How a market-leading insurer tackled rising customer aggression and supported its call centre staff to recover faster.
Background:
Increased call volumes, longer wait times, and a rise in angry, aggressive, abusive, and emotionally distressed customers were taking a toll on this market-leading insurer’s contact centre teams. These challenges were impacting emotional recovery time, self-belief, and confidence at work, with some team members hesitant to seek support. While EAP assistance was available, senior leaders recognised the need for proactive wellbeing strategies to strengthen team culture, reduce psychosocial risks, and maintain their consistently high customer experience standards.
The Initiative:
The insurer partnered with BlueSkyMinds to implement the Mastering Adversity Together (MAT) Foundation and Advanced Programmes across multiple contact centre teams.
Key elements included:
Purpose-built for high-demand roles – targeted, evidence-based tools to help staff respond skilfully under pressure, recover faster, and perform at their best.
Flexible delivery methods – self-guided learning via the organisation’s LMS (4 × 30-min weekly modules) and facilitator-led sessions (4 × 60-min weekly sessions) to fit roster requirements.
Leader enablement – pre- and post-programme touchpoints, team leader coaching guides, and integration tools to embed learning in daily operations.
Personalised toolkits – each participant developed practical strategies to manage the demands of challenging customer interactions.
Wrap-around support – coordination and administration support to ensure smooth implementation and alignment with business objectives.
Business Snapshot
Organisation: Large nationwide market-leading insurer
Industry: Financial services Business
Size: 2500
Challenge: Minimise psychosocial risk associated with the demands of the role.
Solution: BlueSkyMinds MAT Foundation and Advanced Programme
Angry, aggressive, abusive and emotionally distressed customers have had a significant impact on our people’s emotional recovery time, as well as general self-belief and confidence in what they do at work. We were also noticing some of the team would shut down and not ask for support. We wanted to not shy away from the issue.
