How many hours of your life have you spent listening to hold music, waiting to speak to someone in a call centre? Probably not something you want to think about, and also not something you want to add to. Some companies spend a lot of time and money working out which music would be best for their customers to listen to as they wait. Perhaps some familiar soft rock? Uplifting pop? An emotive ballad or two? Or even some specially composed calming muzak? At Lime, we went one step further and thought, “no one wants to call a call centre; what if we make our system so straightforward, so simple and so easy to use that our customers don’t need to call us?”

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First of all, it’s important to understand that we love talking to our customers. And we will always be here if you need us, at the end of the phone or email. We understand that sometimes you just want to speak to a knowledgeable, understanding human being. But we also know that it’s frustrating when you can’t find the answer to a simple question and have to call a call centre. That’s what we want to avoid.

The truth is that call centres are also expensive to run. And of course, that cost needs to be passed on to the customer, which pushes up prices. At Lime, we are committed to keeping things super-simple and affordable. Avoiding a call centre helps us to keep costs down, that’s how we offer the great products that we do, at the prices we charge. But, can you have great service without a call centre?

We think you can. In fact, we think it’s better. We worked through each stage of purchasing and managing one of our policies from getting a quote to making a claim. We stripped it right back and built the entire thing online. At every stage we asked ourselves, could we make this simpler? If we could, we did. We developed an online dashboard where our customers can log in and see all their policy documents and renewal details on one easy-to-access page. Our customers can manage their policy online, make changes and even make a claim online. We challenged ourselves to make all our documentation as clear as possible. Finally, we regularly adapt and update our processes and FAQs to ensure we have everything covered.

This means that we are freed up to speak to our customers when they really need us. We care deeply about our customers and we understand that, for example, when you are submitting a claim it can help to be able to speak to us directly, to be reassured and talked through the process. We also have an email support system which is manned by real human beings and we aim to respond to all enquiries within 48 hours.

We know that technology will never replace real, person-to-person contact.  By not having a call centre, and making sure our system is simple and easy to use we are able to keep our prices as affordable as possible, and it means that when you do need us, you will be able to speak directly to an expert member of our team who knows the system inside out and genuinely cares about you. Plus, as a bonus, you won’t have to listen to hold music.  

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