How Reliance General Insurance empowered the salesforce during the lockdown period

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The sales force of companies got severely impacted during the lockdown however companies swung to action by rolling out training programmes and empowering employees to conduct sales over digital mediums. Reliance General Insurance (RGI) also charted on the same path. RGI has over 45000+ Agent partners, 16000+ Bank branch network, over 6000+ dealership network and 1.2 Million customers coming on the website. RGI is a leading partner for over 500 mega corporate clients in India. All the sales force manages this ecosystem of customers, partners & clients through digitally enabled platforms. EC’s Abhishek Raval speaks with Rakesh Jain, ED and CEO, Reliance General Insurance.

What percentage of your IT budget goes towards the salesforce automation?
Over 2% of the company’s GWP contribution is towards IT budget – highest across industry since over 5 years now. Almost ~75% of this is towards digital initiatives pertaining to salesforce automation, followed by automation towards claims management.

How do you train them? how many hours of training have been provided thus far?
At RGI learning and development is one of the most important people goals. Our employees receive a diverse mix of trainings across product, technical, behavioural and compliance courses. Our internal e-learning platform contributes to over 90% of the learning mode.  An important focus is on training of external agents which is conducted through our in-house product trainers and underwriters on a regular basis. This is to ensure their complete knowledge and know-how of our various products and developments. We also have specialized informative sessions by senior leaders for top agents and brokers via virtual platforms.

We have consistently increased our training coverage YoY. Utilizing the lockdown period for upskilling of employees, more training man days were completed in Q1 2020 than the entire FY 19-20. Employees training coverage has seen a stupendous increase of 4X in Q1 2020 compared to Q1 2019; Third party training has also been witnessed over 3.5X increase in the same period.

Please share stats on the number of policies sold online and the tools provided to the salesforce during the lockdown period?
More than 98% of the policies were sold seamlessly through digital mode by our salesforce, using the exclusive web – based and mobile application provided, while we also saw an uptake in adoption and use of our customer- facing platforms like Reliance Selfi App, RelianceGeneral.co.in website during this period.

How do you measure the productivity and attendance of the salesforce?
In line with our digital philosophy, our attendance is captured through our intranet portal for the employees attending physical offices, whereas for the sales force on field their attendance is captured through an internet portal, which is also available in form of a mobile app. This platform ensures efficiency and seamless operations even when employees are on the move.

To keep their morale high during current times, individual calls were made by HR to over 3000 employees to check on their wellbeing and need for any support. Many interactive communications and digital engagement activities were organized towards mental and physical health of employees’ and their families. For standardized operations, structured policies like Work from Home, Resumption of work and digital diary was rolled out.

What kind of tools have you provided them to do online sales?
While operating as an essential service under these social distancing norms and physical isolation in place, became of utmost importance for us to equip our teams, partners and customers with end-to-end online digital support to service efficiently.

Our AI assisted chatbot RIVA is fully equipped to manage customer queries and transactions under 2 minutes. Email & chat bot handled 85% of customer queries. While going all out in digital transformation journey, it is yet another achievement for us to have bagged the ISO 31000:2018 assurance for risk management.

Another tool, Reliance Selfi app assists & helps in quick claim processing and provides real-time claim status. With Reliance Self-i App, you can renew your policy with just a tap and also get quick access to nearby garages, hospitals and branches. It aims at speeding and simplifying insurance claims and policy renewal process.

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