first2protect Insurance Services, part of LSL Property Services plc (LSL), one of the UK’s leading residential property services groups, is deploying Digital Helpers to support staff in administrative tasks associated with compiling and dispatching new insurance policies to customers. By using the Thoughtonomy Virtual Workforce® platform, first2protect is able to ease the burden on existing administration staff, securing compliance and enabling staff to spend more time with customers to deliver a seamless, personalized experience.
The initiative has been welcomed by staff across the organization, including the administration and IT functions, who are already reaping the benefits, spending less time on repetitive tasks and giving more focus to enhancing the service they give to their customers. Employees have embraced the Digital Helpers into the team and even given them names - Bonquiqui and Sheniqua!
With its core proposition based around the speed with which it can provide customers with a personalized offer on insurance, after a property contract has been exchanged, first2protect recognized the benefits that Digital Helpers could deliver in automating a process which was weighing down the company’s administration team. Each policy was taking its team around 8 minutes to manually compile and dispatch, and with high peaks in volumes concentrated at the end of each month, this put a lot of pressure on the team.
Using Intelligent Automation, Digital Helpers have eased this workload and within the first month freed up more than 100 hours within the administration team. This time saving is set to increase significantly as additional administrative tasks associated with the end-to-end process are transferred across to Digital Helpers. Alongside these time-saving benefits, the automation strategy ensures a fully auditable trail of activity that meets ever evolving compliance regulation.
Thoughtonomy’s Virtual Workforce® platform uses Artificial Intelligence and intelligent optical character recognition (iOCR) to read and interpret information across a range of disparate systems. This ensured that digital workers could be trained to navigate around the system integration challenges that could not be tackled using traditional Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platforms.
Marie Fursdon, Operations Manager at first2protect, said: “We see Intelligent Automation as critical to fulfilling our digital transformation goals. This is just the first step on that journey, but it’s given us a fantastic taster of the impact that Digital Helpers can have on our operations, staff and, most importantly, our customers. The pipeline for further automation is growing fast, and we’re working with Thoughtonomy to embrace our digital helpers as a catalyst for transformation – working alongside our existing teams to enhance the customer experience further in the future.”
Terry Walby, CEO and founder of Thoughtonomy, said: “Insurance is without doubt one of the most dynamic industries globally right now, with huge disruption in the market facilitated by new technologies such as AI and IoT and a refreshed focus on the delivery of personalized customer experience as a key differentiator for brands. first2protect is a fantastic example of an innovation-driven insurance company that is embracing new technology as a way to engage customers on a deeper, more personal level through the introduction of its new online portal. We’re excited to be supporting the first2protect team on their automation journey and enabling them to unleash the power of Intelligent Automation to drive transformation and growth and allow their strong existing workforce to achieve more.”
Fursdon concluded: “We’re seeing how the Thoughtonomy’s platform can transform the way that our business operates, allowing us to deliver better experiences for both customers and staff, and enabling us to pursue new services and new markets that we simply wouldn’t have the capacity to tackle without the support of our Digital Helpers.”
