of record.

How the five solution elements sit between the contact channels and the systems of record

Read the description

Three contact channels feed five solution elements, which converge through robotic process automation into Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365. The journey was designed around the existing technology and staff training.

Journey review

Mapped the customer movement across voice, web, email, shared mailboxes and the systems of record before implementation began.

IVR and call-flow refinement

Reworked the existing voice path so customers reached the appropriate route with less manual correction.

AI virtual assistant

Extended conversational support across digital service interactions beyond the limited chatbot already in place.

Email and form extraction

Converted inbound correspondence into structured information for downstream service and automation work.

Shared mailbox automation

Brought email handling into the designed service flow instead of leaving it as a separate manual queue.

RPA into the Microsoft estate

Carried outcomes into Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365, retaining the systems and workforce practices already in use.

The constraint was the architecture. The solution was required to leverage the customer's existing Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365 technology and its existing staff training, and customer interactions were already intrinsically linked to both. That combination removes most of the obvious options before design starts. Anything that moved work onto a new platform would have had to carry the operating procedures, the permissions model and the retraining across with it, which is the easier engineering problem and the much harder operational one, and it would have done so in an operation whose named problem was already process rather than product. Robotic process automation falls out of that constraint rather than out of a preference for it: it operates the systems already in place through the interfaces already in use, so the automation inherits the environment instead of standing up a second one beside it. The same constraint explains the shape of the voice work, recorded as refinement of the existing IVR rather than replacement, and it is why the extraction layer's job ends at producing data for those systems rather than at holding a record of its own.

Outcome

What changed across the customer journey

  • Manual intervention across the journey is reduced by several automation components rather than by one.
  • Inbound email and submitted form data are extracted rather than read and re-entered by a person.
  • Shared mailbox handling is automated rather than manual.
  • Work reaches Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft 365 through automation that operates those systems, so the record the operation already trusted stays the record.
  • The phone experience changed through the IVR and its call flows rather than through a new voice platform.
  • The technology footprint did not grow. The engagement ran on the Dynamics and Microsoft 365 capability and the staff training already in place.
  • Agent capacity released by the automation was directed towards proactive engagement with premium clients rather than treated as the end of the work.
Design ThinkingService DesignConversational AIMachine LearningDocument ExtractionRobotic Process AutomationMicrosoft Dynamics & 365Insurance

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