Customer experience

Business leaders at American National Insurance Co. checked under the sofa before sitting down to assemble the customer relationship management (CRM) jigsaw puzzle. Why? Because they wanted to make sure they had every piece.First, the business units of the Galveston, Texas-based ANICO defined their CRM vision as precisely as possible. Next, the company selected Pegasystems, a software provider they say has delivered the proper CRM technology for their specific needs. Third, the insurer formed a team of committed customer service employees who meet regularly to share knowledge and guide the CRM effort.

Speed is an important call center objective for American National Insurance Co. because "shaving a minute here or 30 seconds there makes a big difference in costs when you're running a call center," explains Gary Kirkham, vice president and director of planning and support for the Galveston, Texas-based insurer.Yet, flexibility is at the core of the steps that guide customer service representatives (CSRs) through conversations with callers. A key to managing call center conversations resides in workflow-helping the CSR pace the conservation and guide it in the desired direction.

Supporting its more than 12,000 exclusive agents is at the heart of Farmers Insurance Group's CRM initiatives. The centerpiece of this strategy is a branded program called Agency Dashboard, which enables agents to obtain ongoing insights on policyholders' needs.When Farmers agents log onto the secure intranet site, located at www.eagantfarmersinsurance.com, they must key in a user name and password and then are connected to a personalized Web portal that provides real-time data and policy activity of their entire book of business.

Many insurance e-business experts agree that establishing a single source of customer data is a key to making customer relationship management (CRM) succeed. A single source of data produces a unified customer view across the enterprise, in turn enabling insurers to generate a clear and concise profile of customers.Once established, insurers can confidently proceed to configure customer needs profiles, such as realizing specific and changing needs within a mutual fund portfolio. Using analytics, insurers can separate their customers into demographic "buckets" from which they can determine specific needs.

Weak carrier marketing is one reason agents have not flocked to real-time agency-carrier transactions, according to industry sources. "Only a handful of carriers have actually told their agencies these services are up and running," says one source who wishes to remain anonymous. "I get phone calls every day from agencies saying, 'A field rep was just at my office and he didn't know anything about this.'"Carriers haven't publicized their capabilities widely, in part, because they view them as a competitive advantage, says Rick Gilman, vice president for ACORD, Pearl River, N.Y. Although ACORD is making efforts to track carrier initiatives, a comprehensive list of all carriers and the types of real-time transactions they provide does not exist.

Outsouring isn't "news" to the insurance industry. Insurers have been using outsourcers for years for IT projects, such as application maintenance or development to help with legacy problems, small-scale business processes (such as using third-party administrators for claims processing or accounting) and out-tasking small parts but not an entire business process.However, the bulk of insurance outsourcing has tended to be within the IT outsourcing domain. Driven by aging legacy systems and limited resources (time, budget and staffing), insurers have turned to external services providers to help with a wide variety of IT initiatives, including infrastructure, networking, and application development and maintenance.

When GE Capital announced to the world that it had saved $400 million in 1999 by applying six sigma principles throughout its organization, Marla Friedman listened.Then, as senior vice president of operations at Allstate Financial, she shared this impressive news with her boss Tom Wilson, the firm's president at the time.

The term "insurance card" is often equated with health insurance coverage, but a small and growing legion of insurers are issuing plastic to policyholders for more than just a doctor visit.Property and casualty insurers are finding advantages in dispensing branded stored-value debit and credit cards to customers for bigger ticket claims, particularly catastrophic homeowners claims.

Insurance companies have a unique set of challenges to overcome in creating efficient operations. Because of increased competition, insurers are being forced to narrow their focus to the core competencies at which they excel. At the same time, carriers must offer greater product and service offerings and faster distribution to meet increasing customer demands.And, because service industries such as insurance are so dependent on information, the increasing digitization of data is forcing these companies to redefine how they operate. Therefore, to be successful-and to prosper-in this digital environment, organizations must reshape their business models.

Understanding how and when consumers want to receive financial advice is an important aspect in gaining the upper hand in the competitive field of financial planning.By implementing automated systems to expand advice delivery channels, life and annuity insurers can remain competitive with other financial services institutions.