Quality over speed: our commitment to delivering quality customer service

When you call our Customer Services contact centre, you’re expecting to get the right answer to your question.

As we focus on delivering an efficient multi-channel customer experience, we are providing our plan members with more options for accessing information about your benefits beyond our contact centre. We have expanded our online self-serve options to allow our members to access plan information anywhere, on a 24/7 basis—whether through our enhanced member site or our app. We recognize that more and more of our customers want online access to benefits information.

If you still choose to call us, our commitment in our call centre is to deliver what we call “first call resolution”. It’s our commitment to you to solve your issue or answer your question, then and there, with you on the phone. Our industry leading Customer Services team is committed to getting you the information you need the first time you call us. This is our priority on every call. This means putting quality before speed. And it also means that our plan members may have a longer wait on hold to get their call answered.

To give you an idea of how we stack up against other call centres, we measure how well we’re doing on first call resolution through the analytics firm SQM. SQM benchmarks more than 500 leading call centres across North America. This year, we received a first call resolution score of 78, surpassing the industry standard of 72 and just under the world class score of 80. What does all this mean? Firstly, we’re succeeding in our commitment to first call resolution. Secondly, because we’re spending more time with each member on the phone, our wait times can end up being longer. We understand the need to balance speed and service, but your calls are important to us and we want to get you the right answers the first time you call.

Multi-channel customer service experience

We’re realigning the way that we interact with our customers, giving you more ways to find the information you’re looking for through a multi-channel experience. Our aim is to make information accessible in many ways, beyond only our call centre and focusing on online options. This doesn’t mean we’re leaving call centres behind—it simply means we’re giving you more options. You can visit our site, sign in to the member site or app or call us for complex issues—whatever works for you.

As we continue to enhance and develop new channels, we want to encourage our members to explore our online resources. By doing this, we hope members are empowered to use online options for standard inquiries, like resetting your password, getting a copy of your ID card, submitting claims, checking remaining coverage, obtaining a claim totals report for tax time and much more. This will help free up phone lines for more complex inquiries, like issues with a claim or specific, individualized coverage questions.

Here are a few of our recent digital enhancements meant to improve your online experience:

• Enhanced member site and app—we recently enhanced our member site and app to create a more straightforward and intuitive experience for you online. You can now access and manage your benefits more easily. When we developed the enhancements, we talked to our members to see what you needed most. Some of the key enhancements include fingerprint and facial recognition sign in options, home-screen access to your ID card and a cleaner navigation so you can find what you’re looking for faster. Check out the new site and app now.

          Sign in or register at members.ab.bluecross.ca or download the member app from the App Store or Google play.

     

• My Plan—did you know that you can find out basic information about your plan on our site? If you need help submitting a claim, understanding your claim statement or finding answers to commonly asked question, My Plan will have the answers for you. This is a great place to start anytime you have a question about your plan.

What’s next?

We’re constantly talking with and listening to our customers to find out what the most common questions are and what you need help with. Once we hear what you need, we build resources and channels for you to find this information. We have a suite of new digital solutions in the works for 2021 and beyond. Stay tuned to hear what we have in store.

Tips for a quick call

If you need to call us, we’re still here to help. To help us resolve your question or issue, here are a few tips:

• Call during our non-peak hours—our call centres are typically busiest on the first day after a weekend or a stat holiday as well as during the noon hour period. We encourage you to call outside of these times to give you a better chance of avoiding longer wait times.
• Make sure you have your account information ready—to give you tailored support, be sure to have your ID and group number ready to enter when requested. Both of these are found on your ID card, which can be accessed through the member site if you don’t have a physical card available.
• Check online while you wait—while you’re waiting, we encourage you to explore the member site, app or the My Plan section of our site to find the answer to your question.