Premier Insurance Company Consolidates Point of Contact with Customers: New processes improve customer satisfaction and contribute to gains in share-of-customer

Company Profile
The Company has provided insurance and financial services to its customers for over 75 years. Today, the Company comprises an association of seven groups which offer services and products of virtually unparalleled diversity including property and casualty insurance, life and health insurance, annuities, mutual funds, discount brokerage services, banking and credit card products, and real estate investment services. The Company serves more than three million customers worldwide and had revenues of $6.8 billion in 1996.

Situation
The Company's diverse organization presented challenges in managing customer information and coordinating marketing efforts. The Company's multiple lines of business did not share customer information, so that changes, such as a change of address or a name change, were not updated in the records of all of the lines of business with which that customer did business. This placed the onus of making such changes on the customer and imparted the impression that the Company's customer service was uncoordinated. The Company wished to present a single, integrated customer service facade for all lines of business.

Additionally, due to the customer's perception of disorganization at the Company, or the Company's inability to share information, the Company often missed opportunities to retain customers who moved to new locations, or to market additional services to them that were appropriate to the customer's changing life circumstances, as evidenced by a change in name or address. For example, a customer who insures her car through the Company is an excellent candidate for a new life insurance policy and financial services following a name change as a result of a marriage. The Company believed that managing information about customers and applying it to a coordinated marketing effort could significantly increase share of customer.

Business Solution
The primary goal of the project was to improve customer service by understanding the events which triggered customer contact, and to devise processes and systems to effectively share information internally. The secondary goal of the project was to use knowledge about the customer's changing life circumstances to retain customers and increase share-of-customer. Aegis InterWorld consultants redesigned customer service processes to provide a single, integrated point of contact for customers to facilitate sharing of customer information using its Customer-Driven Process Design Method. The project included the following elements:

• Identify Trigger Events and Develop Scenarios
  
  Aegis InterWorld conducted customer focus groups and surveyed customer service representatives to identify the events which triggered customer contact with multiple lines of business. The consultants studied the Company's customer service processes related to the trigger events. Working closely with the Company, Aegis InterWorld developed a set of scenarios for the most common events and used the Company's expertise to identify opportunities and marketing responses for the scenarios.
  
  
• Redesign Business Processes to Share Customer Information
  
  Aegis InterWorld consultants used high-level business process models to design customer service processes to support the customer service scenarios. The new business processes shared customer information across multiple lines of business. Systems were established to prompt marketing activities based on scenarios.
  
  
• Document and Communicate Change
  
  Aegis InterWorld documented the new business processes and transferred the skills to manage them to the Company. Unlike other process redesign projects which focus solely on reducing the cost of operations, the Company was motivated by the desire to improve customer service, with the belief that economic benefits would follow. In this case, the new customer service processes improved the quality of the Company's customer service, and increased the Company's share of customer.
  

Benefits

• Improved customer service by providing a single point of contact
• Improved responsiveness to changing customer needs
• Coordinated marketing efforts across lines of business
• Increased share-of-customer; retained more customers

According to one definition, knowledge management is the strategic application of information. In this project, the Company was able to improve its customer service, retain more customers, and create new marketing opportunities by better managing and applying knowledge about its customers