When insurers consider the connection between technology and branding, they often think first of the Web. Since it's both visual and interactive, it's the most natural extension of traditional brand-building media.

"Your Web site isn't an interesting sideline; it's part and parcel of customers' expectations, regardless of what business you're in. If I buy a top-of-the-line car, when I go to the car company's Web site, I expect a top-of-the-line site. Likewise, because we target high-worth customers, they expect a high-value experience on the Chubb site," says Steve Yacik, vice president and e-business manager for Chubb personal insurance.

The Web has two key roles when it comes to building a brand: communicating the brand promise and delivering value in support of that promise. "Companies must infuse their brand image into online communications and make sure they support customer goals through Web content and function. You can neither bore people into liking your brand nor frustrate and annoy them into liking your brand," Manning says.

Consider that a carrier wants to be perceived as innovative and responsive. "If the [Web site] functionality is vintage 1997, with lots of form fields and server fetches, that will not strike [customers] as innovative, which contradicts one of your brand attributes–so congratulations, you just hurt your brand," states Manning.

However, the Web isn't the end of the technology/brand connection, even for direct writers. The brand experience should be the same among all the various customer-support systems and channels of service a company offers. It also should be consistent for the three key constituencies an insurer serves: customers, agents and distributors, and employees.

THE CUSTOMER: CONVENIENCE AND CONFIDENCE

"Insurance is nothing more than a business of promises. Anything insurers can do to fulfill that promise will enhance that brand," asserts David West, research area director who leads TowerGroup's insurance practice.

How insurers leverage technology to fulfill those promises varies. For instance, a P&C carrier might focus on online self-service, ease of delivery of information to the customer, or field claims technology. "In P&C, confidence is heavily affected by your ability to pay claims. You have to resolve them quickly, efficiently, and equitably by using technology to build straight-through processing to service the customer more effectively than others," West says.

That can boost the brand in ways no amount of advertising can buy. "When customers go to the cocktail party the weekend after they had the claim, they tell good stories about the claim," adds West.

In life insurance, the focus differs. "[Life insurers'] brand promise is around rich analyses, careful planning, and in-depth personal relationships. Making appropriate offers is the first step. It shows customers you know what their needs are. With the use of data warehouses and predictive modeling, insurers can better understand what motivates customers. It's a very different kind of technology investment, but it still supports the brand," West says.

But regardless of vertical, customers share a common expectation about the brand experience. "While we would love to be coddled, we primarily want to be treated with courtesy and respect. When companies treat us like they don't know us or they don't value our time, it's an annoyance," points out Bruce Maynard, senior assistant vice president at Amica.

Amica, ranked five years in a row as the highest in customer satisfaction among national homeowners insurers by J.D. Power and Associates, has a brand reputation to protect. "Your brand isn't just what you say it is; it's in large part what the consuming public says it is," explains Maynard. "The brand we've created has been developed over the last 100 years through word of mouth and interaction with customers because we've only recently become engaged in advertising. [The Amica brand] is a caring, consultative approach to business where we treat you like we would want to be treated."

That philosophy guides Amica's technology strategy. "The customer experience is priority number one," Maynard says. "Some companies say their number-one priority for technology is reducing expenses. That's a mistake."

Since the majority of Amica's business is conducted between customers and its call center representatives, the company uses technology to provide a seamless call center experience. Amica's IVR routes customers to where they need to go, such as underwriting or claims. All service reps have access to a Siebel-based front end that provides a consolidated view of customer information and is the launch point into back-end administration systems.

"The information isn't siloed," Maynard notes. "Whether you're dealing with someone in California, Indiana, or Texas, those customer service people all have access to the same information in systems they can navigate easily. They also can record and document key decisions, often in preformatted manners. If a customer calls back the next day and talks to a different rep, that person can pick up right where the other person left off. That's important because customers give you some time to get up to speed but not a lot. They don't appreciate those 'silent holes' that happen when reps are dealing with a back-end system rather than the customer."

That type of quick, seamless service supported by technology is important to branding, says West. "Carriers have to have a call center system so every customer touch point has a consistent look and feel and whoever is responding is able to pull up my account and all the products I have with the company. You're not going to do that if someone has to flip between different screens. If you write multiple lines of business, you also have to be able to household data so the life side knows what the P&C side has and vice versa," he advises.

Although what Maynard calls "old-fashioned values" are essential to Amica's brand, modern technology is a reality. Its Web site offers expected functionality, such as online policy application and claims reporting, augmented by instant messaging that customers can use if they get stuck on the site.

The company is looking to enhance customers' Web experience. "We tend to have three groups of customers coming to us. One is self-directed, one is open to guidance, and one needs guidance. We have to create 'forks in the road' that offer different paths. If we force everyone down the same path, it won't be right for two-thirds of them," Maynard says. "We want to give customers the same consultative experience they have on the phone."

The initiative, which Maynard indicates will be a "major, multiple-year" project, will enable customers to identify which group they feel part of and then will dynamically modify the Web experience based on their ongoing actions. "How we train our reps to provide service over the phone will be the blueprint for how it is done online. On the phone, reps get a sense of your needs and modify their approach accordingly," Maynard explains.

Amica also is in the process of implementing a new claims system from Guidewire to replace the homegrown system it currently uses, which will enable fully electronic claims management. In addition, it plans to replace the Siebel platform with a simplified customer management application the company now is developing in-house.

AGENTS: MAKING IT EASY

How your technology treats your customers affects how your agents or distributors view your brand, contends West. "If your brand loses value to customers because you're not servicing customers appropriately, your brand also will lose value to agents and you will lose business," he remarks.

"The Chubb brand is about quality coverage and effective service, so what's required from our technology is to provide a seamless consistent approach, regardless of how the customer contacts us," Yacik says. "That manifests itself in the consistent look and feel of policy documents, the experience customers have when a Chubb appraiser or claims adjuster interacts with them, or the online services either they or their agent can tap into."

In the case of Chubb's personal lines business, how that brand manifests itself via technology is influenced by the high-worth market it targets. "Back when we first developed our Web site, we began by looking at other insurers. But then we realized it made more sense to look outside our industry to other businesses that targeted a similar type of customer and had similar branding approaches; companies such as Tiffany and Lexus," Yacik says.

That led to features targeted specifically to the affluent consumer as well as different tiers of Web site functionality. "For VIP and 'signature level' customers, we make available to them a portion of our Web site with additional functionality and online services that are exclusive, such as guidance about personal security, international travel services, and collections management," Yacik explains.

Of course, it's also important to agents how well technology supports them. Although it's a well-worn phrase, "ease of doing business" is the measure by which agents judge carriers' technology.

"For the independent agent, it's about rich agent portals, integration with agency management systems, transparency in the underwriting process, accuracy in billing, not accidentally nonrenewing people because bills get messed up, almost everything insurers do," Josefowicz says. "Insurers' brand promise to agents has to do with rapid processing of new cases, handling claims effectively, being responsive to any service inquiries. And all those are driven by technology one way or another."

Yacik says for Chubb's personal lines agents, it's about easier, seamless e-business. He illustrates that point with the carrier's recently deployed enhancements to its Masterpiece policy processing platform, available to agents via the company's agency portal and through bridges to AMS Services' TransactNOW and IVANS Transformation Station. Improvements to the system targeted the time required to make common policy changes, the ability to quote multiple coverage options and promote cross-sell and up-sell, and the way in which information was logically organized for agents.

"From a new-function standpoint, the clearest example is 'My Alerts,'" Yacik says. "It allows agents to get automatic notification when a policy document has generated for their agency, in lieu of receiving paper policy documents. Other companies provide online documents, but the onus is on the agent to find them rather than with our approach, which lets agents know they've been generated."

Many Chubb agents choose to make chubb.com their default work space, with the site receiving more than one million agent visits in each of the last three years. "The use of TransactNOW and Transformation Station is considerably less. If agents have a large book of business with Chubb, at the beginning of the day they will log on to the site and it's just as efficient, if not more so," Yacik reports.

Chubb believes in the importance of expanding the capabilities of its existing bridges to agency systems. "In terms of cross-selling, the bridging piece is particularly relevant. Let's say we're the incumbent on the homeowners side but not the auto. In that case, having a bridge rather than a portal makes it easier for the agent to move the auto portion to Chubb and round out the account," explains Yacik.

EMPLOYEES: BUSINESS BRAND MEETS CORPORATE CULTURE

A company's public brand image affects how people view it as a potential employer. "When we talk about [Nationwide's] 'On Your Side' brand, it's not just focused on people coming to us as applicants or customers, it's about how we provide that brand promise to all our stakeholders, including employees," says Rocky Parker, assistant vice president of talent acquisition at Nationwide.

To give potential employees a better idea of Nationwide's corporate culture, the company rolled out a 360-degree virtual tour in April 2007, akin to the walkthroughs more commonly found on real estate and travel Web sites. The Flash-based application, which also can be burned to a DVD for on-the-road use by Nationwide's recruiting staff, was created for the insurer by Quantum Tour, a division of A&G Productions.

Nationwide's tour includes embedded video and audio. Click on the receptionist for a welcome greeting. Sit in on a job interview. Or visit the on-site Jazzman's Caf?, where you can watch television and hear people speaking in different languages.

"Each year, about 150,000 people apply online at Nationwide, and most don't have the ability to come into our world headquarters in Columbus. This is a way to give them a better sense of what the energy is like here and to see the personal side of the company, which really comes across in a genuine way," Parker says.

With the system in place since spring, the impact thus far has been anecdotal. "We've gotten great feedback from people who have taken the tour," says Stephanie Pino, production coordinator at Nationwide. "They say it's influenced their decision to apply to Nationwide, and when they do visit headquarters for the first time, they say they feel as if they've been here before because it's such a realistic view of what they're going to experience."

Nationwide also hopes the tour creates another link between the employee and customer brand. "We can't hire everyone who applies, but we can try to turn everyone who takes the tour into a customer because of being able to see the company in a positive way," Parker says.

In addition, the insurer is piloting another feature on its Web site that will give recruits a virtual job preview. "Clicking on a workstation would enable you to see a 'day in the life' of somebody in the sales or service worlds or in some of the other areas where we do a significant amount of new hiring," Parker says. "Therefore, you'd get a sense not only of the culture and the brand and the building from the 360-degree tour but also a deeper dive into what a job might feel like."

Just as a company's self-service technology must be supported by back-office technology to present an effective brand, high-tech recruiting tools need to be backed by efficient systems employees use to do their jobs. "If you want to attract high performers, you need to have a brand promise as a [tech-savvy] employer," Josefowicz says. "That will become increasingly important with the next generation of employees. You can't hire college grads today and plop them in front of a green screen."

FROM TACTICAL TO STRATEGIC

Finally, there is an ancillary benefit to using technology for branding: It reinforces the importance of IT as part of business strategy. "The historical problem between IT and business is IT is seen as the 'gatekeeper.' IT owns the systems and data, business throws projects over the transom, and IT throws them back when they're done," West says.

Leveraging technology for branding enables IT to "keep its fingers on the pulse of the business and establish its importance to the business," says West. "Innovative companies are those where IT has a seat at the table and is an equal partner in any branding-related initiatives."