Payment and document calls go to Manila
Done in two steps rather than one switch. Every midterm caller is now asked whether they are calling about a payment, a document or something else, and payment and document go to Manila; renewal callers are asked "a payment or anything else" (a document request in the renewal window is probably about the renewal, so it stays onshore). Those two changes took Manila's volume up about 1.75 times. The callers landing there are largely the right ones: transfer-back had been worked down to about 25% and is at about 30% after the change. Manila cannot take more without falling behind on the rest of their work, so the next move waits for a capacity plan they are building with the workforce manager from the first days of data. Anything Manila sends back waits over an hour onshore today, so nothing more moves there until 02 is live. On the worst day so far, abandon there was around 20% against a usual 7 to 8%.
- Manila's capacity plan, then how much more goes there.
- Patra in India must work from the same carrier-access list as Manila; cases for carriers they cannot log into are coming back.
- Two ways to send more without more people: open the carrier filter to renewal payment calls (it covers about half of midterm calls today), and let Manila's voice service level loosen rather than have them pull people off offline and chat work.
Manila hands off to the callback queue instead of transferring back
Handoff script: confirm the number, transfer to the callback line, back of the queue is fine. Callback only, no text. In build now, and the one IVR change in progress. Advisors get the same transfer, so a caller who needs a specialist can be promised a callback within a window instead of a second hold. 06 and 07 queue behind it.
Callback offered before the hold
Before any hold music plays, the caller hears the wait and can choose a callback instead, keeping their place in line. Same wording as the queue plan. Live.
Text and callback offers repeated while holding
A caller who chose to hold hears the text and callback offers again while waiting, on a taper (on entry, at 2 and 8 minutes, then every 10), so nobody is refused a way out of the hold. Live since the end of last week. Accepting a text from inside the hold had been silently broken for months after a platform change; fixed Monday, and 15 text conversations started the following day. Reporting on how many callers take the offers is being pulled; if nobody does, the repeats come out.
Pay link by text before any transfer
Payment calls on non-Manila carriers reach an onshore advisor today. A text with the carrier's pay link ends the call; on Manila carriers it saves Manila time. Only for carriers that have a link.
What is live today under a similar name is different: a text offer for payment callers that routes the conversation to Manila. This item is the link itself. The same question is open on the renewal side, where reminders currently say "we emailed you a link" because a text with a link was thought to be hard to build. If a text can carry the carrier's pay link, both use it.
- Build time in the IVR queue, after 02. A text can carry the link; inside the workflow it is about half a day.
- Which carriers have a pay link.
Driver, vehicle and mortgagee changes get their own form by text
Each change already has a customer form. The IVR names them one by one and texts the form instead of holding for an advisor. Cancellations stay a conversation.
- The list of form changes, then the fixes.
Agents' own requests to the EC go by chat, not by phone
Two different things run under the name "agent chat", and only one of them is this item. This one is the rollout: every agent is told that their own questions and service requests to the EC go by chat or text, not by phone. A customer who called the agency and needs service can still be transferred to the service line; that call is fine. The point is to take the agent's own calls out of the queue, which is about 10% of inbound. An audit of about 50 agent calls found roughly half were transfers of a customer rather than the agent's own request, so the win is the other half.
The other thing is the hidden-work pilot, a learning exercise with a few agencies who send all of their service work through chat so the EC can see what agents are still doing in-house that the EC should be taking on. That pilot is not the rollout and it does not decide this item; what it found feeds item 15.
- The decision.
- Web chat alongside text, since some agents will not switch to SMS.
- Chats about agency-billed or commercial policies routed to the people who handle those, instead of being hand-carried.
- Chat advisors allowed to place outbound calls when an agent asks for one, and chat hours that match the phone line.
- The saving only appears if agent calls actually drop.
Advisor kicks off the cancellation workflow instead of working the cancellation by hand
A customer asks to cancel, on a call or by email. Today the advisor sends the form, waits for the e-sign, checks it came back and uploads the signed ACORD to the carrier by hand: about 7.8 minutes a case, and 186 cases a day. With the workflow on the case, the form send, the e-sign chase, the carrier upload and the confirmation all run on their own; the advisor's part is attaching the workflow and saving, about 30 seconds. Carriers that accept the ACORD by email are automated already; the automation is being extended to upload on carrier sites, added in order of volume, double digits by the end of this week. That is the biggest single number on this page, around 1,400 minutes a day once advisors use it every time. Outside the renewal window the save conversation still comes first. Item 14 is the same flow with the advisor removed entirely.
The carrier submissions for 14 carriers, which cover nearly all cancellation volume, are built by Fri Sep 18. They run by hand first: a checkout period through about Sep 26 where a reviewer triggers the bot on a pool of incoming cancel cases for those carriers and checks every run, with each carrier's cancellation recorded step by step, per line of business and edge case. Automatic end-to-end runs come after that, so this is capability in place on Sep 18, not minutes removed from Sep 21. Reporting from Sep 18: form compliance, which of the three steps (form send, carrier submit, confirmation) ran automated, emails per case, with phone-origin cases tracked separately.
- Advisors: attach the cancel workflow the moment they start the case, instead of handling the cancellation by hand. Coaching before the wider carrier coverage lands.
- The share of cancel cases that run through the workflow, on the daily sheet.
Advisor sees the payment status on the case when a customer asks about a payment
A customer calls, texts or emails with a payment question. The account pops in Fusion, the workflow pulls the payment status from the carrier at that moment, and the advisor sees it on the case with the time it was pulled, so they can answer without logging into the carrier site. The case still happens; it is shorter. On a recent day, 300 billing cases closed at a median of 9 minutes, about half of them "did my payment go through" or "how do I pay".
On the case now; the same status goes on the policy view in Fusion this week. By Sep 18 the case also gets a link to the carrier's payment-status page, a pay link if unpaid (the carrier record already holds it) and a receipt or invoice stored on the account, case and policy. The payment bots, built for renewals so far, are being decoupled this week so they run for any billing case. From Sep 30 the pull is triggered by the inbound call itself, along with a dec page download, so the status is there before the advisor asks. Receipts then get wired into proof-of-insurance and mortgage-change cases, Sep 22 and 23.
The bigger lift is upstream of the screen: the payment bots have to return the right payment for the right term. There have been cases where the bot reported a payment that turned out to be last year's. Advisors will only stop logging into the carrier site if what they see on the case is dated and trustworthy.
- Payment bots returning the current-term payment, correctly dated.
- Where on the case it sits and in what shape.
- Advisors told it is there, the day it appears.
Advisor kicks off the proof-of-insurance workflow instead of pulling the document by hand
This already works for some carriers. A customer asks for a dec page or proof of insurance; the advisor attaches the send-documents workflow and the automation pulls the document from the carrier site, emails it to the customer and resolves the case. About 7 minutes of handle time each. The gap is adoption: on the days sampled, roughly half the cases that could have run this way were worked by hand, most often a dec page sent without the workflow. Cases where the subject or attachment says "dec page" now count as missed candidates, so the number is reliable: about 75 a day over the last two days, of which about 10 were coaching and the rest needed the form fixes below. ID cards run through the same automation now. A smaller share can run with no advisor at all (item 16); this is the larger share.
- Adoption. Team leads work the live view daily; advisors note the reason when they skip the workflow, in case there is a good one.
- A percentage used vs. eligible, on the daily sheet.
- Two form fixes so more cases qualify: a field for the loan number lenders want in the subject line, and a free-text answer when the request came with a question.
- Close the workflow's last step automatically once the document has gone out, so a finished case does not sit in inventory. Same fix for mortgage changes, for Manila and onshore alike.
- Reporting on form sends from Sep 17, watched daily.
- Phone is about 55% of proof-of-insurance volume and gets no reduction beyond the advisor attaching the workflow; the no-touch version waits on intent detection.
An advisor works one carrier at a time
Advisors are now assigned cases outside Dynamics, which makes this possible. A team lead sets a carrier (or a carrier and a case type: all the ID cards, all the dec pages) on an advisor's record, and that advisor receives only those cases until the tranche is done, then goes back to normal routing. Logging in and finding the way around a carrier site is one of the biggest time sinks per case; the blitz teams used to organize spreadsheets by carrier for the same reason. Offline work first; calls could follow since routing lives outside Fusion. Due dates still have to move at the same time, so the tranches have to be sized with that in mind. A first test is being set up.
- Whether it makes a big enough difference to be worth the routing change.
- The proposal for the toggle on the advisor record.
- One master list of which advisors have access to which carriers, so cases go to someone who can log in.
Two minutes off every handle time
Operational, not a build. The advisor team is being rallied around taking two minutes out of handle time, with the result reported at the daily standup. It sits on this list because it is one of the levers being pulled every day, and because it has a number attached from day one. About 32 seconds off so far (35 on the best day), every team but one trending down. Team leads review ten calls each, calls to carriers with hours-long holds need a team lead's OK, and Tier 2 is closed this week and likely next so advisors lean on Advisor Assist.
- The daily number on the same sheet as the rest of the scorecard.
A cancellation request is completed with no advisor touch
The pieces exist: sending the form and sending the confirmation are automated, carriers that accept the ACORD by email are automated, and the automation is now being extended to upload on carrier sites, added by volume. The e-signature now triggers the confirmation workflow on its own, so the path from a signed form to a confirmed cancellation is wired. The carrier upload for the carriers behind 80% of cancel volume lands this week; email-based carriers already run. Next week the signature moves into the form itself, so the customer signs where they fill it in instead of coming back for a separate e-sign request. Two versions of the form stay. Customer-started: one combined form, signed in place, and advisors send this one to the customer rather than filling it out for them. Agent-started, filled on the customer's behalf: the older two-step path, form then a separate e-sign request, with the automated chase still running. The combined form is pencilled for about Sep 25 and has no owner. Fully automated here means nobody at Brightway touches it; the customer still signs. The carrier submissions land Sep 18 but run by hand through a checkout period first (see 09), so the no-touch path is real only once automatic runs are switched on. Today 6 of 186 daily cancel cases run without a human; the rest are around 7.8 minutes of advisor time each, about 1,400 minutes a day. Outside the renewal window the flow still pauses for the save conversation.
- Design the customer form change: the signature field, its wording, and what the customer sees after submitting. Pencilled for Sep 25; design work, not automation work, and nobody owns it yet.
- The start-it, customer-finishes-it version of the form, where an advisor or agent fills in what they know, saves, and the customer finishes and signs. Not in the current build plan; today an agent-filled form falls back to the two-step path.
- Further out: intent read from the email, form auto-sent for every non-phone request.
- A demo of the customer flow, so the item can be judged before it counts.
Agents submit the same request through a form, and it runs
The hidden-work pilot showed that most of what agents still do by hand is mortgagee changes and cancellations. Today an agent emails "please cancel this policy" and an advisor chases the reason and the date, sometimes with the agent, sometimes with the customer. Agents have said they would fill out a form or follow a set way of creating the case if it meant the work was done. The customer forms exist and ask the right things; the question is how the agent reaches them and whether the case gets the workflow attached on its own. The start-it, customer-finishes-it form in 14 would be the mechanism; in the current plan an agent filling a form on the customer's behalf goes down the two-step path (form, then a separate e-sign). This item is only a front door to 14: once a form can complete a cancellation with no advisor, the agent gets to submit that form. Same for dec page requests.
- A working session on the flow; there are concerns about the number of touches.
- Whether the form lives in the agent's case-creation screen, in chat, or both.
- The form fixes in 07 apply here too.
A proof-of-insurance request submitted through a form is answered with no advisor touch
When the request arrives as a form, from myBrightway, the text channel or the routing team, the case is created, the document is pulled from the carrier site, emailed to the address on the form and the case is resolved. Nobody touches it. It works for 8 carriers today, with the right policy term selected on the carrier site; the other ~41 carriers on the mortgage-change list start Sep 21, after the cancellation push. This is the fully hands-off share; the larger share, where an advisor is on the phone and kicks the workflow off, is item 11.
- Carrier coverage: ~41 to go from Sep 21.
- Whether proof of insurance uses the same 49-carrier list as mortgage change or its own.
Customer sees the payment status before they call
The same status as 02, shown to the customer where they already look, so the call never happens. myBrightway first, landing Sep 17: the status on the policy, plus a customer-started lookup for supported carriers, with wording that says the answer takes a moment. Then email, Sep 18: the status, a link to the carrier's payment page, a pay link if unpaid and the receipt attached, sent by hand during a vetting period before it runs on its own. The renewal emails can then quote the actual payment and, two days out, say "not paid yet" only because we know. The IVR version comes last: it can only play once the policy is identified, and it lengthens the call.
Not having it is already costing calls: a renewal reminder that cannot say "we have not seen your payment yet" reads as a generic nag, and agents field the confusion. Being able to say the payment bot ran, the policy is approaching and no payment is on record is the point.
- Design for each surface: what shows on myBrightway, what the renewal email says, what the IVR reads out.
- How long the email vetting period runs and what ends it.
How we'll know
Daily where the number existsMinutes are counted as actually removed (median in-progress time, with sub-minute cases and weekends dropped), not as what would be saved if every advisor used every workflow. Each item should end up with one number here and a red, amber or green against it. One report brings every lever back to the target, alongside the daily operational numbers. Per case type, reporting arrives Sep 18 in one pattern: workflow and form compliance, handle time before and after, emails per case.
| Measure | Today | Target | Items |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisor minutes removed per day | [current] | 2,000 a day (60,000 a month) | 09 to 17 |
| Median handle time | 32 s lower | 2 minutes lower | 13 |
| Cancel policy cases run with no advisor, per day | 6 of 186 | 186 | 09, 14, 15 |
| Proof-of-insurance cases run through automation, of those eligible | about half | all | 11, 16 |
| Billing cases closed by an advisor per day | 300 | about half | 10, 17 |
| Manila: volume, transfer-back, abandon | ~1.75x · 30% · up to 20% on the worst day | transfer-back to 0; abandon back under 10% | 01, 02 |
| FL midterm standard: wait and abandon | 38 min · 72% | abandon under 15% | 03 to 07 |
| Agent calls into the EC per week | ~150, about half of them real agent requests | set after 08 | 08 |
| Calls in SLA, callbacks counted | 35% | 50% | all |