NU's Mark E. Ruquet reported recently on a J.D. Powerand Associates survey about overall satisfaction amongauto-insurance consumers. The good news was that consumersatisfaction was the highest since J.D. Power began the service in2000. The bad news, for some of us, is that interaction with anagent fell to the fourth position of importance. Auto-insurancecustomers ranked policy offerings as the most important. Otherattributes that were high in the ranks were price, billing andpayment, and claims service.

The J.D. Power research director said that the growth of morerobust websites that can complete more complicated processes makeshuman interaction less important. But what about humanintervention when problems arise? Do agents become moreimportant then?

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In the last few years, after a few brushes with speeding ticketsthat of course were bogus, my belief in the importance of agentswas brought to the test. My auto-insurance premium skyrocketed, andI felt lucky to have a good independent agent who began to look foroptions without my even having to ask. She further took it uponherself to broaden my coverage not only on my auto insurance butalso on my homeowners'. And she did all of that at a price that wasacceptable.

That agent is very important, and I would rank her as the mostimportant element to me.

Conversely, I have a long-term-care (LTC) policy with alife-insurance agent. I understand that life agents are highlycompensated on the initial sale and, unlike P&C agents, don'tmake a lot on the continuation of coverage. But in this instance, Icalled the agent who had sold me the LTC policy to discuss asubstantial increase in premium when most LTC premiumsskyrocketed.

The result was quite different from the experience I had with myP&C agent. My life agent sent me an email saying he was alittle tied up right then but would call me soon. The call nevercame, so I called the insurance company and found my solutionthere. I will never buy another insurance product from thatagent, and I probably will never leave my P&C agent.

Is there a lesson in the J.D. Power study and such consumerexperiences? Absolutely. I think agents are extremely important,but only when they take their role as advocate seriously and offernot only intervention services but also actively work to providetheir insureds with coverage options, claims-service assistance andprice competitiveness—all of which insureds stated as being highpriorities. I just believe that the availability of agentintervention should also be high on that list.