1to1 Magazine Demo

> EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT go. “At best, we see one or two pieces of isolated technology, so we see the IT department using wiki technology or marketing using blogging. But very few companies have a holistic strategy to bring the tools in house,” Young says. Northwestern Mutual is one exception. For the insurance and investment provider, blogging fits squarely into its corporate communications strategy to foster an open and honest dialogue within the company. The communications department at Northwestern Mutual first created a crossfunctional team from legal, human resources, and IT to decide how to encourage blogging. The group addressed usage guidelines, compliance, security, technical integration, and a roll-out strategy. The company now includes these guidelines in its corporate policies. Kevin Olp, director of organization communication at Northwestern Mutual, says blogging started on a grassroots level. Driven from the employees, topics range from employee concerns to questions about products to technology issues. Olp says the firm is also using RSS feeds to reduce the clutter on the walls of the home office. “With business becoming more complex and with more information to know as an employee, that means the communication channels become increasingly busy with information,” he says. RSS funnels all that information, he adds. Wikis are another way Northwesten Mutual is bringing Enterprise 2.0 into the organization. Still used on a test basis, Olp says employees are leveraging them to create an encyclopedia of industry terms and acronyms. “It’s a great way to be able to gather some of the creativity and ideas of employees and give them an outlet,” Olp says. The strategy seems to be working. Currently, the firm has 91 active blogs and more than 600 posts in the system. There are 1,063 users currently signed up for RSS access, with 502 actively receiving feeds. Olp adds, “I really think the organization will benefit from the increased dialogue. It gives management the opportunity to hear what employees are thinking and to contribute to a more greatly engaged workforce.” Cigna Dental Drills for Loyal Customers The insurer uses the customer experience as a business differentiator. s ome companies would be content with an 87 percent satisfaction rating, and a less than 10 percent churn rate, but Cigna Dental wasn’t. The company’s high marks for its service didn’t stop the business from shaking up its call center by focusing more on customers and spending less time on operational efficiencies. “We were a very transactional-oriented organization,” says Ed LaClair, vice president of Cigna’s dental service operations. “One thing that stuck out to me was employees were saying we needed to spend more time with our customers. We measured things like unit cost and time per call, but they felt customers would benefit from more time on the phone.” As a result of employees’ recommendations, Cigna implemented a voice of the customer program in the call center, which handles more than 4.5 million calls annually from the company’s 11 million members. After surveying its members, Cigna learned there was a strong correlation between call center satisfaction, problem resolution, and customer loyalty. Customers also told the company that when their problem is resolved, they want to “Employees were saying understand how the claims process worked we needed to spend and what the solution was. “The thing we more time with our were hearing most often was don’t just tell me customers.” you solved my problem, help me understand what the clinical jargon means,” LaClair says. Cigna created a plan with three initiatives to respond to customers’ feedback, which has been in place and evolving over the past few years. Call center representatives are trained to expand their claims knowledge, they’ve been empowered to make decisions on their own to solve customer problems, and they’re measured through customer evaluations against their performance expectations. Agents can also see customers’ feedback right on their desktops, including positive comments. LaClair says he tends to focus on the positive, while coaching underperformers instead of immediately penalizing them. The biggest change is agent training. Last year Cigna created classes it calls Clinical 101–106, which agents attend six times per year over a period of six months. Dentists come in to the call center and explain terminology, billing processes, and other technical issues that complicate claims and cause problems for customers. LaClair credits the training, along with the other changes, with raising the call center satisfaction rating by five points. “We went from 87 percent in 2005 to 92 percent so far in 2008,” he says. “That’s a big number.” In addition to satisfaction increases, problem resolution increased from 78 percent to 87 percent over the same time period, and customer retention is now at 95 percent. “We look at whether customers would Cigna’s Call Center Satisfaction Rate recommend us, but we also want to know if, given a choice, they would switch to one of 2005: 2008:92% our competitors,”LaClair says. Now when agents talk to employers who purchase Cigna’s dental plan, they mention the customer experience 87% > Mila D’Antonio ONLINE EXTRA: Learn how Quicken Loans uses Enterprise 2.0. www.1to1media.com/links/quickenloans.html as a value proposition. Conversely, employer customers tell Cigna that their employees don’t want them to switch programs. “We’ve gone completely from a transactional organization to a customer-centric one,” LaClair says. “For us the customer experience is a business model differentiator.” > Jeremy Nedelka http://www.1to1media.com/links/quickenloans.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 1to1 Magazine Demo

1to1 Magazine Demo Contents 1to1media.com Editor's Note Feedback Putting Care in Patients' Hands Loyalty at Work Redefining the Contact Center Agent Introducing Enterprise 2.0 Cigna Dental Drills for Loyal Customers On the Beat 19 Ways to Succeed Miami Heat Schools Its Staff on Sales and Service Marketing Lends a Helping Hand More Than Meets the Eye Customer Service by Committiee Textron's Business Soars by Tracking Customer Loyalty Resources Contact Center Agent as Trusted Advisor Mastering Global CRM Face to Face with Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D.

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