Companies address issues in an either/or fashion, says Chris Selland, vice president, sell-side research for the consultancy Aberdeen Group. Either the company puts people on all the [requests], which is usually a waste of resources for the 80 percent of requests that are simple to solve, or the company sends [all customers] to serve themselves, which is frustrating for the 20 percent [of customers] who have more complicated problems. The real goal is to blend self-service. If you try to push everybody to self-service, you usually wind up frustrating customers.

Bob DalSanto, vice president of e-business for Western & Southern Financial group, says his company has long believed the Web is important in delivering service. The Web really has helped us with one of our key strategies as a companywere looking to serve our customers anywhere, any way, and any time, he says. We need to serve the customers when they are looking to be served. The old kind of insurance company service hours are not appropriate for what our insurance clients are looking for in 2004 and 2005. Western & Southern has tried to leverage its customers ability to do the same number and type of transactions online they would perform if they were to call the contact center and talk to the insurers customer service reps. Everything is customer focused, says DalSanto. We try to build the services the customers use the most. Thats what drives a lot of our development.

Doing It Right

To do it right, though, insurance carriers have to ask themselves a simple question: Who is your customer? Is it the policyholder or the agent? Depending on the answer to that question, you will find different ways of approaching the self-service question. Many insurers want to provide self-service to customers, Cynthia Saccocia, a senior analyst in the insurance practice at Tower-Group, believes, but there remain some strategic questions to be answered as to what services [the carrier] wants to provide in the self-service environment. Some still are getting push back from insurance agents who state, We dont want you providing as much service to the customer, for fear they are going to lose control of that customer, she says. There still is some strategic work that needs to be done that keeps the agentsparticularly in the P&C marketat the center of that relationship with the policyholder, keeping them informed of any self-service activities. Certainly, the benefits gained by giving clients the capability to submit information to the insurance company and for those clients to transact some business on their own indicate a direction in which the industry needs to be heading.

On the Other Hand

Sharon Marburger, director of internal operations at Penn National Insurance, doesnt necessarily agree, though. Our primary customers are our independent agents, she says. If we are going to do something [on the corporate Web site], our first question is not, What does it do to our internal efficiencies? It is more, What functionality and service does it provide to our agents? Weve already made decisions that if [a project] improves only our internal efficiencies, we may not pursue it because our primary focus needs to be what we can do for our agents. We would rather sacrifice internally than have our [agents] sacrifice something they need. Our primary driver is not always internal efficiencies.

As an example, Marburger reports Penn National is working on a project it hopes to kick off next year. There are four [issues] we need to solve, and one of those is internal efficiencies, but that came down fourth on the list of priorities, she says.

Agents may worry too much about falling out of the loop between the carrier and the policyholder, Saccocia believes. That is the feedback I received from a vendor that was working with an insurance company on some self-service activity, she says. I was a little surprised and frustrated to hear that. Quite frankly, agents should be focused solely on selling, and any time the insurance company can provide them with additional tools for service, that is a real benefit for [the agents]. It is important, however, for the insurance company to send alerts or notifications to those active agentsthose still working with the customer the carrier is transacting business withbut I dont think its imperative.

Issues Ignored

There are many aspects to self-service businesses have ignored. The general supply of information is one of them, according to Selland. An area of self-service that is drawing more attention, he notes, is the use of the search engine on the corporate Web site.

One of the past requirements [to service] has been we structure our knowledge, he says. We had to put the answers to the questions in a structure so people knew where to look for them, and we had to make sure we answered the questions consistently. But as search engines became more powerful, all you had to do for customers was put up a box that says, How can we help you? Theyll search for the answer, and if they dont find the answer, theyll want to speak to a live person. For most simple inquiries, Selland believes, the search engine can be enough. Search is evolving, in the long term, as probably the most important tool for self-service, he asserts. The more powerful the search engine, the less structure you need. There are a lot of good search engines out there.

Do What You Want

Many financial services institutions are creating an online environment, Saccocia reports, where customers can do almost anything they want by themselves. She cites examples such as making a policy change, a transfer of funds in the case of investment-oriented insurance such as annuities, beneficiary changes, and address changes. Insurers need to look at the breadth of transactions customers actually can do in any given policywhether its P&C or life and annuityand give them full access to execute many of those transactions, she says. You can provide cross-selling activities based on the customers demographics or what the customer is doing at the time. If [the policyholders] are online in a particular path through the Web site, the insurers can have rules engines behind that [path] that will have pop-ups to provide some guidance or some options as to other products a client might consider. Carriers can ask whether customers want to update their profile, and customers can provide additional information about themselves, such as what types of products they own. Saccocia notes information can be shared with an agent for cross-selling activity. At some point, [the carriers] need to provide [the policyholders] access to support. If thats provided online, you can have interactive online conversations as opposed to forcing a customer to pick up a phone and call a call center, she says.

Primary Customers

Penn National offers its primary customersindependent agentsaccess to more information than it provides its policyholders. An example of this is the policy declaration pages. We put those on the Web for our agents to see any of their customers they have with us. But the insureds cant see those pages, says Marburger. This service also could be given to the policyholders, but Marburger adds Penns independent agents dont want the information readily available online. The agents say they want the insured to call them because not only are they the agents but they can take the opportunity to check on the account and possibly sell additional coverages, she explains. The agents do want services online, such as a payment process, which are more clerical in nature, according to Marburger. They want us to push that out to the insureds and let the insureds do that themselves and take the agents out of the picture, she says. Policyholders can make their payments online, see the status of their account, and get a good feel of what their payment history has been. They can make simple change requestssuch as replacing insurance cardsor change a mailing address. Penn National may get 100 such online requests a month on those simple changes, reports Marburger. The bulk of service requests, though, come through the agents. The policyholders choose to go to an independent agent. They want to talk to an agent, so they go to them for those things, she says.

Penns objective is to keep policyholders doing things through the agent because the carrier wants its agents involved. [The agents] are the front line, states Marburger. They talk to customers and get to know them. In my opinion, I think insurance is too complex for consumers to get comfortable doing on their own. It is complex, and people choose not to learn it because it is not interesting. They want to go to someone who will tell them what they need to do. There are simple things they will do onlinelike make their paymentsbut other than that, I dont think [self-service] ever will take off.

Free Time

Western & Southerns self-service efforts are designed to free up more time for its agents to be selling financial services and meeting needs of their clients. We dont think it is the best use of [agents] time to be doing beneficiary changes or some other things, says DalSanto. Plus, for many customers, it comes down to the fact a lot of them expect to be serviced when they want to be serviced. Weve really extended our customer service hours with people. Consumers are expecting to be able to call their financial services companies later and later at night, so were providing more services to those customers at night. He believes Western & Southern has a strong Web team. Some of the things were doing are having a real impact on our placement rates as a company, which is good from an agents standpoint, a companys standpoint, and a consumers standpoint, he says. If we can use these technologies to place policies seven days earlier than they used to be placed, thats a benefit to a lot of people.

Service Link

Selland recommends carriers put some type of customer service link or a search box right on the home page, if not every page. Sometimes [companies] wall off [customer service] as a separate area, and [customers] have to dig to find the customer service area to ask a question, he says. Putting it right out front can be very helpful. If people cant find the answer and they want a live answer from a live personwhether its e-mail, a chat, or a phone callyou want to make that process smooth.

Too many companies structure their Web site by product line, he asserts. Insurers and financial institutions, in general, tend to do this, says Selland. Thats frustrating for customers. You want to structure your customer service operations by how the customer wants to do business with you, not by how your business is set up, which often is by product line.

He also believes better search tools are coming. The technology has been played around with for a while. Customer acceptance is what drives it, he points out. In the end, its not about doing more complicated and cool things, its about doing simple things well. The important thing is for companies to be easy to do business with and easy [in providing] answers. Usually when people contact you for service, they want to be done as quickly as they can. Thats why they go to self-service in the first place. They want to get on and get offget their answer and go on with their lives. The more you try to wrap them up in Flash, pretty UIs, and lots of impressive graphics and music[increasing] the time it takes them to find somethingthe less likely they are going to come back.

Tech Guide: Customer Service

Afni Insurance Services
Bloomington, Ill.
309-828-5226
www.afniinc.com

AIG Technologies
Livingston, N.J.
800-788-0144
www.aigtechnologies.com

Alterian
Chicago, Ill.
312-704-1700
www.alterian.com

Amdocs
San Jose, Calif.
408-965-7000
www.amdocs.com

AMS Services, Inc.
Windsor, Conn.
800-444-4813
www.ams-services.com

Aspect Communications
San Jose, Calif.
408-325-2200
www.htmect.com

Avaya, Inc.
Basking Ridge, N.J.
866-462-8292
www.avaya.com

Avolent
San Francisco, Calif.
800-553-5505
www.avolent.com

Benefits Technology Group
Hopedale, Mass.
866-315-7100
www.bentechusa.com

Best Software
Scottsdale, Ariz.
480-368-3700
www.saleslogix.com

Bristol Consulting Group
St. Louis, Mo.
314-743-1447
www.bristolcg.com

Captiva Systems, Inc.
Miami, Fla.
800-274-8300
www.captivasystems.com

CGI
Andover, Mass.
952-542-2145
www.cgi.com

CSC Financial Services
Austin, Tex.
800-345-7672
www.csc-fs.com

Diagenix Corporation
Norwell, Mass.
781-871-6624
www.diagenix.com

Duck Creek Technologies
Bolivar, Mo.
866-382-5832
www.duckcreektech.com

DWL
Atlanta, Ga.
770-325-4000
www.dwl.com

eAgency Systems
Newport Beach, Calif.
949-253-9131
www.eagency.com

eAssist Global Solutions
San Diego, Calif.
858-458-4188
www.eassist.com

EchoMail, Inc.
Cambridge, Mass.
617-354-8585
www.echomail.com

EDS
Plano, Tex.
972-604-6000
www.eds.com

Envoy WorldWide
Bedford, Mass.
781-482-2100
www.envoyworldwide.com

E.piphany
San Mateo, Calif.
650-578-7200
www.epiphany.com

Everture International Research
Berlin, Germany
+49 30 61202 873
www.everture.com

Exstream Software
Lexington, Ky.
859-296-0600
www.exstream.com

E-Z Data
Pasadena, Calif.
626-585-3505
www.ez-data.com

FileNET Corporation
Costa Mesa, Calif.
704-875-1934
www.filenet.com

Fineos
South Portland, Maine
207-879-0400
www.fineos.com

Firepond, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minn.
925-229-2300
www.firepond.com

Firstlogic
La Crosse, Wis.
608-782-5000
www.firstlogic.com

Fiserv Customer
Contact Solutions
Brookfield, Wis.
262-879-5000
www.fiserv.com

FMR Systems, Inc.
Palatine, Ill.
847-934-5566
www.fmr-systems.com

FrontRange Solutions
Colorado Springs, Colo.
800-776-7889
www.frontrange.com

Fulcrum InteTech
Napa, Calif.
707-224-7700
www.fulcrumit.com

Genelco Software Solutions
St. Louis, Mo.
800-983-8114
www.genelco.com

InterlinkONE, Inc.
Wilmington, Mass.
978-694-9992
www.interlinkone.com

Konexx
San Diego, Calif.
800-275-6354
www.konexx.com

LOMA
Atlanta, Ga.
770-951-1770
www.loma.org

London Bridge Group
Norcross, Ga.
770-810-8000
www.london-bridge.com

MarketSoft
Lexington, Mass.
781-674-0000
www.marketsoft.com

Mobitor Corporation
San Ramon, Calif.
925-552-8230
www.mobitor.com

Motion Computing
Austin, Tex.
512-637-1100
www.motioncomputing.com

NaviSys
Edison, N.J.
800-775-3592
www.navisys.com

Oaktree Systems
Calverton, N.Y.
631-369-0094
www.oaktreesys.com

onClick Corporation
Houston, Tex.
866-722-5425
www.onclickcorp.com

OneShield, Inc.
Woburn, Mass.
888-663-2565
www.oneshield.com

Pegasystems
Cambridge, Mass.
617-374-9600
www.pegasystems.com

PeopleSoft
Pleasanton, Calif.
800-380-7638
www.peoplesoft.com

Pragmatech Software, Inc.
Amherst, N.H.
800-401-9580
www.pragmatech.com

Robert E. Nolan Company
Allas, Tex.
972-248-3727
www.renolan.com

Roots Infocomm Limited
Punjab, India
www.rootssoft.com

S1 Corporation
Atlanta, Ga.
404-923-7637
www.s1.com

SAS Institute, Inc.
Cary, N.C.
919-677-8000
www.sas.com

Search Software America
Old Greenwich, Conn.
203-698-2399
www.searchsoftware.com

Siebel Systems
San Mateo, Calif.
650-389-1128
www.siebel.com

Skywire Software
Frisco, Tex.
972-377-1110
www.skywiresoftware.com

Steel Card, LLC
Santa Barbara, Calif.
800-553-9961
www.steelcard.com

Sun Microsystems
Santa Clara, Calif.
650-786-0662
www.sun.com

Teradata
Dayton, Ohio
937-445-5000
www.teradata.com

Terrace
Oakland, Calif.
510-836-3400
www.terrace.com

TIA Technology A/S
Denmark
+45 7022 7620
www.tia.dk

Tri Plus Technologies
Norcross, Ga.
770-817-9090
www.triplus.com

Touchstone Corporation
Costa Mesa, Calif.
714-755-2810
www.wintouch.com

Value One, LLC
Morrisville, N.C.
919-321-6146
www.e11online.com

Witness Systems
Roswell, Ga.
770-754-1900
www.witness.com

XDimensional Technologies
Brea, Calif.
800-789-2567
www.xdti.com

Xerox Global Services
Rochester, N.Y.
716-264-6550
www.xerox.com