Customer care today is a whole new ballgame. In fact, customers control the ball now. They have better access to more information, and that results in new desires and very specific needs.

Customers today are telling the power companies they want to be billed the way the phone company bills them. They're demanding salads in fast-food burger restaurants. If they get an upgrade when they travel by plane, they expect the railroad to offer a similar program.

In other words, not only do customers want you to do your job well, they also want your organization to perform what everyone else does well.  

To stay on top of the game, recognize this change and meet customers where they want. And that means keeping a lot of balls in the air.

Here's how it works. A customer searches for a policy from her phone and visits your mobile website. She has a question, so she calls your company for more details. Your customer service representative is instantly able to relate her online session to the phone call and answer her question.  

So the customer decides that she's going to walk to your nearby branch office to complete the transaction. By the time she gets there, the office has printed out a hard copy of the policy for her to review and an agent is ready to answer any additional questions and accept her payment.

You closed the deal because you made yourself available in all the places your customers look for you, and all those places are connected and able to communicate with each other in real time. 

How do you achieve this? As I've often said, data are the lifeblood of our industry.  Anticipating customer needs means mining and interpreting that data in as many ways as possible. Consistent data mean you can identify customers the same way in every interaction. ACORD standards are one tool that can help you achieve that consistency. You can open a dialogue on the web, continue it on the phone and finish it in person.

Bottom line: You'll engage customers on their terms today and be ready for whatever they might demand tomorrow. The customer experience is critical today and to compete, you need to be where the customers are—now and in the future.

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