Case Study: Foresters Financial

Offering Top Quality Financial Services Support For Investors

Foresters Financial is built on a proud 170-year history of protecting members’ financial interests – and is equally focused on the future. As investment-bond specialists, Foresters Financial grows wealth for tomorrow through sustainable solutions and an innovative, considered investment approach.

The business offers a range of financial services that are focused on providing financial protection and security to individuals and families throughout multiple generations; empowering prosperity and protecting legacies through secure, sustainable, and tax-effective investment.

Enhancing Microsoft Teams to Deliver Compliance and Business Intelligence

The Foresters Financial Customer Service team, known as Investor Services, is responsible for a wide range of tasks that include Investor administration, processing both new applications and redemptions, supporting the various Foresters Financial platforms and handling general customer (investor) enquiries. Their primary objective is to offer first contact resolution (FCR) to Investors while ensuring a high standard of service and a quality customer experience through friendly, helpful, supportive, informed and experienced assistance.

“As Microsoft relies on its Partner ecosystem to provide contact centre recording and reporting, we needed to find a certified Microsoft Teams contact centre provider to enhance our Teams solution. Enghouse was the one we chose.” Robyn Compton, Head of Operations at Foresters Financial.

Foresters Financial first spoke with Enghouse about a new contact centre solution in 2022. The business had recently moved to Microsoft Teams. However, for the contact centre they needed to augment the Teams platform functionality with recording and business metrics, which were not available in Teams.

The business has a requirement as a member of the financial services industry to capture all conversations for compliance purposes, however this was not available via Microsoft Teams on its own. Another function Foresters Financial required, that was not available in Teams, was smart contact centre reporting for performance and activity analysis, to help the Investor Services Manager manage the team and understand customer demands and call patterns.

Lastly, Foresters Financial knew they wanted a cloud contact centre solution. As well as a remote working requirement, they were looking to simplify inhouse technology management and wanted to avoid introducing infrastructure overheads.

Happy to Be in Good Hands for CX Technology and Support

The Enghouse system has proved to be a valuable addition to the Foresters Financial technology stack. Enghouse was able to ensure carrier connectivity for Foresters Financial with Microsoft Teams following the deployment, and implementation of the new call delivery was seamless. Staff uptake was extremely quick, and while Enghouse delivered onboard training for the agents, Robyn observed that her staff found the application intuitive and extremely easy to use from day one: “It was all very smooth, and Enghouse gave us a real confidence.”

Enghouse’s recording capability was a critical part of the solution, and this was also up and running in a timely and effective manner. With the system in place, Foresters is very happy with all aspects of the new solution. Robyn and her staff are now able to analyse a range of contact centre metrics that weren’t available in Teams, with some of their key requirements being average handle time (AHT) measurements for team members, visibility of agent activity and performance, and clearer break management.

“The stats are great!” enthuses Robyn. The recording functionality has also brought additional benefits: as well as fulfilling compliance obligations, it has also already proved highly effective for staff coaching and reviews.

As needed, the system is extremely conducive to remote working. Staff work part of their week from home and working this way has been seamless. Management is also very happy with ease of staff onboarding which has already proved very painless.  “It will be very useful for us to be able to introduce new staff to the system and have them quickly up to speed”, Robyn noted.

A Promising Foundation for The Future

Foresters Financial is already looking forward to exploring the extensive capability of the Enghouse system and wider portfolio. First on the list is drilling down into more of the metrics available. These will equip Robyn and her team with an enhanced understanding of their customer service operation and will therefore enable longer term planning and strategy.

As Head of Operations, Robyn is also keen to investigate the Enghouse solution’s Agent Scoring capability, allowing management to work with agents to extend their skills and build up their confidence.

Another improvement planned in the future, based on customer demand, is expanding the operation to a multichannel environment. This will enable Foresters Financial to offer customers a true omnichannel experience. A list of potential engagement options to consider includes email, web chat and text messaging, depending on which channels Foresters Financial ultimately decides would be most suited to their customers – and they know the Enghouse system can offer them a greater range whenever they need it.

“As a business,” Robyn explains, “Foresters Financial understands the need to continue to evolve to meet technology advances and changing customer needs. And to do this, we need both the right technology stack, and the right providers to deliver it. We are delighted to have Enghouse join our select providers, both for the solution set they provide – current and future – and for the team behind it.”