Technology Can Solve the
Customer Service Puzzle
As the Web and mobility alter expectations, insurers can employ
analytic tools to better serve customers. By Bill Kenealy
Insurance carriers have long regarded customer service as a source of competitive advantage. Yet, in recent years, the connota- tion of customer service in the
insurance industry has become increasingly fuzzy, and now encompasses a
variety of transactions over multiple
platforms.
Indeed, insurers now need to accommodate everyone from a senior
citizen phoning a call center to report a
claim, to a member of the millennial
generation expecting to pay a bill via
their mobile device. As customers become increasingly comfortable using
self-service features online and on mobile devices, it is creating new challenges for carriers.
One service problem that cuts across
channels is latency. Slow-loading screens
are a wellspring of vexation for agents,
customer service representatives (CSRs)
and consumers alike. One group of
technologies that enables businesses to
spot and mitigate service degradations
and outages caused by poorly performing applications is business transaction
management (BTM).
Despite extensive testing, performance glitches inevitably arise in production environments. By providing
real-time monitoring to ferret out bot-
tlenecks at the network, database and
application level, BTM ensures that
transactions get executed timely and
successfully. Much as carriers have lev-
eraged predictive and business analytics
to improve areas such as underwriting
and claims handling, BTM turns that
analytic approach inward and uses busi-
ness metrics and customized dash-
boards to pinpoint performance issues.
