Chordiant Announces New Offering for Insurance Providers

Applications Featured Article

May 15, 2008

Chordiant Announces New Offering for Insurance Providers

By David Sims
TMCnet Contributing Editor

Chordiant (News - Alert) Software, which sells what company officials call “Customer Experience” software and services, has announced a new capability for insurance providers: Chordiant Insurance Self-Service.

The product uses capabilities of the Chordiant Service Oriented Architecture platform and products to offer policy shopping, quoting, and selection for insurance consumers.

Insurance carriers are finding that younger consumers consistently expect to deal with their insurance providers directly through the Web. Consumer surveys, such as the Harris Poll survey done by Chordiant in January, show that the generation of consumers who have grown up with the Web prefer online policy comparison and procurement.

The major insurance companies, which historically have focused a large percentage of their attention on the agent channel, are now trying to catch up. As Karen Pauli, practice director of TowerGroup points out in her recent report “Technology Directions in US P&C Insurance Claims Operations: Transforming a People Business,” consumers want self-service capabilities “like those that they have with their banks, credit card companies, and investment organizations.”

The demand for 24/7/365 service, Pauli believes, “will continue to grow as the Generation X and younger individuals become a greater proportion of the marketplace.”

The new Chordiant offering uses the company’s SOA-based platform, Chordiant’s Enterprise Case Management, and Chordiant’s Decision Management suite. Together, they allow self-service for automobile policy providers and include intelligent request routing

and “optimized product bundling.”

For example, a life policy consumer opens an auto quote on the Web and receives a decision-based bundled quotation based on an offer “optimized” in real time for him. The consumer then requests assistance and is routed by the Chordiant decision engine matching their request and demographics with the most effective representative. The agent is presented additional options prompted by the system, including a travel insurance bundle with incremental discounts, and underwriting approval from the same decisioning engine. Once accepted by the consumer, the completed bundle is then automatically routed to fulfillment.

In the Chordiant survey, 95 percent of those surveyed said a “personalized” customer experience is at least somewhat important to them.

Sixty-five percent said it is important, and 27 percent said very important. The study surveyed over 2,000 U.S. adults who regularly interact with high-volume service providers such as credit card companies, mobile providers, insurance carriers or banks.

Personalized is defined as the service provider “knows who I am, my buying history, past problems or complaints, preferences, and billing record.” Asked what they would do if they have a negative experience, 62 percent said they would be likely to cancel their service agreement.

In fact, the survey revealed, 60 percent of these adults have already switched providers as a result of negative experiences. Eighty-two percent defined a positive customer experience as “having their needs anticipated or met.”

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

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