ABOUT THE VENDOR
EnvoyWorldWide provides real-time notification services to wired and wireless devices. The
company's services facilitate automated, fully interactive voice and text communications to
landline phones, faxes, email, pagers, SMS and WAP phones, PDAs and other wireless devices. Funded
by Battery Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, and Longworth Ventures, EnvoyWorldWide is headquartered in
Billerica, Massachusetts and offers its services to more than 65 customers globally.
ABOUT THE CUSTOMER
Electric Insurance Company (EIC), established in 1966, is a direct writer of private property and
casualty insurance and has been a GE benefit provider for over 35 years. The company writes auto
and homeowner's insurance in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and serves more
than 125,000 policyholders.
ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY
EnvoyWorldWide has developed a notification service and real-time message delivery infrastructure
designed to tackle complex communications issues. EnvoyXpress, the company's core service, can
deliver messages to telephone extensions behind auto-attendants, negotiate international phone
dialing requirements, and report whether a person or answering machine picked up a message.
Companies can leverage an XML-based API to integrate EnvoyXpress into their enterprise
applications. Tracking information and recipient input are then driven back into the
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enterprise
applications via HTTPS. Senders can also use a simple browser-based interface to compose and track
messages.EIC sought to automate select communications in its customer service and call centers, billing, marketing, and claims departments. The company initially implemented EnvoyXpress in June 2001 in its customer service and call centers to send late payment notifications via pre-recorded voice and email to customers whose premium due dates had passed. SearchCRM spoke with Jack Schumaker, EIC's customer service manager, about the project.
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SearchCRM: What were you looking for in a CRM vendor?
Schumaker: We were looking at versatility. What appealed to us with EnvoyWorldWide was the multimedia ability across the digital spectrum, from e-mail to fax to voice. It also gives us scalability. As more electronic devices become common, we can grow into that.
SearchCRM: How did the implementation go?
Schumaker: The implementation took about 30 days. It was one of the easier implementations. The biggest challenge was modifying the message to make sure it was what we wanted it to be. In the testing process, we tested it on internal customers -- employees of our company who are also policyholders -- and got their feedback. We found that on the voicemail, using the text-to-speech capability for names really doesn't work so well. For example, it doesn't work on my name because of the way it's spelled. So we modified the voicemail to not say the customer's name. Also, when we first started, we had a lot of detail in the message. We found that we didn't need to have that level of specificity.
SearchCRM: How did you start using the CRM system?
Schumaker: We had been making contacts with customers using licensed insurance representatives. The application I'm referring to specifically is our non-pay courtesy calls -- a situation where the customer has not made the payment on their installment, has missed the late due date, and has gone into a cancellation status. If your insurance cancels for non-payment of premium, that changes your risk considerably. We couldn't reinsure you, and a new carrier would charge a much higher rate.
We've found that if we can get the customers ahead of time and let them know that they're in a cancellation status, we've had a much higher success rate of payment and preventing the policy from canceling. But because we had only two people we could dedicate to that, we couldn't hit the entire population. On a manual basis, we'd do at best 200 customers per month. Moving the same contact to EnvoyWorldWide, we can now hit all the customers, which is about a thousand per month.
SearchCRM: How are you using the EnvoyWorldWide system now? Have you expanded the application?
Schumaker: We've actually rolled it out in several other applications across the business. For example, we notify customers in a given geographic area if there's a hurricane or a major storm coming. Then we provide them with some tips on how to prepare for the storm and contact information should they have a claim.
SearchCRM: Do you use all the communication channels available on the system -- fax, e-mail, PDA, etc.?
Schumaker: We will first try an e-mail. If we don't have an e-mail, the application goes to their phone number. And in some cases, we have used the fax capability.
SearchCRM: What happened to the employees who were making the calls manually?
Schumaker: These are representatives who have been through 12 weeks of training, they've probably got a couple of years on the phone, they're licensed insurance agents. The system has allowed us to rededicate those two people to more complex transactions. I have them reviewing the policies of our best customers for coverage counseling opportunities.
SearchCRM: Have you seen ROI?
Schumaker: Yes. The number of policies canceling for nonpayment has decreased 29 percent. Our overall cost per call has decreased about 17 percent. Also, if I were to take the calls made by this system and dedicate six full time equivalents to that, it would have cost us an additional $270,000.
SearchCRM: Do you have any future plans for the CRM system?
Schumaker: A lot of times we have customers calling in and asking, "Where's my check"? And at 10 to 12 dollars a call, that gets kind of expensive. So in the third or fourth quarter of this year, we want to use the system to notify customers when their claim checks have been mailed.
We're seeing more and more customers signing up to pay their policies via electronic funds transfer. Because it's a digital format, people's expectations of when it's going to be set up are fairly quick. But we still have to go through and manually set up each one of these policies. So starting late this summer, when we do set the customer's policy up to be paid via ETF, we'll send them a message via Envoy to let them know.
SearchCRM: What advice do you have for companies thinking of starting a similar project?
Schumaker: Envoy works best for non-complex transactions -- more one-way communications to customers, where it's not a dialog. Companies should identify those opportunities in their contacts with their customers, and find out where they can automate them. We did that. It started in the call center, but it gained more and more traction across the business as people saw what was happening in the call center and realized, "We do a similar type of communication."
Linda Formichelli's writing has appeared in Woman's Day, Wired, Writer's Digest, Family Circle, Psychology Today. Contact her at linda-eric@lserv.com, or check out her Web site http://www.twowriters.net
This was first published in June 2002
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