Insurance is a service industry in a global service economy — which means our customer service skills had better be top notch. But just how good are they?

Earlier this month, CFI Group came out with its second annual Contact Center Satisfaction Index (CCSI), a survey that measures customer satisfaction with call centers in eight industries, including insurance.

Although overall customer satisfaction with call centers gained 3 percent to a score of 72 out of 100, one in five customers end their contact center experience with unresolved problems, leaving them twice as likely to defect to another.

The satisfaction rating for insurance call centers was a bit higher at 75 percent — up from 68 percent in 2007 — as were overall scores for insurance CSRs at 80 percent (from 77 percent in 2007). These scores measure courteousness, interest in helping the customer, speaking in an understandable manner (well, as understandable as you can get with insurance), knowledge and effectiveness in handling an issue.

Impressive? For the most part, yes — although insurance CSRs' “hard skills” of actually resolving a customer's issue was only 73 percent, compared with 87 percent for retail CSRs and 81 percent for banks.

What does this mean for your agency? Plenty, if you rely on CSRs for cross-selling your customers in this tough economy. The survey shows that 42 percent of insurance customers relied on call centers to place an order or check on an order's status, up from 35 percent in 2007.

According to the report, “Self-service as a business model appears to be slow-coming to this industry. The nature of this particular service and the complexity of different insurance plans and rate schedules force some customers to seek personalized human intervention, in the form of a contact center and a CSR.”

Smart insurers and the agents and brokers who represent them already understand the importance of CSRs in this or any other economy or market cycle.

What's your agency doing to recruit, train, educate and compensate your CSRs?

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