In the past year, we’ve seen increased demand for our outsourced total loss claims management services, as more customers seek improved digital services.
Insurers were already aware of the importance of improving the customer journey, particularly around claims settlement, for their policy holders – but the pandemic really brought this into focus.
Being heavily tech driven, Copart was already a well-established ‘partner of choice’ for many major insurers prior to the pandemic, with an outstanding track record of success. With all our auctions 100% online, and a completely contactless digital journey for sellers and buyers, we were already well ahead of the game when covid hit.
Now we are seeing demand continue to rise for our industry-leading claims management services, and we are very proud of the trust our insurers have placed in us to maintain strong and positive relationships with their policy holders throughout their claims settlement journey.
Our customer service functions have been rapidly expanding in line with this increased demand and it became clear that we needed to centralise these services to support the ongoing growth and changing needs of our customers.
At the beginning of the year, we opened our new Customer Excellence Centre in Bedford. The Centre houses our Claims Settlement, Customer Support Centre, and Operational Audit teams, alongside specialist IMI and AQP qualified engineers.
The centralisation of these areas of expertise enables us to maintain high levels of accuracy and quality to our insurance customers, while continuously developing and improving our world -class end-to-end outsourced services to drive more returns from their vehicles.
Appointed earlier this year to lead the continuing development of our Customer Excellence Centre was Richard Howe, who brings a wealth of commercial, technical and claims experience.
In this article, we speak to Richard to find out more about his role, and how it demonstrates Copart’s ongoing focus on developing strong and trusted partnerships with insurers and their policy holders.
Why was this new role of Head of Central Operations introduced at Copart?
We are seeing a growing trend within the insurance industry to outsource elements of the motor claims process.
With Copart’s new and existing strategic partnerships for salvage disposal and total loss settlements, we are perfectly positioned to continue growing our existing capabilities to offer an end-to-end process for total loss management, incorporating customer service, motor engineering, claims settlement, private plate retention and finance marker removal.
To centralise these vital services and ensure they are robust, efficient, fit for purpose and ultimately scalable, Copart opened its brand-new Customer Excellence Centre. My role was created as Head of Central Operations to oversee these functions, underpinning Copart’s commitment to operational excellence and continuous improvement.
The Customer Excellence Centre not only supports the continued development of Copart’s strong and trusted partnerships with insurers and their policy holders, but it also acts as a conduit between our Insurance Sales and Member Services teams based at our Head Office in Wootton, and our nationwide Operation Centres.
Therefore, a strong focus of my role is to ensure smooth and seamless processes and communications are maintained across these different areas of our business.
What has been your initial focus since starting the role?
My initial focus has been to engage with the team to fully understand the services we offer, the systems we use, and the processes we follow. My primary aim is to deliver improvements, efficiencies, and ultimately world-class customer service.
Most days involve me having in-depth discussions with the team, questioning what they do, why they do It, and what we could do to possibly improve it. I firmly believe in engaging with the people carrying out the role at grass roots level, getting their ideas for improvements and ultimately making them feel more involved and engaged in our business.
What impact has the new Customer Excellence Centre had so far?
Firstly, and most importantly, it is enabling us to continue streamlining and improving processes and services for our customers.
We’re very proud that, despite the challenges of the pandemic, we continued to put our customers first by opening the doors to this new Centre as part of our wider growth programme, showing the outside world that we are a very robust and resilient business. This gives our customers an important sense of security during uncertain times, reassuring them that Copart can be relied upon to deliver these vital services.
And internally, the Customer Excellence Centre has created a real buzz amongst our people, due to the increased focus on service delivery. It has allowed our Sales teams to confidently offer our customers a “one stop shop” for total loss claims management, knowing we are offering a robust and market leading service, which is continuing to go from strength-to-strength.
What are you looking forward to achieving next?
I’m lucky to be working with a highly functioning, engaged, and award-winning team that provides outstanding customer service and fully understands our customers and their individual needs and service requirements. I’ll continue to develop and grow the team in line with the needs of our business and customers, as well as for their own personal development goals.
Earlier this year, our Customer Excellence Centre was awarded the prestigious CCA Global Standard Accreditation by the Customer Contact Association, for a second year. Copart was praised for demonstrating solid improvement despite the pandemic and our continuous focus on the customer experience was highlighted as a key strength. I’m looking forward to building on this success and keeping the momentum going.
Copart’s continued investment in technology and systems makes this an incredibly exciting place to be. The fact that we can develop our own bespoke systems from needs identified by the business, or by our customers, is amazing and the speed of delivery and implementation is unique. So, I am looking forward to being involved in lots of interesting projects which will take our already successful business to the next level!
Our new telephony system, MiPhone, which is already delivering brilliant results with our call handling management, coupled with future capabilities to offer multi-channel communication methods with customers, such as web chat and WhatsApp messaging, will only help to drive our customer service offering forward.
The new Centre signals our ongoing commitment to providing world-class service to our customers, and as the business continues to expand and improve its range of products and services, I’m really looking forward to being part of the journey!