Customer service

Despite many advances in agency automation over the last few years, insurance agents are frustrated with many aspects of the technology designed to make their lives easier. This is a conclusion of a survey conducted early this year by the ACORD User Groups Information Exchange (AUGIE).Nearly 9,000 agents and customer service representatives participated in the survey. And, according to the results, not only are agencies burdened by keeping their agency management systems updated, agents also are irritated by the chore of duplicate data entry and the costs and training issues associated dealing with carriers' proprietary systems.

Individuals who have experienced an auto accident or incurred damage to their vehicle often discover that the road to swift claims settlement is a bumpy, winding and volatile one.

Claims processing capabilities within the automobile insurance segment is not unlike a car itself-hitting on all cylinders is essential to ensure high performance.In 1999, Mayfield Village, Ohio-based Progressive Insurance Co. debuted TotalPro, a Web-based claims processing application that can be activated by both internal affiliates and Progressive policyholders.

Most insurance agents will admit that flood insurance isn't an easy sell. Property owners, both individual and commercial, are often aware that their policy covers fire damage, but most don't realize that it doesn't cover flood or mudslide damage.Rarely do these parties investigate the prospects of securing a flood insurance policy, which can cause disastrous ramifications because most floods don't qualify for federal disaster aid. Only floods declared national disasters by the president qualify for federal assistance, which comes in the form of a grant or a federal loan that must be paid back with interest.

Insurance industry executives are wrestling with the complexities of customer relationship management (CRM), trying to understand what it can mean for their organizations and how to proceed to adopt appropriate CRM solutions.

With the insurance industry, one moment of impact-whether it's two vans, two workers or two ships-can initiate a lengthy reporting trail weighed down by paper handling and delays. The first notice of loss, which carriers receive from agents by phone, fax, or Internet, starts the trail.

Mark Guthrie is flying high-personally and professionally. In April, he completed his first solo flight on a small airplane, and he was selected to replace Hussein Enan as CEO of InsWeb Corp., effective July 1, 2002.Transforming the Gold River, Calif.-based online insurance distributor into a profitable enterprise will require all the skill and determination Guthrie can muster.

When Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts embarked on its customer relationship management (CRM) initiative four years ago, the Boston-based health insurer could find no other healthcare organization to use as a benchmark.Today, insurers thinking about implementing CRM would do well to examine Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts as a model for what can be accomplished with a customer-focused business strategy supported by sophisticated CRM technology.

With 2.4 million members, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts has avoided the common errors of implementing customer relationship management (CRM).First and foremost, senior management decided in 1998 that the Boston-based company would adopt an enterprisewide, client-centric business strategy, which it calls Concierge Service Delivery.

The information technology initiative that Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp. and IBM Corp. announced in April is receiving its fair share of scrutiny within the insurance community due to several wide-ranging implications.

Insurers are discovering that strategic outsourcing ventures performed overseas can provide a great deal of mileage when it comes to capturing significant long-term efficiencies.Those that have launched offshore endeavors have found that establishing a presence outside the U.S. with information technology and business process outsourcing possesses a greater degree of leverage for a couple of reasons. From a labor standpoint, the cost of doing business outside the U.S. is far less expensive, and the savings can be passed along to the client.

The market for supplemental disability income insurance is relatively untapped. Indeed, more than 80% percent of U.S. workers either have no long-term disability coverage or coverage they feel is inadequate, according to a recent study from the Consumer Federation of America and the American Council of Life Insurers.And, a 1997 study by the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association (LIMRA) concludes that less than half of small-business employers (10 to 49 employees) offer any kind of disability income insurance to their workers.

Even though claims service provided by property/casualty insurance carriers represents a major factor in their ability to retain customers and attract new ones, insurers are not providing the level of service that is considered acceptable to corporate customers and consumers, two new studies conclude.Moreover, even well-capitalized carriers that possess the financial stability to support quality claims service appear to be dropping the ball.

While the downturn in the economy has slowed strategic IT spending across financial services, insurance companies that have committed to new customer relationship management (CRM) strategies have not slammed on the brakes. But they are proceeding with caution, according to Meridien Research Inc., Newton, Mass.In a report titled "Insurance Client-Centric Strategies: Reach for the Stars with Service," Meridien highlights insurers that have launched ambitious CRM projects, including an Australian P&C direct underwriter.

Insurance companies, banks and brokerage firms are actively competing for new business on each other's turf. But financial services convergence in a true sense is progressing at a tortoise-like pace: slow and cautious.When Citicorp acquired Travelers in 1998-forming Citigroup, one of the world's largest financial services institutions-many analysts hailed the union of the insurance and banking entities as the beginning of a revolution in the financial services industry.

Similar to many insurance providers, Omaha, Neb.-based Jefferson Pilot Benefit Partners knows that field sales representatives were assigned their title for a reason. The emphasis on "field" provides them license to network away from the home office as often as possible.The problem: The home office is where the heavy lifting is performed from a data processing standpoint. When field reps conduct business outside the office, they often devote an equal amount of time-or more-at headquarters to ensure data they collected in the field was properly captured and processed.

In the beginning, Corporate America created a concept known as full-service, and it was good. The epitome of full-service is gasoline marketing, where a service station attendant rolled out the red carpet to customers, who could expect to have their tank filled, windshield cleaned, oil and tires checked and the transaction processed-all without unbuckling their seat belts.

It's always been assumed that an insurance agency can find a way to provide adequate service to its existing customer policyholders while at the same time optimize its new-business opportunities.But most realize that it rarely works that way. Internal operational inefficiencies, marked by a paper-intensive communications process and antiquated data-exchange platforms, often undermines an agency's agility in generating new business.

Success in designing Web self-service capabilities does not subscribe to a "build it they will come" philosophy. The business sponsoring the Web site must first conduct diligent research to determine the specific blueprint of what Web features will be regularly accessed.BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina was one of the first health providers in the nation to offer its members, doctors, hospitals and other health care professionals a large array of self-service transactional capabilities with real-time access to mission-critical information.

Chris Mower didn't want to spend a lot of time-or money-building a Web portal for independent agents. But those restrictions didn't prevent him and Royal & Sun Alliance's Professional & Financial Risks Division from developing a comprehensive offering that is designed to develop new revenue streams, improve productivity by eliminating manual processes and help small-business clients understand management liability exposures."The business model, which we validated with customer feedback, was to create a way to distribute products through new channels without creating channel conflict," says Mower, manager of e-business solutions for Royal & Sun Alliance's ProFin division based in St. Louis. "It was about re-inventing existing processes and taking advantage of new technologies."