Background

An early adopter of Amazon Connect, the company originally used the cloud platform in conjunction with a third-party system that extended its native functionality. But as Connect evolved with new tools and features over the four years We Insure used it, the company's ability to take advantage of these capabilities was limited by the technology it had layered on top of it.

Challenge

In addition, its Amazon contact center lacked integrations with the company's other enterprise systems. As We Insure grew, its representatives found it increasingly difficult to meet the organization's service-level targets. Agents, for example, had to toggle between multiple tools to access data in their customer relationship management (CRM) and workforce management (WFM) platforms, which led to inefficiencies that hurt productivity and affected customer service. "We hold ourselves to answering 80% of calls in 60 seconds or less," Kurtz says. "The platform wasn't letting us get there consistently, and our franchise owners deserve better than that, so we fixed the platform."

Its underlying call flow architecture included more than 450 modules, far more than the maximum 200 typically recommended for Amazon Connect. When customers did get through to an agent, "the agent would have almost no information about who the caller was or why they were calling," CDW Principal Digital Experience Consultant, TJ Paulson, says. Policy information was siloed in We Insure's industry-specific agency management system (AMS), while important data pertaining to individual customers was isolated in a separate CRM solution. "Most of the time, agents were coming into calls totally blind," he explains. Agents also had to enter call notes manually after every customer interaction, and the quality assurance (QA) platform, also not integrated, included a tool for transcribing conversations for just 1 in 3 calls, leaving 70% unaccounted for. "From a customer satisfaction perspective, that's not good at all," Kurtz explains. "If you get a complaint, it's important to be able to go back and review the call so you can understand what happened and try to improve."

Solution

With We Insure's goals clearly spelled out, the Mission/CDW team decided to approach the project in two distinct phases. First, it would tackle the contact center's various integration-related challenges, and then it would configure the system with the latest Amazon features to enable automation and scalability moving forward. Throughout the process, team members held weekly virtual meetings with Kurtz and his colleagues to review their progress and make adjustments as necessary, while a shared channel kept communication open for any concerns that needed attention right away.

Kurtz says the plan was a good fit for his team and even allowed his contact center agents to continue their work uninterrupted. "In this case, even with tight turnarounds, everything went really smoothly and efficiently," he notes.

Among other things, the Mission and CDW’s experts completed system integrations with We Insure's CRM, WFM and AMS platforms, and they strengthened the company's existing Amazon Connect foundation by integrating voice and SMS channels. For agents, they introduced AI-supported workflows for quoting, renewals and service tasks, and they added features such as Amazon Nova Sonic, a speech-to-speech AI model that automates aspects of customer service. Agents were also equipped with a unified workspace that provides a comprehensive view of each customer. And to address the company's QA difficulties, supervisors were provided with a new suite of tools for call monitoring and real-time coaching.

Results

• Simplified system architecture: 450 → 33 call flow modules
• Shorter call lengths (in minutes): 13.2 → 11.9
• Improved call transcription rate: 30% → 100%
• Increased operational efficiency: +30%
• Service-level target exceeded: +80% of calls answered in 20 seconds or less (target: 60 seconds).

Today, We Insure's upgraded platform has allowed the company to do away with its legacy touch-tone system. Its new architecture, stripped to the essentials, means "there's no more 'push one for this, push two for this' and people pounding the zero in frustration," Paulson explains. "It's just, 'I need help adding a new driver to my policy,' or 'I need to get a homeowner's quote,' and the technology follows the business logic to quickly route you to the right agent."

From his perspective, Kurtz says the new system "is absolutely amazing." Agents are no longer bouncing back and forth between multiple platforms as they try to do their work, and that's allowed them to focus on their customers. "The agent sees the caller, the policy and the reason for the call on one screen before they say hello. That's the whole difference — they're spending their attention on the customer instead of on our software," he says. "Overall, it's a lot simpler — everything is there in front of them."

Now, Kurtz reports, the system's modern features are helping representatives work more efficiently, and everything from compliance to handle time is improving. All calls are automatically transcribed, and every transcript is automatically scanned for sensitive data that, if found, is instantly redacted. At the end of each call, an AI tool generates a summary and writes it back to the AMS, eliminating the manual note-taking that previously slowed every interaction. "Every call transcribed, every transcript scanned and redacted, notes written back automatically — that's a contact center operating the way a modern one should," he says. "We're providing better service, and it's made us a better company."

AWS Services

• Amazon Connect
• Amazon Nova Sonic