Overview: Premier Guarantee shines in the competitive and highly regulated UK construction insurance market by delivering proactive, efficient service that fosters trust and loyalty through a truly personal client experience. Leveraging 8x8 Work and 8x8 Contact Center, the team is enhancing visibility across customer touchpoints, strengthening alignment with Consumer Duty commitments, and driving forward ambitious plans for digital transformation and accelerated change.

“In order to be more proactive, we needed better data, visibility and communication methods to support our customer journey. Fresh insights we could also use to inform, develop, and prioritise our change roadmaps and future digitisation plans.”

Kate Hughes

Head of Customer Experience and Business Change, Premier Guarantee

Added security and peace of mindlink to this section

No one understands the challenges of the UK construction process better than Premier Guarantee. Underwritten by A-rated insurers, the company’s insurance policies protect UK homeowners and commercial entities from defects in newly built, converted, or refurbished properties—from faulty workmanship, materials, and design to major structural problems with walls, floors, roofs, and drainage systems.

Driving client satisfaction and brand loyalty is where Head of Customer Experience (CX) and Business Change, Kate Hughes, does her best work.

“For us, CX begins as B2B and moves to B2C as the property warranty transfers between the home builder and home buyer,” explains Kate. “That journey could span up to 12 years, and it’s crucial we’re at the top of our game throughout, as we strive to provide the best possible service and outcomes for our clients.”

Seeking fresh proactive service and compliance advantageslink to this section

Kate oversees the customer experience teams, orchestrating the best customer journey and outcomes in partnership with sales, disputes, complaints, claims, and other touchpoints along the customer journey. Her passion lies in improving processes, data, and propositions to make it easier to do business with Premier Guarantee.

“We receive around 1,600 calls a month, and our clients don’t want to jump through multiple hoops,” says Kate. “Training a specialist to excel in one-stop service and deal with any enquiry can take up to six months.”

Premier Guarantee’s legacy system lacked visibility into customer journeys. Simplifying compliance with Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulations by forming a clear line of sight between interactions and Consumer Duty requirements was very much front-of-mind.

“Our ratio of inbound to outbound calls was around 80:20, meaning that we were providing more of a reactive than pro-active service,” recalls Kate. “By introducing a new process supported by 8x8 solutions, we gained the data and visibility we needed to transform our approach. These fresh insights and approaches now help us anticipate customer needs, inform decision-making, and prioritise our change roadmap and future digitisation plans.”

No longer waiting for clients to calllink to this section

As part of a corporate acquisition, Premier Guarantee had just six weeks to implement 8x8—the solution already in use across the wider group.

"With 8x8, we quickly saw several advantages in terms of configurability, self-management, reporting, and smart features—with the ability to test and learn as we go," says Kate.

All customer-facing users now manage conversations through a softphone and headset, whether in the office or at home. Calls can be transferred easily to Microsoft Teams users in the back office. "The warm transfer feature is really useful and ensures the client doesn’t have to repeat themselves," Kate adds.

These productivity gains have facilitated process improvements, together contributing to a 30% increase in proactive contacts, resulting in a healthier 50:50 balance between inbound and outbound calls.

“With 8x8, we quickly saw several advantages in terms of configurability, self-management, reporting, and smart features—with the ability to test and learn as we go.”

Kate Hughes

Head of Customer Experience and Business Change, Premier Guarantee

Better visibility and controllink to this section

Importantly, 8x8 Contact Center has been uniquely configured to make sure clients are connected to the right person the first time. This includes remote teams—like surveyors and engineers—quickly reaching the right people, allowing them to focus on verifying onsite technical standards and accelerating the issuance of insurance policies.

“Having much clearer and more detailed reporting helps us make better decisions,” adds Kate. “If we need to tweak a call script or reassign staff in queues, it’s now instant and within our control.”

In addition, Kate and her colleagues lost no time in bringing more 8x8 features into play. “Call recording with speech-to-text analytics is a huge time saver and means we don’t have to wade through entire transcripts when reviewing complaints. We’ve launched post-call surveys, and we’re now able to measure customer sentiment and emotional tone, which allows us to validate that our service aligns with customer needs. More benefits that weren’t previously possible.”

Strengthening compliance with smarter insightslink to this section

Premier Guarantee are feeding insights from 8x8 into their compliance checks to ensure every interaction meets the highest standards and supports Consumer Duty and Treating Customers Fairly. This supports ensuring products and services are designed to meet client needs, offer fair value, provide clear and transparent information, and deliver reliable support throughout their client relationships. Premier Guarantee's commitment to these principles gives confidence that client best interests are always at the heart of what they do.

“Call recording with speech-to-text analytics is a huge time saver and means we don’t have to wade through entire transcripts when reviewing complaints.”

Kate Hughes

Head of Customer Experience and Business Change, Premier Guarantee

The plan is to further consolidate their reporting by automating the process of bringing call data and insights from 8x8 into their Consumer Duty scorecards system.

“No two days are alike here, and I love that,” concludes Kate. “And now, thanks to 8x8, we can try out further CX innovation opportunities such as text messaging, mobile chat, keyword monitoring, in-system sampling and video calling.”