Riverside Underwriting transforms customer communications with an 8x8 contact centre solution
Riverside Underwriting Limited (Riverside) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Riverside International Holdings Limited (RIHL) which includes Riverside, Riverside Insurance Agency Malta Limited and Orchard Administration Limited.
Operating globally, Riverside works in close partnership with partners and affiliates to support the provision of niche insurance solutions for the travel and motor industries.
The challenge
Riverside had relied on a legacy analogue telephone system for a long time to communicate with its customers. However, as the technology landscape changed, especially after the pandemic, the old phone systems struggled to keep up.
During the COVID lockdown period, Riverside’s employees had to log in to telephone systems via VPN, leading to a few seconds of delay in conversations. This started the consideration of updating their communication technology systems.
During this time, the nature of Riverside’s business had also changed. A few years back, most of its insurance policies were sold over the phone, whereas now it’s mostly online.
With most of its systems already cloud-based, Riverside decided it was time to move its contact centre solution to the cloud as well.
We spoke to David Kent, the Group Managing Director of RIHL, and Shannon Sweeney, the Customer Resolutions Manager at Riverside, to hear more about this transition.
Shannon also highlights the reporting challenges they faced with the old system. “Another major challenge using the old telephone system was the reporting. Downloading reports took time and pulling data for just one week could take 15 to 20 minutes, and with a large team, doing this individually for everyone was challenging.
We didn’t report on how long people are spending on calls or other useful info because it took way too long to pull just the basic information together.” Shannon explains.
The solution
Riverside has been a long-time customer of 4Sight Communications, a CloudClevr company. 4Sight had originally helped them implement the legacy telephone systems, and naturally, Riverside turned to 4Sight when they decided to migrate to a cloud-based solution. 4Sight recommended the 8×8 contact centre solution as a replacement for its outdated systems.
In addition to replacing its phone system, Riverside also sought to consolidate its live chat and email systems under the unified 8×8 platform.
Reflecting on 4Sight’s approach, David, comments: “There was a bit of a learning curve for both 4Sight and Riverside initially as 8×8 was a new platform for us and them. They helped us understand a bit more about 8×8 functionality and how it’ll help us solve the challenges we were facing. They involved 8×8 directly whenever needed, giving us confidence that this was the right solution for our requirements.”
Shannon praised the hands-on support she received from 4Sight during the implementation. “4Sight was always available on the phone, and also personally visited us many times, helping us work through the issues. Especially when we were taking down the existing hardware, they spent the whole day in the office, ensuring it was a seamless rollover from the old system to the new one.”
“If I need to summarise 4Sight’s approach in 3 words, I’d say they’re always available, responsive, and supportive,” concludes David.
The results
Since moving to 8×8, Riverside has seen some really positive benefits, particularly with reporting.
“We didn’t realise how the reporting lacked efficiency until we started using 8×8. Now, we have comprehensive analytics, allowing us to report performance at both the individual and team level—something we couldn’t do before.” Shannon explains.
For instance, Riverside now has clear visibility on calls waiting and abandoned calls. With the new system, they can quickly access logs to understand exactly what was happening when a call was abandoned, allowing them to address issues much faster than before.
Shannon added, “We’ve already managed to reduce call wait times from 20 to 15 seconds, and we expect further improvements.”
“Another major improvement we saw after moving to 8×8 was the call quality. We don’t always necessarily work from the office, and we no longer have the lag while talking to customers if we’re working from home. The calls are also a lot clearer now, which helps us with internal training and auditing.”
Additionally, the 8×8 system introduced call categorisation feature, enabling the team to label calls based on customer inquiries. This new capability is now being used to improve the FAQs on the website, something that wasn’t possible with the old system.
8×8 also made their teams more self-sufficient than before. “Previously, if the phone systems went down, we would have had to ask 4Sight to fix it. Or even for simple things like amending SLAs, we needed 4Sight’s help before. Now, we can manage many of these tasks ourselves. It’s a lot more user-friendly.”
“Still I know I can rely on 4Sight if we ever have any issues. I can just email them and they get back to me very quickly, which is reassuring”, Shannon says.
Future with CloudClevr
As for the future, David is eager to explore how the wider CloudClevr team can support Riverside. “Now that 4Sight is part of a larger group, we know they can offer additional services like IT, cybersecurity, and mobility. We’re looking forward to seeing how CloudClevr can assist us as we continue to evolve, particularly since IT is such an integral part of our business,” concludes David.
