Agents Add Value with Customer Self-Service

From the consumer’s perspective, the insurance industry often seems schizophrenic about service. Who do you contact for help on routine billing or policy matters? The agent? The carrier? Either one?

Depending on the inquiry, the response often could be handled by either the agency or the company. If the customer calls the agency, it often can take several phone calls to the carrier to resolve simple matters. Attempting to smooth out this situation, carriers have introduced customer service centers for personal and small-commercial lines, with mixed results. For some of these service-center accounts, agents have dual workflows.

Again, we have succeeded in confusing the consumer.

It’s a positive trend that carriers can offer customers, for example, billing history and claims status data online. Remember, though, that carriers can provide information only for their own policies. Who is going to be able to provide the insured with a consolidated view of their insurance portfolio? It should be the agency. They’re the initial point of contact for most consumers. So we as an industry need to put into place services and processes that make that a reality.

Are agents ready for this? They should understand keenly where this is all headed. Service isn’t what it used to be. In the consumer’s mind, “value” is less defined as routine policy matters. Look at how we bank, buy gas, and shop at the grocery store: we check out ourselves. While routine issues (policy inquiry, certificates, e.g.) can be “turned over” to the customer, the agency can focus on building relationships, consultative cross-selling, claims handholding and growing the book.

Today’s technology, too, increasingly will allow the agency to have a de-facto customer service center in-house (off the Web site). That’s valuable, since most consumers have their coverage with multiple companies. Data standards, privacy and secure connections help make that happen.

The industry has been working feverishly in this area of customer service. The progress is captured in a new report from the Agents Council for Technology, called “The Real-Time Revolution: Redefining How We Work.” The report covers paradigms under which agents and carriers have grown accustomed to working. For instance, one traditional paradigm is “All data needs to reside at the agency as well as the carrier.” But the new paradigm is that, “Data can reside anywhere it is accessible—provided there is a commitment that it will be accessible in the future when needed.”

Now, no matter where the data is, customers ought to be able to access it through their local agent or broker. Here are some of the online self-service options offered by one agency:
• Review or make changes to personal or company information;
• Review current insurance coverages;
• Replace, edit, remove or add a driver, vehicle or equipment on the policy;
• Request a motor vehicle report;
• Request an insurance certificate;
• Change or add a certificate holder, additional named insured or loss payee;
• Request an insurance form;
• Report an accident or claim;
• Ask a question;
• Get an insurance quote;
• Ask about employee benefits options;
• Ask about financial services.

As many as 60 percent of customer calls to an agency are related to billing. Providing online access can help offload that activity. If customers can access their billing histories in real time, many of those calls could be eliminated, freeing up staff hours. But even if they still call the agency, with real-time access to carrier data from the CSR’s workstation, the time needed to handle a billing inquiry is one-tenth of that required to handle it with a phone call. Now the agency can spend more time in consultative selling, paying attention to their customers’ future needs and portfolios, managing risk, improving claims service and really working at client relationships. The agency can target clients with appropriate products rather than just taking orders and processing. Errors are reduced as well.

The beauty of online service also means customers can access the agency or carrier Web site 24/7. Agents who are breaking new ground here report plenty of activity on their Web sites after 7 p.m. Customers are busy; they often need to handle these things after work hours.

Getting back to the insurance company side, “being ‘easy to do business with’ is becoming increasingly important for carriers distributing through independent agents, who live in a multiple-carrier environment,” according to the ACT report.

“Just as with consumers, the expectations of independent agents are rapidly changing as they increasingly experience the efficiencies of the real-time world. Once again, building real-time functionality (that can be accessed through agency management systems) positions the carrier as a competitive player over the long-term.”

Real-time capability eliminates carrier headcount in several areas, the ACT report says. “Billing, claims and policy inquiries are handled automatically; carrier staff can now focus on handling more complicated agency issues. Carrier staff do not need to process agency submissions or endorsements. Once again these are handled automatically, and the carrier staff can focus on the risks requiring individual underwriting. Real-time eliminates the risks being handed off to several people, each creating the possibility of errors which then must be followed up upon and corrected. Instead, the risk is handled correctly the first time, by the party closest to the risk—the agent. Carriers are saving paper and postage costs by providing agents with electronic access to their policy information, rather than mailing it to them.”

In any industry, a service standard today is anytime, anywhere and anyway meeting the needs of the consumer. And a component of that must be self-service—backing up that is real-time communications, databases that can talk with each other and electronic data standards. Ultimately, it may not matter who the consumer contacts—agent or company—to access basic information. But agencies need to be better equipped and using today’s technology for customer service—today’s brand of customer service.

Carolyn “Cal” Durland, (cdurland@acord.org) is manager of Member Relations for ACORD. Based in New York, ACORD is a global, nonprofit insurance association whose mission is to facilitate the development and use of standards for the insurance, reinsurance and related financial services industries. For more information, visit www.acord.org.