Aviva

Sector:
Financial services
Requirement:
To offer an alternative contact approach which boosted efficiency
Solution:
A large-scale live chat platform with the custom analytics required to refine operations
I would estimate we only use 30% of the features offered by WhosOn, but that 30% has added considerably to the contact centre operation at Aviva.
Delivering the optimum in internal chat

Aviva is the world’s sixth largest insurance group. The company employs 46,000 employees, serves 53 million customers globally and boasts worldwide sales of £45.1 billion. Only a world-leading communication solution would suffice for a company of Aviva’s size – and WhosOn was that solution.

 

The challenge 

Aviva needed a live chat platform that could support tens of thousands of internal users. At the same time, that platform needed to offer a suite of supporting contact centre features such as custom reporting and help desk ticketing.

When searching for technical support, Aviva's employees were using traditional methods of telephone and email. This was a lengthy process for both the employee in need and the technical support agent, often claiming more time and admin than was necessary.

Aviva was searching for a live chat solution that could speed up this internal support process and bring efficiencies to its call centre. Enter WhosOn.

 

The solution

After a successful free trial, Aviva chose a 75 user hosted WhosOn account. With its features, analytics, and range of integrations, WhosOn was the perfect tool to cut costs in the provision of technical support to a 46,000 strong workforce.

To help Aviva use chat to best effect, Parker Software designed a bespoke performance dashboard. Displaying on multiple flat-screen monitors across the contact centre and sharing a variety of real-time stats such as the average chat wait time and number of missed chats, the dashboards gave live data on the metrics that mattered most to Aviva.

 

The results
  • • With the addition of web chat and other service desk initiatives, Aviva achieved operational savings of over £1 million annually
  • • 25% of contact volume shifted to the live chat channel, massively reducing expenditure
  • • 77% chat uptake within the first 12 months alone

 

The feedback

"We completed the addition of a chat icon to the desktops and watched staff embrace it; we were surprised how fast adoption took place.

We'd looked at a number of live chat providers and found the reports and metrics available in WhosOn to be more detailed and advanced. Now, we have the ability to create custom reports and work towards continual improvement of the live chat channel. As we became more efficient we were able to reduce the number of analysts handling live chat and reallocate those FTEs to other areas to provide service.

We know that nearly 25% of our contact volume has shifted to the live chat channel. The availability of data allows us to see that the number of cases has not changed significantly; employees are just transitioning to the live web chat which is good because agents can handle multiple cases. This shift means the company can reduce its expenditure: telephony infrastructure to support 40,000 people can be very expensive. By comparison, live chat is not.

Since our live chat application is for support of employees, the site monitoring features go largely unused. I would estimate we only use 30% of the features offered by WhosOn, but that 30% has added considerably to the contact centre operation at Aviva. The product is solid and we look forward to the forthcoming enhancements.

Since launch we have been receiving requests from many departments that interact with our 46,000 plus staff, including Human Resources. Because we’re well beyond a trial and the benefits are well established, offering web chat to support other departments will go quickly."

Mark Bennett, Head of the IT Service Centre, Aviva