NEXT Insurance saves $957K through adherence gains

NEXT Insurance (recently acquired by ERGO Group) is on a mission to help entrepreneurs thrive by providing fast, affordable and tailored small business insurance. As one of the fastest-growing leaders in insurtech, NEXT Insurance serves over 7,000 customers across various industries, providing tailored insurance solutions that traditional carriers often overlook.

The challenge: Spreadsheets reach their breaking point

When Dan Swartz joined NEXT Insurance as Workforce Manager in January 2023, the team was managing a growing support operation. As customer demand surged and support operations expanded rapidly, NEXT recognized the need to upgrade beyond legacy tools and processes. Like many fast-growing companies, NEXT had reached the point where its current approach needed to evolve to match its ambitions.

Scheduling was handled through spreadsheets that worked fine when the team was smaller, but managing 110+ agents across internal and BPO teams was pushing the limits of what spreadsheets could handle reliably. The scale of operations demanded a smarter, more reliable system, reflecting NEXT’s commitment to efficiency and excellence at every stage of growth.

Forecasting was still done manually in spreadsheets, which meant planning ahead often felt more like guesswork than science. Without systematic tools in place, Daniel couldn’t always tell if the next day would be smooth sailing or full of surprises — underscoring the need for more reliable, data-driven forecasting as NEXT continued to scale.

Real-time visibility was limited. When volume spikes happened, the team usually found out after the fact rather than being able to respond proactively.

Reporting was focused on the basics. The team had some key metrics, but leadership needed deeper insights to make strategic decisions about hiring and resource allocation.

These weren’t signs of weakness, they were signs of scale — classic growing pains. The processes that helped NEXT grow rapidly had to evolve; now it was time to mature to a more advanced, future-ready operation.

The search: Finding a next-level solution

Having come from a large-scale contact center with enterprise workforce management tools, Dan knew spreadsheets wouldn’t be enough for NEXT’s ambitious growth. He put together a comprehensive list of 50+ need-to-have capabilities and started evaluating vendors. After demos with several different companies, Assembled was the clear winner.

"Assembled clearly understood our needs and could answer all our questions better than any other vendor," Dan noted, "and as a bonus, they were the only system that had dark mode built in, which I love.”

What stood out:

• Core capabilities that checked every box across forecasting, scheduling, monitoring, and reporting
• An intuitive interface that wouldn't require massive training
• A strong integration with Talkdesk
• Implementation support that felt like partnership, not just onboarding

Getting company-wide buy-in was the easiest part. "The nice thing about being in a growing tech company is there's appetite for tech solutions, especially when they'll save money," Dan explained.

The launch: Implementation in weeks, not years

"In one word: great," Dan said about the implementation experience. Having been through workforce management implementations before, he knew they could be painful. "I've seen implementations at other companies take up to two years. Most of our actual work was done in a month."

The difference came down to the system being intuitive and the implementation team being genuinely helpful. "We didn't need to go over the same features multiple times because everything just made sense," Dan explained. "And the implementation team was there to answer questions every step of the way."

What impressed Dan most was that there weren't any surprises after go-live. "Usually with software rollouts, you discover features you didn't know about or things that don't work the way you expected. With Assembled, the implementation team had covered everything so thoroughly that we didn't run into those issues."

Day one: Crystal-clear visibility

The most immediate transformation came from Assembled's staffing timeline. For the first time, Dan could start each day with complete visibility into what was ahead.

“The best part for me was opening the staffing timeline first thing in the morning and seeing right away if we were in the green or the red,” Dan said. “It meant I could finally stay ahead of problems instead of realizing days later that we’d already missed service levels.”

This visibility unlocked true workforce management so Dan could move agents between channels based on actual demand, address staffing gaps in the moment, and plan overtime strategically.

Onward: The next generation of business processes

With reliable data as the foundation, NEXT Insurance built new processes that elevated workforce management from tactical to strategic.

NEXT Day Preview

Each afternoon, the team publishes a snapshot of tomorrow's staffing outlook, named the NEXT Day Preview. Team leads and leadership get advanced notice of potential challenges, which means agents get stability through predictable schedules, supervisors can plan ahead for overtime, and everyone stays aligned instead of operating in silos.

Strategic forecast presentations

Dan helped elevate NEXT’s monthly forecast review from a basic finance meeting into a comprehensive strategic session. Using Assembled's forecast views, he presents directly from the platform to leadership, covering forecast accuracy, volume trends, and hiring recommendations.

"Assembled does such a good job illustrating the data that I've given up on exporting to Excel and making my own version," Dan noted. "I just screenshare right out of Assembled."

With all decision makers in the room, recommendations get turned into action immediately — whether that's hiring plans, resource allocation, or operational changes.

The results: $957K in savings and counting

The business impact was substantial and measurable for the team at NEXT.

Through improved schedule adherence alone, NEXT Insurance has already saved $957K. Adherence jumped from 68% to 85% — a 17-point increase that translated directly to operational efficiency.

"We had no way to measure adherence before Assembled," Dan explained. "Agents knew it wasn't being measured, so they essentially made their own schedules. Once we could measure and provide gentle coaching, the improvement was immediate."

Now that the team has complete visibility, they can track all the metrics that matter to them, including forecast accuracy for strategic planning, handle time trends to spot training needs, and schedule utilization to prevent agent burnout.

Despite implementing stricter adherence monitoring, NEXT Insurance has also maintained its impressively low attrition rates — well below contact center industry averages. The key was focusing on coaching rather than punishment, and agents continue to appreciate the transparency and predictability.

The partnership: Going beyond the platform

What stood out for the team was Assembled's ongoing support after implementation. Unlike vendors who disappear once the contract is signed, Assembled maintains active engagement through dedicated Slack channels and responsive support.

Dan shared his favorite example of this partnership in action: NEXT Insurance came to Assembled with a specific operational challenge that wasn't part of its standard platform. One of Assembled’s support engineers offered to write a custom script to solve it.

"That blew me away," Dan said. "I would have been fine if they'd politely said it wasn't their problem, but instead they went above and beyond and solved it."

What's next: Workforce management as a growth lever

The transformation from spreadsheet-based reactive management to strategic, data-driven workforce optimization shows how the right tools can elevate an entire function. For NEXT Insurance, workforce management isn't just about managing costs anymore — it's about enabling growth, ensuring quality, and supporting both agents and customers.

What was once reactive is now proactive, giving the company a new edge. "We went from limited ability to plan or measure to having complete visibility and being able to make strategic decisions based on real data," Dan reflected. "It's transformed not just how we work, but how NEXT as a whole thinks about workforce management."

About NEXT Insurance

NEXT Insurance is a leading digital insurer transforming small business insurance with simple, digital coverage tailored to entrepreneurs.

NEXT utilizes AI and machine learning to simplify the purchasing process for coverage with 24/7 access to servicing, including Certificates of Insurance, additional insured, and more. 

After years of close partnership with Munich Re, NEXT was acquired in 2025 to become a part of their ERGO Group global insurance network. Together, they are making small business insurance simpler and smarter to help more small businesses thrive. 

For more information, visit NEXTInsurance.com. Stay up to date on the latest with NEXT on LinkedIn, Facebook and their blog.

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