When a customer has a claim pending and wants to know itsstatus, where does he turn? Does he call the carrier, hoping tofind someone with a friendly voice who can find an answer withoutleaving him on hold for 25 minutes? Or does he want to call hisagent-the guy who lives two blocks over and has been selling himpolicies for years? Not a tough question.

But the carriers might prefer you do the former, even as theyknow the real answer is the latter. Premier Insurance Co. ofMassachusetts figured this out and decided to do something thatwould help its independent agents keep their customers up to datewith the claims process.

Desiree Darch, Internet manager for Premier, said her companyneeded a real-time solution to allow agents to answer routineclaims questions from its insureds.

Premier is owned by Travelers Insurance (www.travelers.com) and offers autoand homeowners coverage in Massachusetts. It uses a sales force ofapproximately 425 independent agents to sell its policies.
Premier looked at five software providers to provide a solution itdecided to commit to Intelligent Environments and its iE Integratorproduct.

"IE came to us with a comprehensive proposal," Darch said."Rather than simply offering us a product, it was interested inworking with us to solve our problems. It learned our claimssystem, assisted in creating a vision for the future, and built aprototype."

The builders from iE worked closely with Premier's staff toachieve the best solutions to the carrier's problems. "They metwith our people in claims and other departments to find out whatthe agents were looking for," said Darch. "They also invited agentsin to review their plans and offer some suggestions."

Those suggestions proved to be fruitful. "They suggested that weput instructions online for the agents," Darch said. "The more theyunderstood the system, the easier it would be to use."

Another suggestion was for what Darch called "hover helps." Sheexplained: "If the program brought up an claims term, a pop-up boxwould appear to explain the term."

Once the prototype was ready, the installation went smoothly,Darch said. "Other than one minor configuration conflict that wassolved when building the prototype, we didn't have any seriousissues," she said. "It is interesting to note that whenimplementing an application like this you sometimes findlittle-known transactions with your own source system." As anexample, she said the claims department had a 'transient' status.During telephone conversations, the claims rep could accommodatefor this, but not over the Internet.

The installation took about a month, including time to test thesystem and simulate high-volume usage. There was basically notraining, Darch said. An announcement was sent to agents about whatto look for and pointing them to the instructions on the Web page.There have been no problems either with the agents or thesystem.

The company is getting almost 100 hits a day with claimsinquiries while telephone inquiries have decreased significantly."The agents now have a tool in their hands to improve customerservice. We are very pleased with the results," Darch said.

The iE Integrator application is a part of the IntelligentEnvironments NetFinance program which the company says can helpinsurers improve their entire e-commerce agenda. Premier hasn'tcommitted to any further use of the NetFinance solution, but Darchsaid other applications are "under review."

THE COMPANY: PREMIER INSURANCE CO. OF MASSACHUSETTS
NET WRITTEN PREMIUM: $275 MILLION
WEB SITE: www.premierins.com

THE PRODUCT: iE INTEGRATOR FROM INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS
WEB SITE: www.ie.com