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With motor insurance premiums set to rise further, and a reminder of this in renewal notices when changes come into force showing last year’s premium, we expect to see an increase in consumers shopping around for quotes and contacting their insurer.

One measure call centre managers often try to use to analyse call centre performance (and hence quality of a call) is call length.

Customers expect a seamless experience across all touchpoints, from the advertising or website, to webchat, phone calls, emails and policy documents.

To ensure customer service levels are operating at their peak, insurers need to constantly measure, analyse, benchmark and adapt the way they interact with their customers and offer their products and services.

To help you get started in this cycle of improvement, we have created a checklist for insurers focused on the five pillars of great call centre customer service and experience.

Just 10 years ago the role of the call centre in insurance was ubiquitous, with the majority of new business being conducted through this channel. Over the next few years, as consumer confidence in e-commerce grew, the shift to buying online began; more recently that shift has moved more towards buying through price comparison websites.

With the rise of price comparison websites, many in the insurance world predicted the call centre would become a thing of the past when it came to selling insurance policies. But while the aggregators have grown from strength-to-strength over the last decade, call centres have remained the second most popular way that shoppers get quotes.

The desire to obtain and maintain a competitive edge in the insurance, and indeed any industry,  means keeping a constant eye on the market and changes ahead.

The CMA and FCA’s recent changes on the sales of add-ons and protected no claims discounts are designed to improve consumer understanding and pricing transparency.

We talk to Jill Holland one of our Market Specialists about what these changes mean for insurance call centres.

If one theme emerges from Consumer Intelligence’s quarterly Web2Phone research, it’s that insurance companies are employing very different strategies in their call centres when talking to customers who’ve got a motor quote online.