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What's New in
Cybertalk?
by Jean Gora
March 1999
Note: CyberTalk is a
column that appears monthly in LOMA's Resource, the magazine for insurance and financial
services management. To see more contents of the magazine and to see how to subscribe,
click on
RESOURCE MAGAZINE.
Express Yourself:
Met’s Online Forum
MetLife, which has long had one of the most elaborate life insurance company Internet
sites, has recently added an online forum to its site. This issue of CyberTalk examines
how the MetLife online forum is structured.
MetLife has had a section on its site called Life Advice for some time. In that
section, site visitors can read advice on coping with most of the major events that can
occur in a person’s life. These events are both financial (for example, buying a
house or saving for college) and non-financial (for example, becoming a parent).
Obviously, even the non-financial events often have financial implications. MetLife
believes that insurance purchases tend to occur in conjunction with life events. Hence,
its emphasis on such events on its Web site. Nevertheless, a visitor can spend a long time
on this site without reading anything about insurance.
The Life Advice section of the MetLife Web site now includes a forum called Life
Advice Exchange. The big problem most companies have in offering online forums with
open participation is that consumers start making entries that are irrelevant or
inappropriate. For example, no insurance company would want to run an online forum in
which the public makes unfavorable comparisons between insurance agents and used car
dealers. Although the company can control this problem by monitoring entries before they
are posted on the site, MetLife has opted to go one step further and try to structure the
dialogue so that it does not wander from the issues of MetLife’s choice.
A visitor to the Life Advice Exchange must choose among six topics: getting
married, buying a home, becoming a parent, planning for college, changing jobs, or
planning for retirement. The visitor then chooses whether to give advice or get advice.
Giving Advice
A person who wants to give advice then describes himself or herself by selecting from
an assortment of multiple statements. For example, in the section on planning for
retirement, the visitor selects from multiple choice endings to the following statements:
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My attitude about preparing for retirement is ---------------.
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I’m preparing financially for retirement by -----------------.
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I’m investing for retirement primarily in -------------------.
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I want money for retirement so I----------------------------.
The visitor then can enter advice in a text box. Next, he or she enters a title for the
advice, again selecting from an assortment of multiple choice entries. Finally, the
visitor is asked to enter age, household income, and information that indicates when he or
she retired or plans to retire.
One site visitor identified herself as a 52-year-old, with a household income of
$54,000, who plans to retire in eight years. A narrative shows which choices she selected
in the multiple-choice statements above.
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My attitude about preparing for retirement is I’m trying but worry it won’t
be enough.
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I’m preparing financially for retirement by paying off debts to free up funds to
invest.
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I’m investing for retirement primarily in a deferred annuity.
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I want money for retirement so I won’t be a burden to my children.
She selected "Every Penny Counts" as the title for her entry, which stated,
"You can never start too early. Just whenever you have some free money, invest it.
Put it away. Often you don’t have much but every little bit counts!"
Finding Advice
Suppose the site visitor wants to find advice others have given. He or she goes to the
"Get Advice" section of Life Advice Exchange. That individual is asked
to fill out some of the same multiple choice statements as a giver of advice completes:
The answers to the above statements determine which advice—entered by someone
else—the advice seeker sees. Suppose the advice seeker entered the following:
My attitude about preparing for retirement is I’m trying but worry that it
won’t be enough. That advice seeker is offered the advice entered by the
52-year-old woman referred to above.
Suppose that the advice seeker had answered the above question differently:
My attitude about preparing for retirement is my spouse or family will take care of me.
That advice seeker is instead guided to advice entered under the heading "No
Worries" by a 72-year-old woman who retired 17 years ago. Her advice was as follows:
"My husband has been saving for the two of us since we got married and all of our
children are doing quite well in life, so I feel I am already well taken care of."
In all cases, the advice recipient is offered the chance to respond to the advice and
to read how others have responded to it. The advice recipient can also give advice in
turn. Thus, the whole process of giving and receiving advice is highly structured.
MetLife Comments
MetLife interposes its own comments about the topic in the left margin of the page.
These do not appear to be closely integrated to the response topics. For example, the
following statement appeared next to the advice provided by both the "No
Worries" lady and the "Every Penny Counts" lady:
"Money is the biggest retirement concern most people have, so having a clear
picture of your finances will go a long way toward putting your mind at ease." Along
with MetLife’s comment, there is a hyperlink to the Planning for Retirement area of
the main Life Advice section.
In general, the comments in the "becoming a parent" section of the exchange
were longer and more emotional than those entered in the "planning for
retirement" section. Here is advice provided by a 37-year-old woman with a household
income of $120,000 who became a parent 10 years ago. Her multiple choice responses were as
follows:
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Becoming a parent is so hard sometimes I’m not sure I’ll survive.
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I prepared for parenthood financially by vowing to cut spending and save more.
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The biggest sacrifice involved in parenthood for me has been adult companionship.
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After I became a parent, I realized I’d underestimated how difficult arranging
childcare would be.
The title of her advice is "How Can Someone Small Be So Demanding?"
Her advice? "I’m the mother of four children, all under the age of 10. I’m
a single parent, and sometimes the pressure of motherhood is just too much. Children
always want something more. And although you try to cut back on spending, there is never
enough money. The biggest single expense is daycare—it’s both hard to find and
expensive. My advice to any new parent is not to let yourself get too isolated. You need
to be sure that you have a good, healthy support system in place. You’re going to
need adult companionship to help you out—physically and emotionally. If you’re a
single parent like myself, you’re going to need to depend on your family and friends,
as well as public service agencies to help keep you sane."
Impressive Things
Several things about the Life Advice Exchange forum are impressive. Most of
the entries are articulate and informative, and people don’t make a lot of comments
that are tangential to the issues under consideration. A surprising number of advice
providers have substantial incomes, which must make MetLife rejoice. At the moment, there
are not a lot of entries in each area—probably because the forum has only been open a
short while. The structured routing has both advantages and disadvantages. It’s easy
to follow the navigation, and a visitor is not forced to read about a lot of extraneous
things.
The problem is that the site visitor depends on MetLife’s definition of extraneous
and, therefore, may miss some relevant advice. The structure may force advice seekers and
providers into overly narrow pigeonholes. However, some people may like the pigeonholes
because they do not want to read a lot. As always, there are trade-offs.
It will be interesting to see how this forum evolves.
For more information,
E-mail research@loma.org
To register / order, call 1-800 ASK-LOMA
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