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Innovation, Impact & ICTA – Part Three: Service DIY

In this, the last of the three-part blog series on the Insurance-Canada Technology Award (ICTA) finalists, we will look at a set of  finalists which showed achievement in outward delegation, also known as customer empowerment.

To recap: the 2012 ICTAs are intended to celebrate implementations of technology which show innovation and impact on business.  In two previous posts, we tried to look inside the jurors minds while they selected the nine finalists out of fifty excellent nominations.  In the first post, we saw patterns with three finalists which focused on inside improvements to yield  improvements to outside service and sales.  In the second, we found three organizations applying creativity to the long standing challenges of broker connectivity.

In this our last (but not least) effort, we see three organizations – two distributors, and one supplier –  which have successfully improved customer service, as well as their own bottom lines, by implementing initiatives to let the customer become, in effect, the customer service agent.  These organizations are:

  • AP Reid for ZipSure, a self described  “100% self-serve and 100% on-line insurance brokerage” which collected the attributes of a number of large apartment buildings in its target market, allowing its carriers to predetermine rates and criteria, and subsequently allowing qualified resident prospects to complete all application and subsequent service functions through the website.
  • Ingle International for the technology they use to develop and operate micro-sites used by school administrators and student customers of its student health and accident insurance.  While this concept is not new, Ingle’s implementation allowed  a highly customized product for each school, which includes variables such as:  logos/co-branding,  specific products and characteristics, custom claims forms, booklets, etc.
  • Allianz Global Assistance (formerly Mondial Assistance) for its implementation of an online customer claims portal.  The development was driven by a six-sigma project to reduce customer facing cycle time for claims.  The result of the carefully planned and implemented project exceeded projected goals by a substantial margin.

Common characteristics of each of these finalists was careful consideration of the market needs, planning to empower customers with technology to best serve their needs, and measurement throughout the process to ensure the customer service, customer satisfaction,   and business objectives were being achieved.

2012 Insurance-Canada.ca Technology ConferenceOur judges were clearly impressed for the first round of voting.  We will see whether any of these competitors impressed the judges enough to take away a coveted ICTA when the awards are announced at the ICTA Luncheon at the Insurance-Canada Technology Conference on March 5, 2012.

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