When you contact an insurance provider, you want fast service that provides accurate answers to your questions and speedy solutions to any challenges you are experiencing. With people more attuned than ever to on-demand service and solutions and data security, having employees who can exceed their expectations is paramount.
In 2024, insurance and annuity products provider Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life) focused on taking its customer service to the next level, cementing the company’s reputation as a market leader. Thanks to a training initiative that created more focused time for employees to concentrate on their learning, Allianz Life delivered heightened customer satisfaction and security.
A MARKET-LEADING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
“Our Contact Center is the first line of interaction with our customers, so the ability of our Contact Center representatives to provide exceptional customer service is imperative to achieving a market-leading customer experience,” says Vice President of Learning & Development Bill Ryan.
To support this, Allianz Life implemented a program to help upskill Contact Center employees and vendor partner representatives on technical expertise and service skills. The program delivers simulation-based experiential learning to help employees develop their phone, e-mail, and chat interaction skills in an empathetic and caring manner, with a strong focus on accountability.
This program includes additional tailored, job-related scenarios and individualized coaching with behaviorspecific feedback. This is designed to provide employees with an opportunity to strengthen their communication and relationship-building skills.
“The program increases confidence and provides the ability to ask questions immediately and get feedback in real time,” Ryan says. “The Contact Center learning program is reviewed and updated quarterly to ensure an exceptional learning experience for employees and a quality experience for our customers.”
From the fall of 2023-2024, 328 employees completed Contact Center training. The average quality score of the program after 30 days is 87 percent, 2 percent above the 85 percent benchmark. The average quality score after 60 days is 88 percent, just slightly below Allianz Life’s 90 percent benchmark. The average quality score after 90 days is 90 percent, nearly meeting the goal of a 92 percent benchmark. “To continue to support these scores, we are in the process of redesigning our Contact Center training through hands-on practice to reinforce training knowledge and confidence for our service representatives,” Ryan says. “We also partner with the department for on-the-job, one-on-one coaching to reinforce the learned concepts that focus on challenging areas.”
In 2024, out of more than 32,000 customers who completed the survey, 86 percent reflected a positive experience, exceeding the Learning team’s goal. The survey is now a 5-star rating, and has a 4.6 average overall.
CYBERSECURITY TRAINING
Cybersecurity was one of the areas that was top of mind for Allianz Life’s leaders last year. “We are dedicated to online safety, ensuring the protection of our company, customers, and employees,” Ryan says. “Our robust security measures and fraud controls are key to this commitment. We monitor our progress with monthly phishing tests, aiming for most employees to report phishing e-mails and very few to click on them.”
Allianz Life doesn’t leave this commitment to security to chance. The company adopted a multi-layered approach to training its employees to be aware of potential security breaches and then to take actions to make those breaches as unlikely as possible.
The company’s learning program includes an annual security course, Cybersecurity Awareness Month activities, and monthly phishing tests. This training “combines advanced social engineering training with interactive opportunities that engage our user community on relevant topics,” Ryan says.
#5 ALLIANZ LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA
FOCUSED TIME FOR LEARNING
The greatest of training programs is of little use if employees don’t have the time for quality learning. That’s why Allianz Life made increasing learning time for its team a top priority last year.
The company increased its minimum expectation for employees from 40 hours of tracked learning in 2023 to 45 hours in 2024. “This increase reflects the company’s continued investment in continuous learning being part of our jobs,” Ryan says.
In addition, the company had its first full year of quarterly “Connect & Learn Days.” On these dedicated learning days, it is expected that business areas do not schedule normal business meetings to allow employees to participate in learning—either through prescheduled company-wide learning courses or selfguided opportunities.
The increased focus on learning content was a priority at the global level. With more than 150,000 global employees in Allianz Group (Allianz), the organization took a more prescriptive approach to learning, including that all employees dedicate a minimum of 11 annual hours of learning for technology, digital, and data upskilling, and deployed the most annual learning content in the company’s history through its focus on Skills for the Future.
Allianz Life invested in creating learning tracks around AI, data, and M365 to provide content counting toward the annual requirement. “The content creation and expectation for employees to complete this upskilling reflects the company’s global investment in these important skills to help set us up better to address business needs now and in the future,” Ryan says.
Upskilling became an even bigger priority for Allianz Life in 2024. With more than 17,000 global people leaders, the company took a more prescriptive approach to learning, including that all people leaders dedicate a minimum of 10 hours of learning to complete upskilling content on the topics of employee engagement, hybrid leadership, mental health awareness, and a generative AI deep dive. “This focus for leaders helps show that dedication to learning these vital topics comes from the top down,” Ryan notes.
OPTIMIZING AN AI-DRIVEN WORLD
Last year was a big one for artificial intelligence, which suddenly seemed to permeate nearly every facet of people’s lives. Allianz Life is making use of this new technology to further improve its learning programs and service to customers.
The company utilizes the Degreed learning experience platform, which employs AI to foster a culture of continuous learning and skill development aligned with company priorities. Degreed allows employees to identify their focus skills for career growth, Ryan explains. Based on these inputs and their interactions with the platform, Degreed’s AI generates personalized learning recommendations that appear in an employee’s daily feed. “This approach not only supports the development of targeted skills but also introduces new areas of interest to broaden their expertise,” Ryan says. “As employees’ roles evolve, they can update their skill profiles, enabling Degreed to continually tailor learning suggestions to their changing needs.”
In addition to Degreed, Allianz Life in-house instructional designers harness a proprietary generative AI tool to enhance training content creation, as well as AI-driven scripting, AI voiceover tools, and advanced authoring capabilities, and utilizes software such as Microsoft Co-Pilot for efficient design.
“Looking ahead, we are committed to exploring further AI enhancements in our training programs to further personalize content delivery and optimize learning experiences, while leveraging data analytics to continuously refine and improve our training initiatives,” Ryan says.
BALANCED CULTURE OF LEARNING
The coming year promises further refinements to Allianz Life’s learning culture. “In 2025, we’re excited to foster a more balanced culture of learning. We’ll continue supporting essential training and skill development while placing greater emphasis on elective learning to enhance personal and professional growth,” Ryan says. “This is already a significant part of our continuous learning culture, and our focus will be on enhancing the employee experience.”
Ryan says the company will continue to focus learning efforts on:
- Critical skill development
- Personalized learning targets to build individual skills
- Connect & Learn Days
- Recognizing trends/key skills/other topics as they emerge (e.g., data/AI; diversity, equity, and inclusion; global events; products, etc.)
- Continuing to launch new business acumen learning opportunities (e.g., virtual instructor led, eLearning, etc.) New initiatives launching in 2025 include:
- Personal development plans and a Career Compass portal
- Mentoring platform
- New ways to reach learners (e.g., building learning communities/new forums)
- New employee hub (consolidated location for important new hire resources)
“We’re also eager to simplify our learning message by introducing a quarterly theme and more personalized learning reports,” Ryan adds. “This approach will help us deliver clear and engaging communication, making it easier for everyone to connect with and benefit from our learning opportunities.”
