Customer service and the skills machines can’t replace  

“In the future, the skills that machines can’t replace, our care, our reason and our humanity will be the keys to success.”

First, the good news: the 2025 UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) across 13 sectors, including insurance, is at one of its highest levels since January 2023[1]. Satisfaction across motor claims is high, particularly amongst the leading insurers, where there is improvement regarding speed, professionalism and courtesy[2].  The less good news is in home insurance, which has seen increased complaints that highlight confusing policy wording, impersonal communication and a lack of consistency[3]. Whilst claims directors and managers navigate a constantly changing landscape, the real constant in all this is the presence of the customer service advisor. The desk-bound employee who operates the front line, whether via the phone, social media, live chat or email.

In my experience, these are some of the most important people in an organisation; those who determine how the business, as a brand, is perceived. When we contact customer service, we have a series of expectations about what the advisor can do for us. Depending on our experience, this creates memories, hopefully good ones.  When we have memories, whether good or bad, we share them as stories. If our expectations have been met and the memories and stories are positive, a relationship has likely been established between us and the advisor.

Knowing how to create a relationship, whether via written or spoken communication, is a core skill for a customer service advisor. Where no relationship or rapport exists, the process is purely transactional. For simple issues, this is fine, but for more complex cases, the ’moments that matter’ you need your best advisors.

I’ve advised and worked with customer services teams internationally, mainly for retail brands such as Nespresso, Louis Vuitton and Gucci. These companies invest in having advisors with the ability to turn customers into brand advisors or advocates. Take the case of the angry customer who was so impressed by how the advisor handled her complaint, she invited her to stay in her villa in Southern Italy.  Whilst retail is different from insurance, the skills and competencies are similar; the difference is in mindset and context.

If you want advisors who establish relationships with customers, generate a positive brand image and create loyal ambassadors, here are five characteristics to watch out for.

1. Excellent communication skills

We can break this down into two parts:

A. Spoken Communication

Ideally, you want natural conversationalists, those who are articulate and who like to share stories and listen to others. When talking to clients, such people communicate warmth, enthusiasm and empathy. They use positive language, and regardless of how frustrated a customer is, they remain upbeat, always trying to steer the conversation towards a positive outcome. They are skilful users of tone of voice in both spoken and written communication.

They are persuasive when they speak, whether outlining the options for the customer or turning a problem into a solution. Their persuasiveness is a result of their confidence in the products, processes and options available. When they speak, they are easy to understand, not only because they are articulate but because they speak clearly, enunciate properly and don’t mumble. Regardless of regional accent or ethnicity, they know that unless they are easy to understand, it will be hard to establish a relationship.

Good communicators are also excellent listeners. When on a call, they listen actively and can block out all peripheral noise. This is because they focus exclusively on who they are speaking to. This is much harder than people think and often quite tiring.

B. Written Communication

The key thing here is adapted communication. That is the ability to adapt a communication style to suit the media channel.

Those with excellent written communication skills write clear and concise emails that are well-structured. Use short sentences, simple words and avoid the passive tense where possible. At the same time, they write in ways that are in line with company values and tone of voice. As email can always be used as evidence by a customer, excellence here is a necessity.

When using Live Chat, these advisors modulate their tone of voice to the channel and the needs of the customer. They are always mindful of how to explain the complex simply or when to move the conversation onto a more appropriate channel. As they are often managing three to four customers at a time, they must always appear to be giving the caller their undivided attention.

2. Emotional Intelligence

The best advisors have a high level of emotional intelligence. This is defined as the ability to understand and manage emotions. The term was coined by the American writer and psychologist, Daniel Goleman[4], who describes it as having five characteristics:

1. Self-Awareness – an ability to understand and recognise your own emotions as well as how this might affect those with whom you communicate, i.e. the customer.
2. Self-Control – the ability to express your emotions in the right way and at the right moment, so that you can adapt how you communicate.
3. Social Skills – being able to interact with others, whether they are peers, managers or customers, so that relationships and connections are made.
4. Empathy – the ability to recognise how others feel and to show that you recognise this in ways that appear genuine.
5. Motivation – a desire to do good for others, in ways that go beyond money or success, but which are biased more towards personal goals and beliefs.

As Goleman describes it, once you get all this right, ‘you have a whole human being.’  However, for a claims manager supervising a team of advisors who are part of Generation Z or younger Millennials, that is a big ask. It’s where training and experience come in.

Emotional intelligence allows advisors to develop a couple of other important characteristics:

1. Patience  – a temptation to try to resolve the situation quickly leads to impatience. Impatience makes doing hard things even harder, which is why experienced advisors master the art of patience.

• A thick skin – customer service is not for the faint of heart. Advisors must learn how to allow insults, anger and frustration to bounce off them. This is where self-awareness and self-control come in.

Fortunately, it is possible to teach emotional intelligence, which means there is no reason why advisors cannot start to apply these characteristics when handling clients.

3. Digital Savvy & Adaptable

These days, most advisors are digitally savvy. They have grown up with broadband and are adept at working across multiple platforms and with a variety of tools. Increasingly, they work in tandem with Live Chatbots and in the coming years, this will become even more sophisticated with the introduction of Agentic AI[5].

This means that advisors need to be highly adaptable and capable of managing enquiries via the phone, email, social media, live chat and maybe even in person. As mentioned above, they also need to be adaptable emotionally in the ways they communicate. How they engage with a Baby Boomer, born between 1946 – 1964, is going to be different to how they communicate with a Millennial born between 1981 and 1996. Or it should be!

Professional advisors are also able to separate how they communicate socially on digital with and how they engage with customers professionally. Similar platforms and technologies, yes, but different styles of communication.

4. Accountable

29% of customers say the ability to handle their requests without a transfer or escalation is high on their list of expectations. They want to deal with someone who is going to resolve their issue from start to finish. 70% of customers who leave a company say they would have stayed if their issue had been resolved in a single interaction instead of multiple ones[6].  This echoes my own experience following a car accident when I received emails from 10 different claims advisors, with nearly every email coming from a different email address.

On one level, this comes down to the internal claims process; on another, having confidence in the advisor to see the whole process through. To do that, not only do they need to have the skills outlined above, but sufficient product knowledge and authority to handle the claim. The best advisors are keen to take on such responsibility, leading to a better outcome both for the customer and the organisation.

5. Inspiring Leadership

Not surprisingly, the final characteristic is about leadership. Excellent customer service advisors are the product of inspiring leadership.

Leaders, whether at a director or manager level, have:

1. A passion and enthusiasm for the brand and the services it offers
2. A belief in the strategic importance of customer service
3. An understanding of how to manage the gap between AI and interpersonal communication
4. A commitment to training and personal development
5. Visibility – they make their presence felt; they know their team and take an active interest in everything. 

These characteristics rub off on advisors. I’ve seen it time and again. This, in turn, impacts the performance of the team and how the organisation is perceived by its customers.

Summary

As insurance companies and claims directors feel increasingly under pressure to turn to technology to solve the challenges in meeting targets and satisfying customers, I think the last word should go to Simon Sinek, the author and optimist.

“I was recently talking to an executive at a big company, and they’d just recently bought a big fancy new AI customer service system. It answered every question, it could handle thousands of requests at once, but there was one issue. The customers hated it. And so instead of digging in their heels, they pivoted. They actually ditched the AI and instead trained their employees in emotional intelligence and conflict resolution. And guess what happened? Customer satisfaction skyrocketed.

It’s easy to feel like we’re living in a technologically dominated future, but studies show that human skills like empathy, creativity and communication remain the most important workplace expertise. In the future the skills that machines can’t replace, our care, our reason and our humanity will be the keys to success.”

Joe Pélissier is a Marketing, Branding & Communications consultant who advises international customer service teams on their tone of voice.  He will be interested to discuss aspects of your approach to customer service this article raises. You can learn more about him via his LinkedIn profile.

L: linkedin.com/in/joe-pelissier

E: joe@pelissier.co.uk

[1] https://www.instituteofcustomerservice.com/research-insight/ukcsi/

[2] https://www.postonline.co.uk/personal/7958093/aviva-saga-and-lv-lead-the-pack-in-customer-satisfaction

[3] 3. https://www.insurtechworld.org/post/102ky1c/which-magazine-members-survey-of-home-insurance-customer-satisfaction-raises-a-re

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7m9eNoB3NU

[5] https://iloveclaims.com/claims_essentials/ai-customer-service-why-its-not-about-the-technology/

[6] https://www.salesforce.com/eu/resources/service/important-customer-service-skills-list/