Health Benefits Direct Corp. Claims 600 Percent Customer Contact Increase

Health Benefits Direct Corp., a vendor of direct marketing and health and life insurance products, has customized IP-based contact center automation software by Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) to increase its customer contact rate by approximately 600 percent.

The contact center-based insurance agency, which operates an interactive online marketplace where users shop for, compare, and purchase health and life insurance products, says it achieved this rather dramatic increase in its customer contact rate by customizing the software, called Customer Interaction Center, and combining it with an Interactive Intelligence Interaction Dialer module.

This created an online product called "Quick-to-Call," for which it has filed a patent application.

"For potential customers who submit quote requests online, our connect time to a licensed agent from time of submission is now as fast as 30 seconds, which has enabled us to increase customer contact rates by about 600 percent," said Health Benefits Direct co-founder, president, and chief operating officer, Charles Eissa.

He adds that the sales cycle from the time a consumer submits an online quote request to submission of an application to a carrier for underwriting has been reduced to as little as 60 minutes, which he calls a "huge benefit," since waits of several weeks were common "under traditional insurance sales models."

Eissa said the open, single-platform architecture of the Interactive Intelligence software, along with its "virtually unlimited customization options," was key in helping them develop the "Quick-to-Call" application.

Today, Health Benefits Direct uses its "Quick-to-Call" application to support more than 200 contact center agents and business users.

Earlier this month Interactive Intelligence, the only publicly traded information technology company based in Indiana, has received the Indiana University Entrepreneurial Award of Distinction in the category of Innovation.

"Interactive Intelligence clearly met our criteria for the Innovation Award with its ground-breaking IP-based unified communications software, which was first released nearly a decade ago," said Donald F. Kuratko, executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and The Jack M. Gill Chair of Entrepreneurship in the IU Kelley School of Business."

The Interactive Intelligence software, first released in 1997, was developed as a unified communications software suite that's scalable and standards-based, offering single-platform architecture designed to eliminate the cost and complexity introduced by individual point products. The software is marketed as ideal for contact centers and enterprises.

In early November TMC's Internet Telephony magazine named Interactive Intelligence's CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown, among the "Top Voices of IP Communications" based on his insights and contributions to the industry, according to the magazine's editorial savants.

Brown co-founded Interactive Intelligence in October 1994, and has served as CEO since April 1995, and president since inception.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data in packets over the Internet. I...more

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