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Electric Insurance Company's Customer Service Department

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2014 American Business Awards

Company: Electric Insurance Company
Company Description: Electric Insurance Company® is a national leading provider of personal and commercial lines insurance products. Established in 1966 specifically to serve GE employees, Electric Insurance now extends its superior personal lines products and outstanding service to discerning consumers inside and outside of the GE community.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year

Nomination Title: Electric Insurance Company's Customer Service Department

Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department has achieved since January 1, 2014 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms.

Electric Insurance Company® strives to deliver outstanding service in every customer interaction. As one longtime customer from West Chester, Ohio, says, “Every experience we’ve ever had with Electric Insurance Company is absolutely above and beyond. It’s the greatest insurance company in the world, and we sing your praises to everyone. Every experience we’ve ever had, whether it’s just a question or a claim. You guys wrote the book for customer service.”

Customer Focus is one of our company core values. To us, this means solving each customer’s problems completely by listening carefully and responding appropriately to reduce customer effort. In 2014, we made major changes to drive consistency, achieve greater efficiency, and further improve what we do best: provide an exceptional customer experience every time.

To realize our vision of delivering consistently exceptional service throughout every interaction, we combined our Customer Service and Claims Service organizations under one leadership team, which has provided opportunities to merge and evolve our philosophies as a single, cohesive group. Rather than continuing a process in which both organizations handle many similar tasks in different ways, we selected the best practices from each group and established those as common practices for the entire organization.

We also looked at the entire customer experience, from first contact through follow-up after the transaction is complete. As a result of this review, we implemented improvements that ensure our customers’ requests are resolved more efficiently. For example, we modified our phone menu, which now directs customers to the right person 31% faster. It was a desire to reduce customer effort that led the Customer Service team to adopt the Claims Team’s Specialization model, where tenured Specialists handle the most complex situations. This benefits our customers by quickly getting them to the right associate to efficiently process their transactions. Furthermore, it has expanded the career path for our associates, who now start out learning simpler tasks and graduate to more complex, specialized tasks as they demonstrate proficiency.

The organizational merger has allowed us to capitalize on synergies between our Claims and Service teams, leading to the development of our cross-departmental Call Quality Team, whose primary focus is to provide targeted coaching and support so our associates can deliver a consistently exceptional customer experience. We have also incorporated cross-departmental trainings and communications that allow our associates to gain a better understanding of the customer interaction involved in each department. These trainings sharpen our skills so we can educate our customers on how their policies protect them.

In an effort to improve our customer response, we created a Real-Time Operations Center (RTO), whose focus is to proactively manage our telephony and customer correspondence queues. The RTO has a standing workstation, giving our leaders a bird’s-eye view of the operation and the opportunity to provide assistance to associates as needed. This dedicated focus on managing our operation has paid off: since implementation, we’ve improved our average answer speed by 41% and our correspondence response time by 73%.

Customer Focus means being Always On® for our customers regardless of the challenges we may be facing at our headquarters. The record-breaking snowfall in the Boston area this winter was well documented, but our Customer Operations Team never missed a beat while responding to our customers’ needs. Even when the governor declared a state of emergency and banned driving on local roads, we were able to mobilize our teams to service our customers. Our customers, unaware that our associates were working from home, received the same quality service we typically provide when in the office. Even during multiple office closures, we answered 88% of calls within 20 seconds.

Our commitment to deliver an exceptional customer experience every time is evident in the improvements we’ve made over the past year. Customer Focus continues to be at the core of everything we do, and living our core values is what distinguishes Electric Insurance Company from other insurers.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) accomplishments of the nominated department since the beginning of 2014 (up to 150 words).

Merged Claims Service and Customer Service Departments Under One Leadership Team
> Implemented cross departmental communication and trainings
> Expanded career path opportunities
> Shared and adopted best practices
Re-engineered Organization
>Implemented Real Time Operations Center
>Introduced Specialized Customer Service organization
>Improved:
>> Average Handle Time by 22%
>> Service Level by 15%
>> Average Answer Speed by 41%
>> Correspondence Response Time by 73%
Simplified Phone Menu 
> Directs customers to the right person 31% faster
> Misdirected calls reduced by 35%
Developed Call Quality Team
> Enhanced use of current call monitoring tool to improve customer experience
> Increased coaching for associates who need additional focus
> Proactive identification of improvement opportunities
Maintained Strong Service Level During Multiple Weather Related Office Closures
> Answered 88% of calls within 20 seconds
Claims Service Customer Feedback
> Likeliness to renew – 99%
> Overall satisfaction – 98%