Carriers often make the mistake of pressuring claim and customer service departments to reduce internal expenses at the cost of quality. This is especially common during softening market cycles like we're in today. It's more critical than ever for carriers to adopt progressive systems in order to promote service excellence, reduce costs, and deliver significant return on investment.

Through a few basic steps, insurers can improve service excellence and efficiency in their claim departments that will benefit both customers and carriers. First, services must be delivered seamlessly across all departments. This can be accomplished through segmentation techniques, which categorize claims by complexity, customer claim history, and customer profiles in order to streamline processing cycles and ensure precise and accurate handling.

Seamless operations benefit both the customer and carrier. For customers, it makes them feel that every service offered by the carrier is synchronized to provide a comprehensive strategy designed to enhance value. For carriers, it gives them an enhanced picture of all customer needs. As a result, additional marketing and service packages can be developed to better serve customers while increasing sales. Less than half (44 percent) of North American insurers, however, are currently using advanced claim segmentation, according to a recent study from Accenture.