Smart carriers know that their agents and brokers are as much their customers as their actual policyholders. As your first (and sometimes only) point of contact with the world, you need to provide them with the tools to easily do business with you. Make the connection to your home office smooth, and youll be rewarded with more business and fewer complaints. Speed the connection to your agents and youll keep them happy and productive.
The Internet Age has ushered in a host of technologies that promise to do all those things. Extranets and virtual private networks provide high-speed, secure connections to the back-end systems agents need to process accounts.
Wireless devices and connections to back-end databases allow agents to work when and where they want, pulling information from your systems as they need it. Handheld and palmtop computersalong with lightweight laptopsallow agents to take your products with them anywhere.
The original vision of SEMCI may be dead (or it may not be, depending on who you ask), but technologies that do virtually the same thingor virtually do the same thing, as it wereare finding their way into more and more carriers and agents offices.
Straight-through and once-and-done processing streamline what was once a complex workflow, freeing agents to focus on customers (and potential customers) instead of their paperwork.
Web-based front ends reduce the learning curve for people on the outside, and give the people on the inside (thats you) more control over the applications they use. And by standardizing the software connections between those front ends and the various applications in the home officeusing COM/DCOM, CORBA, BizTalk, or Web services like .NETcarriers give themselves flexibility with their back ends.
All this is, of course, in a perfect world. In reality, carriers are forced to make choices, and those choices affect their agents and brokers. Helping you decide which choices to make are some sharp mindsGlenn Headley, CIO of Republic Insurance; Judy Johnson, vice president of insurance information strategies for the Meta Group; Dan Loranger, CIO of Safety Insurance; and Don West, vice president of client services for State National Insurance. Theyre all on the panel at TechDECs session, Customer Service and the Carrier-Agent Relationship: Things You Should Be Doing.
Dont miss the opportunity to hear and question some of the people on the leading edge of the new dynamic between carriers and agents.
Would you like to know more?
Customer Service and the Carrier-Agent Relationship: Things You Should Be Doing
Saturday, September 14
Go to www.tech-dec.com for information and registration.
TechDEC Fact
TechDECs speakers come exclusively from insurance carriers (like Allstate, CNA, Farmers, and the Hartford) and analysts (like Deloitte and Touche and Meta Group). But youll find plenty of vendors in the exhibit hall!
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