While there are many keys to being a successful fisherman, perhaps the most important is knowing where the fish are located. An angler can have the most attractive lure in the water, but if the fish aren't nearby to bite, he'll go home empty-handed. The same can be said for insurance companies.
Imagine that insurers are fishermen, the fish are the customers and the lures in their tackle box are the different distribution channels. If a carrier is consistently casting all of its effort and resources into a channel where customers used to reside, but in reality have relocated to other areas, they're going to lose those customers to another carrier that recognized the shift in the customer's behavior.
One insurer quick to pick up on customer migration patterns is Northbrook, Ill.-based Allstate Insurance Co. Historically known for selling the majority of its products through agency owners and exclusive agents, the company recognized the crucial need in 2006 to change its distribution strategy and present a single face to the customer, regardless of their channel choice. In order to do so, it needed to quickly innovate and deliver an attractive, efficient auto insurance self-service solution to the Web.
The resulting effort earned the company a third-place award in Insurance Networking News' 2009 INNovators Awards.
READYING THE TACKLE
After being challenged by the CEO to reinvent and bolster protection and retirement as a whole-including products and services-for consumers in 2007, Allstate's focus shifted to serve its customers the way they wanted to be served. Branded as the Consumer 2.0 growth initiative, Allstate started by expanding its customer call center, and also at this point, says Allstate Director Randy Patton, the company began to implement technology to meet this new goal. To this end, Allstate rolled out Quote 2-a new, interactive online quoting and binding system.
"It took 12 months to roll the first state out, and since then, we have added additional states using a phased-in approach," notes Patton. As of the end of 2008, Allstate had deployed the product in 16 states, completing its consumer interface nationwide by the end of 2009.
By utilizing the best of Web 2.0 tools and a service-oriented architecture, Allstate built its new quote and bind process on a Web services backbone that utilizes more than 14 services-consuming applications (quote, bind, territory, billing, payment, auto information, etc.), all of which represent the same services used by both the agency and call center. According to VP Patricia Coffey, fostering a "write once and reuse" philosophy not only enabled major cost savings, but also vastly improved the common user experience.
As part of the implementation, Allstate renovated its customer call center and focused on enhancements to its Spanish-speaking site. Streamlined to make it easier for customers, the site now minimizes the number of customer inquiries, notes Coffey. "By utilizing Web 2.0 technology," she says, "the user now has more control, and we've enhanced the experience so it goes much more quickly and is not as ambiguous as it once was."
ACTION AND ATTRACTION
One of the ways Allstate streamlined its new online system is by keeping data collection to a minimum. The system allows customers seeking a quote to do so anonymously, but the insurer also has refined the questions asked to improve the user experience.
For known customers, the capture of operator, vehicle and payment information is done so with the use of smart controls, such as date drop-down menus that consider valid values and intuitively do basic arithmetic. Data sliders now represent numeric values, and text boxes are programmed to auto-complete based on user input. By keeping the applicant's typing to a minimum, Allstate can expedite the process and enhance customer satisfaction. "We no longer have to ask 125,000 questions," Patton quips.
But customer enhancements weren't just centered on the usability of the Web site. Patton says they also integrated the site's functionality and features with the other traditional channels.
"Now, you can use our "Click to Chat" and "Click to Talk" features to automatically talk to an agent right from the online form, which directs the customer to a local agent," he says. "Or, if they so choose, the customers can guide themselves."
These features also are somewhat intuitive; a proactive chat option is available for customers who are struggling with a particular part of the application.
THE FIGHT
When undergoing a massive corporate culture shift between distribution ideologies, as Allstate did, there are bound to be impediments. Coffey says the biggest challenge facing them was the transition from a pure agency model to a truly integrated multi-channel approach.
"Many in the industry think it's either agency or direct," she says, "but it's really an integration of the two. That said, the question still remains: How do you integrate bricks and mortar?"
In Allstate's case, it meant a new, collaborative communication approach designed to empower both the direct channel and its agents with improved capabilities, shorter time-to-market and lower operational costs. Besides trying to get the company to think differently about its channel strategy, the other main obstacle, according to Patton, was figuring out how to use and integrate the new Web 2.0 capabilities.
"The new system left significant gaps in our traditional monitoring methods, as well as holes in our operational end in the short-term," he says. "Our standard tracking and monitoring tools also didn't work, so we had to work with vendors to remedy the problem."
CATCHING A KEEPER
Recognizing the imperative to expand its distribution offerings has reaped Allstate significant rewards. By building a solid foundation for expansion, the insurer has tripled monthly new business and purchase percentages, exceeding its business objectives. And in terms of human capital, the solution has allowed them to free up resources to focus on other strategic aspects of customer-facing Web applications, resulting in expenditures only being two-thirds of the projection.
In the end, Coffey says that by supplementing its online sales with stronger lead generation to its offline channels, they more than tripled their total enterprise sales results, and assisted other verticals in achieving their sales goals.
