4 Ways Insurers Can Improve Customer Service When It Matters Most
*Updated 22 September 2026*
Insurance customer service is rarely judged during the easiest interaction.
It is judged when somebody has had an accident, suffered damage to their home, had a trip disrupted, needs to understand their cover or is waiting for a claim to progress.
At those moments, speed matters, but so do reassurance, clarity and context.
This makes the contact centre much more than a service channel. It is where the insurer's processes, technology and customer promises are tested in real time.
The Financial Conduct Authority, in December 2025, reported that 79% of consumers who had made an insurance claim were satisfied with how it was handled. However, it also said there remained room for improvement and announced further work around customer service, claims handling and third-party oversight.
More recent complaints data reinforces the point. The Financial Ombudsman Service, reporting on April to June 2026, recorded around 4,100 car and motorcycle insurance complaints, compared with 2,800 in the same period a year earlier. Concerns included claim values, cancellations and delays. Travel insurance complaints also increased by 30% year on year to around 1,300.
The opportunity for insurers is therefore not simply to add more digital channels or automate more conversations.
It is to make every interaction easier to understand, faster to progress and more likely to reach a resolution.
Britannic Technologies supports this through its wider Insurance technology and communications proposition, bringing contact centres, communications, AI, automation and analytics together around insurance operations.
1. How Can Insurers Give Agents More Customer Context?
Customers should not need to reconstruct their claim every time they contact their insurer.
Yet this can easily happen when voice, email, messaging, policy administration, CRM and claims systems operate separately.
A customer may submit information digitally, call for an update and then receive an outbound message from another team. If employees cannot see those interactions together, the customer becomes responsible for joining the journey together.
A better contact centre gives employees enough context to understand:
what the customer has already done, why they are contacting the organisation, what stage their claim has reached and what needs to happen next.
This is particularly important in insurance because a single customer journey can involve underwriters, claims handlers, loss adjusters, repair networks, brokers and third-party suppliers.
Britannic's Five9 Intelligent CX Platform supports voice and digital channels alongside AI, automation and analytics, helping organisations manage interactions within a more unified contact-centre environment.
The same principle applies when insurers retain existing platforms. Modernisation does not necessarily require replacing every system.
Britannic worked with Kelliher Insurance Group to integrate its contact centre with the company's insurance database. Improved reporting, customer self-service and agent tools helped the business identify new opportunities while improving customer experience and reducing the overall cost to serve.
Read the Kelliher Insurance case study
The important outcome is not simply system integration.
It is making sure the employee handling the interaction has enough information to move it forward.
2. Where Should AI Fit Into Insurance Customer Service?
AI should remove unnecessary work from insurance customer service without removing human judgement from the moments where it matters.
That distinction is increasingly important.
ContactBabel's 2026 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers' Guide, based on research with 215 UK organisations and more than 1,000 consumers, found that 78% of contact centres placed AI among their top five technology investment priorities for the next two years. Yet the same research found customer preference for live voice remained particularly strong for complex and urgent enquiries.
For insurers, this creates a relatively clear dividing line.
AI is well suited to tasks such as recognising intent, summarising interactions, retrieving information, categorising enquiries, supporting agents and handling simple repetitive requests.
Human involvement remains essential where circumstances become complicated, sensitive or disputed.
A policyholder asking for the status of a straightforward claim may be well served by automation.
A policyholder whose home has flooded and whose claim has become complicated needs something very different.
AI should therefore help the insurer decide what can be automated and what needs human attention.
Britannic's AI capabilities can support this through conversational automation, interaction analysis and workflow integration. Britannic's AI Receptionist, for example, can understand caller intent and route or resolve straightforward enquiries without requiring manual intervention.
The wider opportunity is analysis.
Rather than sampling only a small proportion of calls, insurers can increasingly analyse larger volumes of conversations to understand recurring themes, sentiment, reasons for contact and operational problems.
The objective should not be AI for the sake of reducing headcount.
It should be to give employees more capacity for claims and conversations where judgement, empathy and expertise create greater value.
3. How Can Insurers Improve Claims Journeys Without Losing The Human Element?
Claims handling is where contact-centre performance and operational processes become inseparable.
An agent cannot provide a good experience if the workflow behind them is slow, fragmented or unclear.
The FCA's current rules require insurers to handle claims promptly and fairly, provide reasonable guidance to policyholders and provide appropriate information on claim progress.
Its July 2025 review of home and travel insurance claims found good practice but also identified areas where claims-handling arrangements still needed improvement. The FCA continues to use measures including claims acceptance, complaints and payouts to assess whether general insurance products are providing appropriate outcomes.
The contact centre therefore needs to be connected to the process behind the conversation.
A useful claims workflow could recognise an incoming customer, retrieve relevant claim information, understand why they are contacting the insurer, route the interaction appropriately and trigger the next operational action.
Straightforward interactions can then move quickly while exceptions receive more attention.
Britannic's INBOX Enterprise can help structure digital interactions and connect them with workflows and wider business systems.
This is particularly valuable around First Notice of Loss, documentation, status enquiries and repetitive administrative communication.
Britannic's insurance proposition also supports digital claims handling from initial notification through to resolution, including validation, routing, workflow automation and low-value payment processes where the insurer's own rules permit them.
The purpose is not to create a completely touchless journey for every claim.
It is to reserve human intervention for the points where it genuinely improves the outcome.
4. How Can Insurance Contact Centres Make Communication Easier To Trust And Access?
An effective contact centre needs more than speed.
Customers also need to recognise communications, understand what is being said and have an appropriate way to respond.
This becomes particularly important when an insurer is trying to reach somebody about an active claim.
Unknown numbers can be ignored because customers increasingly associate unfamiliar calls with scams or unwanted sales activity.
Britannic's Branded Calls can display verified information such as the organisation's identity and reason for calling on supported devices, helping customers recognise legitimate outbound communications.
For example, instead of an unidentified number, a policyholder could see that the insurer is calling about an existing claim.
Accessibility is equally important.
The FCA's 2025 work on vulnerable customers found that at least 51% of adults experiencing characteristics across all four drivers of vulnerability said dealing with customer services by telephone could be difficult and confusing because of their health condition or illness. The FCA specifically highlighted channel choice and tailored communication as areas firms should consider.
This does not mean replacing telephone service with digital channels.
It means providing appropriate choices.
Email, messaging and self-service can work well for straightforward updates. Voice remains valuable where the conversation is urgent, complicated or emotional.
Language also needs consideration.
Britannic's NetTranslate provides real-time translation across calls, Microsoft Teams and chat in more than 100 languages, helping customers and agents communicate in their preferred languages while continuing to use existing communications environments.
Human interpretation will remain appropriate for some sensitive interactions. Real-time translation provides another option where language would otherwise slow or prevent effective communication.
The principle is straightforward.
More channels do not automatically create better accessibility. Customers need the right route for the interaction they are trying to resolve.
What Should An Insurance Contact Centre Actually Measure?
Average handling time still matters, but it cannot explain whether the contact centre is improving the customer journey.
ContactBabel's 2026 research found that an inbound contact-centre call costs an average of £6.17, around 25% more than email and 83% more than webchat. It also found that empathy remained highly valued, with 62% of respondents identifying it as the most important characteristic in an agent.
Reducing unnecessary calls therefore makes commercial sense.
However, pushing customers into digital channels simply because they are cheaper can create repeat contact if the original problem is not resolved.
A better measure is whether technology is reducing avoidable demand while improving resolution.
This means looking beyond handling time towards first-contact resolution, repeat contact, transfer rates, customer effort, complaint themes, reasons for contact, claim progression and whether digital interactions subsequently become telephone calls.
This is also where conversation analytics can provide greater value.
Patterns across calls, messages and emails can show insurers where customers repeatedly become confused or where operational processes are generating unnecessary contact.
The contact centre then becomes a source of business intelligence, not simply a place where enquiries are processed.
The Britannic Insurance Contact Centre Test
A practical review can be structured around four areas.
| Area | What Insurers Should Test |
| Recognise | Can the organisation identify the customer, their previous interactions, accessibility requirements and reason for contact quickly? |
| Route |
|
| Resolve |
|
| Review |
|
This provides a more useful test than simply asking whether the insurer offers telephone, webchat, email and messaging.
The question is whether those capabilities work together to improve outcomes.
Why Does This Matter More In 2026?
The economics of insurance make efficient service increasingly important.
The Association of British Insurers reported in February 2026 that UK motor insurers paid out £11.9 billion across 2.5 million claims during 2025. Property insurers paid a record £6.1 billion during the same year, including £1.2 billion in weather-related claims.
Insurers therefore have to improve operational efficiency while continuing to meet regulatory and customer expectations.
That is precisely why contact-centre transformation should not be treated purely as a channel project.
Changing the telephony platform without examining workflows, data, routing, AI, customer accessibility and operational processes will only modernise the interface around the same problems.
The stronger approach is to work backwards from the customer outcome.
What is the customer trying to achieve?
What information does the employee need?
What can be automated safely?
Where does human judgement add value?
What is causing repeat contact?
What can interaction data reveal about the underlying claims process?
Those questions make technology decisions much easier.
Better Insurance Customer Service Starts With Better Resolution
Insurance customer service does not need to become entirely digital or entirely automated.
It needs to become more intelligent about where technology helps and where people matter.
AI can remove repetitive administration.
Automation can progress straightforward claims and enquiries.
Connected platforms can give agents better information.
Analytics can reveal why customers are contacting the organisation.
Branded communications can make outbound contact easier to recognise.
Translation and channel choice can make insurance services more accessible.
The outcome should be simple.
Customers spend less time navigating the insurer and more time getting their problem resolved.
Britannic Technologies works with insurers across contact centres, unified communications, AI, automation, analytics and intelligent applications, including long-standing work with organisations such as Kelliher Insurance and Markerstudy. Its focus is on integrating technology around measurable operational and customer outcomes rather than introducing another isolated platform.
Insurers reviewing their contact-centre strategy can speak to Britannic about where customer journeys are generating unnecessary contact, where claims workflows are slowing resolution and where existing communications technology could be integrated or optimised before further platforms are introduced.
