“Test, learn and adapt”—How BGL built a contact center in 8 days with Twilio

Challenge

BGL needed a contact center that empowered its agents to work remotely and safely during the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to provide its customers with the best possible service.

Solution

With Twilio Flex, the BGL team built a new virtual contact center in 8 days, enabling 1,200 agents to work safely while maintaining the highest level of customer service.

BGL Insurance, a leading digital distributor of insurance, helps more than three million customers with their motor, home and life insurance needs.

With almost 2,000 colleagues across three sites in Peterborough, Sunderland and Wakefield, England, BGL Insurance uses its passion, scale and expertise for the benefit of its customers.

In the early months of 2020, when lockdowns kept BGL customer service agents at home, the company remained committed to delivering the best possible experience to its customers. This meant the business needed a way to transition its agents to remote working without impacting BGL’s customers and ongoing operations—and Twilio Flex was the answer.

Over the course of just 8 days, the BGL team built a new, Twilio-powered virtual contact center, enabling 1,200 agents to work remotely and safely while maintaining the highest level of customer service.

A fast and (Flex)ible solution

Prior to committing to a cloud-based contact center, BGL Insurance began exploring how automation could benefit operations while enhancing the experience of customers. In early 2019, BGL ran a pilot with Twilio, which proved successful in testing and served as the basis for a roadmap to transition from its existing on-premise solution to a fully Flex-based model.

However, the rapid spread of COVID-19 necessitated a speedier transition timeline. An on-premise model could not quickly facilitate this, so the pressure was on to find a way to move to remote working without impacting BGL’s customers and ongoing operations. That’s when BGL decided to make the leap to Twilio Flex.

“BGL’s customer experience is all about making it easy for our customers to interact with us,” Jayne Lansdell, associate director of process and technology at BGL, said. “The test, learn and adapt approach that Twilio enables through its open platform makes the refinement of that experience far easier to achieve than it would otherwise be.”

During the 8-day transition period, 25 members of the BGL team moved its operations to a Twilio cloud-based contact center. Also in this time, 250 new laptops were built, 60 agents were upskilled on web chat, 1,050 desktops were reconfigured, and the team managed to get hold of the last 900 headsets in the UK. In total, 1,200 agents became fully remote for the duration of the lockdown, and all of BGL’s contact centers remained open and serving customers during this time.

“When lockdown restrictions came in, our priority was keeping colleagues safe and customers supported, and our investment in Flex meant that this was achievable in a short space of time and without dropping a day of service,” Lansdell said. “We were able to keep all channels of communication open and achieve or improve our customer satisfaction scores, and our teams adopted the new system with enthusiasm.”

Enhancing customer experience with AI

With a blueprint for ongoing development in place, BGL Insurance is focused on enhancing its approach and is looking to build on its use of AI for effective routing and increased automation in its voice channels. And bringing voice and digital channels together ensures that customers get consistent responses and top notch service, no matter which branch of BGL they reach out to.

“In the insurance industry, the level of automation is already extensive and growing, and the pandemic has accelerated that, having reinforced the need for businesses to simplify processes and enable more effective digital access,” Lansdell explained. “Thanks to the work we’ve done on our platforms and now with Twilio, we know that we are ready, no matter what COVID throws at us, and will have a more flexible model for the future as the shape of our workforce evolves to reflect the needs of the new normal.”