In the US, Amerigroup, a healthcare company, found its customer care centres were becoming bogged down by isolated systems and complex workflows that drove up operating costs, hampered growth and stopped the company from being able to deliver consistent service.

“Our associates had to negotiate many systems to help a [customer], which made it difficult to support growth, innovation and standardisation,” says Russell Esposito, senior vice-president of IT Services.

To address the problems, Amerigroup’s 700 customer service staff and nurses in three sites are now using an integrated system from Pegasystems, a software company. Mr Esposito says average call handling time has been cut by 15 per cent, training time has been reduced and regulatory compliance has improved.

Los Angeles-based Farmers Insurance, another Pegasystems customer, faced the challenge of integrating customer service systems following a series of acquisitions.

“Processing more than 5m inbound and outbound calls annually, we developed contact centres to centralise operations and create economies of scale to process claims efficiently,” says Shohreh Abedi, who is in charge of Farmer’s claim applications.

With Pegasystems, Ms Abedi’s team developed a business process system that automated some decisions relevant to an individual caller’s claim.

“Today, calls are handled more effectively and with higher levels of customer satisfaction, yet operational costs are down,” says Ms Abedi.