Prudential, Sapient Offer Online Help For P-C Agents AndCustomers

Prudentials self-service account, available through the companysWeb site, www.prudential.com,points out John Heidelberger, vice president, e-commerce forPrudential, serves both customers and agents. The sophisticated,tech savvy customer has the option to service his or her accountonline. Independent agents save on time and paperwork involved whenusing a company customer service representative.

The savings, points out Joe Marchese, vice president of financialservices at Sapient, is in dollars to support a single servicerequest to a call center, compared to quarters for the self-serviceonline system.

"Self-service gets the most impact for the investment," Mr.Marchese noted.

Driving Prudential to make this choice in online capability wascompetition, Mr. Heidelberger said.

"From the agents perspective, what we have seen so far, this is acompetitive tool," Mr. Heidelberger noted, asserting that this Webtool is on par with the best Internet insurers sites out theretoday.

"This tool never was designed to replace the agent," he added."What we want to see is the customer continuing to go to the agent.We plan to continue to build our technology so it does not pullaway from the independent agent model. This mechanism is to provideservice. We want to target agencies and make life easier for them,and target customers who do not currently use an agent."

What the system offers, explained the executives, is the ability toservice auto, home and personal catastrophe policies online. Thesystem allows users to change an address, request duplicatedocuments, amend their automobile policies, make changes in theirdeductibles, or check claims information. Some items for the futureinclude bill payment and filing claims online.

Sapient began working on the system with Prudential last year.Instead of building a product that would be forced onto customersand agents, Sapient said it designed the technology around customerand agent feedback. One of the results was designing the site so anagents policy change request would be executed faster than acustomers.

The process for customers, Mr. Marchese explained, is that as he orshe makes changes, additional informational screens pop up, tellingthe user what the changes mean and indicating alternative choicesavailable. He added that agents may not need this feature.

Another feature of importance to agents is security, observed Mr.Heidelberger.

There are different levels of data that an agency wants availableto some of its agents, and part of the solution, he pointed out,was creating a system where that happens. At the same time, thesystem needed to be designed so the agencys book was protected fromexternal access, while still allowing all of the agencys producersaccess to its customers.

The demand for this application by independent agents withPrudential appointments was obvious, with more than 150 agentssigning up for systems with no promotion, said Mr. Marchese.

Today, Prudential boasts 200 independent agencies in 23 statesselling p-c insurance, and that is expected to grow in the nextseveral years, the company said.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property &Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, October 21, 2002.Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.