Progressive Insurance, which offers coverage both through its direct channel and via independent agencies, is now leveraging its technology investments in order to maximize its buyer experience—regardless of platform.

“We are having success in tools that cross over,” says Matt Lehman, mobile business leader for Progressive. “As we build out certain capabilities, clearly we are looking for those to be channel-agnostic.

“When you look at the servicing and claims capabilities that are built into both our apps as well as our mobile Web—things like severe-weather text alerts or the ability to view policy coverage—we want those to be available to all customers, regardless of how they choose to work with us,” he adds.

Lehman believes it all comes down to ways for customers to use mobile technology to make the insurance-buying process easier.

“If a customer chooses to work with one of our 35,000 independent agents, that's great, and we want to put tools like the new FAO (ForAgentsOnly) effort into agents' hands so they can be mobile,” says Lehman. “On the other hand, if a customer wants to work directly with us and use the device in their hands, we want to offer tools that will make that easy as well.”

For instance, Progressive recently went outside its own research and development area to purchase software from technology vendor Mitek to help boost the direct line by allowing customers to submit a photo of their driver's license and the VIN for a particular car and get a rate back through their smartphone.

The image capture allows a customer or potential customer to take a picture of their driver's license for prefill and another picture of their insurance card to get the VIN or scan the VIN off the car itself.

Many companies are gambling on one mobile-operating system taking over the market, but Lehman points out the market is still too fractured with key players developing their own systems.

“As far as agents and what the mobile FAO will cover, certainly the iPad has the lion's share of tablet usage today,” he says. “We are also seeing some inroads with the Kindle Fire, the Motorola Zoom and the Galaxy Note tablets. By offering similar functionality, those operating systems will cover the vast majority of the tablet market.”

The handheld market is more evenly split, according to Lehman.

“We see pretty broad coverage on both iPhone and Android,” he says. “Our goal there when we think about the consumer is to be present from the app space with iPhone and Android apps. We have a robust mobile-Web offering as well, and that is device agnostic, so if you have a BlackBerry or Windows phone you can access the mobile capabilities.”

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A &lsquo;Progressive&rsquo; Approach to Selling

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