In This Issue:

Resource cover story:
Making an Innovative Customer Service Course

New research briefs

Education and Training news

Events

Featured in this month's Resource magazine:

Making an Innovative Customer Service Course

LOMA has just launched ACS 101—Customer Service for Insurance Professionals. Delivered purely online, and featuring a heavy dose of audio and video examples, scenarios, and role plays, ACS 101 is innovative customer service training created specifically for insurance employees. It is not merely an update of an existing course; it is a reinvention.

To best learn customer service theory and skills, employees need to do more than just read about them; they need to see and hear good—and bad—service in action. They also need to drive customer interactions for themselves. ACS 101 accomplishes all of these. But revolutionizing the way insurers train their employees in customer service takes a lot of effort. Dozens of people inside LOMA, and more than 100 experts from the industry itself, worked for almost two years to conceive, design, build, and deploy the course. This is their story..

Read full article | Members: download the June issue

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Research Briefs

Member login is required to download briefs, which are available in the Research and Knowledge Database on LOMA's Web Site. To see all available briefs, visit the Information Center and log in.

New research briefs
from LOMA's Information Center:

Mentoring Matters

Mentoring programs have been around for decades, and though they've morphed with the changing conditions of the labor pool, they've never really disappeared. Their persistence is likely tied to their purpose – retaining and speeding the development of talent, a goal that companies in hypercompetitive industries cannot afford to ignore. For this reason and others, several insurers have adopted some form of mentoring, even if the programs are not company-wide.

Members: Download "A Helping Hand: Mentoring Programs at Life Insurance Companies"

Calling in Payments

Customers may have all kinds of reasons for wanting to initiate a premium payment over the telephone – their policy is close to lapsing, for example, or the payment is late, or they're already on the phone with the call center about a service matter. But do life insurers allow this practice?

Members: Download "Dialing with Dollars: Paying Premiums by Phone"

Monitoring Quality in Group Benefits

Service-based industries like insurance face some unique challenges in their efforts to monitor, measure and manage the quality of what is ultimately an intangible product. And in the group benefits environment, quality failures can have a broad impact – an error in the issue of a group contract can impact hundreds or thousands of participants, not just the plan sponsor. In this brief,examine insurers' quality assurance approaches.

Members: Download "Group Benefits: Quality Review and Management Strategies"

The Transformers

Change has become an inescapable fact of the insurance marketplace, spurred by advances in technology, shifting consumer preferences, heavy regulation, market volatility, global expansion, and complex, intertwined risks. Learn how some insurers are facilitating transitions and transformations in this brief.

Members: Download "Managing Organizational and Cultural Change"

More...

For research requests on these and other industry topics, contact LOMA's Information Center at infoctr@loma.org.

Quick Queries

LOMA's 50 committees often conduct informal surveys to obtain insight on various industry practices and procedures. LOMA members can access these surveys on LOMA's website, in the Research and Knowledgebase section, at Quick Queries.

Recent Surveys:

E-Delivery for Policy Output

Quotes or Illustrations from Mobile Apps

Future Technology Languages / Environments

Text Messaging Practices

Onsite Participant Education

Mailing Participant Materials

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For assistance, contact your company's Ed Rep or e-mail education@loma.org.

Education & Training Updates

New Customer Service Course Getting High Marks From Learners!

"I Like it, I Love it, I Want Some More of It."

While the exact words were not the same as the song title made famous by country superstar Tim McGraw, the overwhelming response among enrollees in LOMA's new Customer Service for Insurance Professionals (ACS 101) course echoed a similar sentiment. "Loved it – need more courses like this toward designations," and "The format makes you want to continue . . .you don't lose interest . ." were just some of the reactions from the initial survey of those who have taken Customer Service for Insurance Professionals since it launched in April.

Over 95 percent of the respondents agreed that the information in ACS 101, which was developed to be specific to the insurance and financial services industry, is relevant to their jobs; they fully expect to be able to increase their productivity and perform their responsibilities more effectively for having taken the course. For more information about this course, or to participate in an interactive demo, please click here.

See more!

Upcoming LOMA Events

Events

2012 LOMA Annual Conference & Conferment

If you have recently achieved at LOMA designation, or are working towards one, make plans to attend the LOMA Annual Conference & Conferment! This year's event will be held September 12–14, 2012 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel in Seattle, Washington. This conference addresses timely issues affecting the insurance and financial services industry and honors committed professionals who have recently earned a LOMA designation.

We're pleased to announce that our Speakers include Olympic Gold Medalist, Peter Vidmar, and nationally-recognized humorist, Tim Gard!

View program details

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