ARCHIVED - Brief Case Studies of Exemplary Practices

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Canada Life Assurance Company

Description of Business Line
Canada Life Assurance Co is a diversified international life insurance company offering a range of protection and wealth management products to approximately ten million customers, individuals and groups, in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and several other foreign locations.

Canada Life is one of Canada's five biggest insurers and offers both group and individual policies for life, health, disability, and property/casualty insurance. Canada Life also provides annuities, pension plans, unit trusts, and other investment products, as well as financial and investment management. The firm has operations in Canada, Ireland, the UK, and the US, and is expanding in such countries as Brazil and Germany.

There are two main customer groups: individuals (independent financial distributors, i.e. brokers, and end customers) and groups (brokers, plan sponsors, i.e. companies that purchase group plans, and plan members).

Service Standards in Use

Canada Life is committed to the use of service standards to help ensure customer satisfaction. Currently, Canada Life bases their service standards on a combination of customer expectations and industry standards. The Canadian Division, Central Unit (survey respondent) uses the Canadian Framework for Business Excellence as their management framework.

The service standards are measured through internal and external surveys. Three business lines within the Canadian Division have marked improvements in customer satisfaction: Group Life and Health, Investment and Pensions, and Pay-out Annuity. Each business line in this division, regardless as to whether they have already seen improvements is working with customers to continually improve customer service. Each business line is surveying customers and identifying the top 3 issues upon which they will work for measurable improvements in customer satisfaction.

The Canadian Division delivers approximately 50% of its business line by phone and 50% via Internet.

Customer Satisfaction Detail
Various tools are used by the Canadian Division, Central Unit to measure customer satisfaction. A Market and Customer Insight Team was established to deal with two obstacles to the process. One of the greatest challenges to overcome is that customers cross over various business units and staff wanted to contact each customer only once. A system was developed to ensure no repetitive calls were made to each customer and the information shared with other business units desiring the information. Secondly, because Canada Life had merged or acquired other companies, links between data systems had to be established to eliminate redundancies and create consistent information.

Significant improvements in customer satisfaction were realized in: staff knowledge and cross-functionality (for customer information); turnaround time (especially dental claims); and accessibility (due to increased call centre hours).

Implementation
Each Market and Customer Insight Team has representation from all areas of the organization and they have implementation sessions for middle and upper management who then communicate the information to their staff.

Employee satisfaction surveys have been in place for more than 4 years. The results of these surveys are used to make changes in Human Resource standards. The next steps to be taken are always communicated to staff to ensure follow-through.

Improving Customer Satisfaction through Service Standards
The Market and Customer Insight Team in each business unit are using a systematic approach to gather information through the new Customer Feedback Unit. Business units then analyze customer feedback and link it to the following year's plan and to improving service standards.

At present there is no definite data that points to a correlation between the improvement of service standards and customer satisfaction. Not enough data has been collected over the relatively short period of implementation. Because several service standards were changed at the same time, no conclusions can yet be drawn to indicate which service standards had the greatest impact on improved customer satisfaction. The overall conclusion drawn by the Market and Customer Insight Team and management is that customer satisfaction has risen to many improved processes and standards now in place.

Sharing Best Practices
Canada Life has working relationships with other companies outside the financial/insurance industry such as AMEX, AT&T and Xerox. We have shared best practices in both directions and found it most helpful.

Exemplary Practices

• The Market and Customer Insight Team. The team provides consistent information to all business units. Surveying, reporting and cross-functional teams are all standardized and thoroughly communicated to create a more completely informed employee base.
• A Customer Complaint Team has been developed with representation from all units in Canada. They created a process to deal with complaints. They are currently deploying this process throughout the Canadian Division.
• Internal Comment Cards are used, especially with the services that the Information Technology Department provides.

Lessons Learned

1. The Market and Customer Insight Team has determined that the service standards related to customer satisfaction need to be addressed on a continual basis. The current practice of developing service standards on the basis of customer expectation and industry standards has been very recently amended toward having standards based completely on customer expectations.
2. Standardized reporting formats across units and among newly acquired or merged companies is necessary for measurement and integrity of data.
3. Frequent and thorough communication across business units (through management meetings) and deep into each business unit (through staff meetings or intranet) is very valuable.
4. Sharing with and receiving Best Practices from other companies, not necessarily in the same industry, is useful and creates efficiencies.
5. Linkages between feedback and planning is essential.

Contact

Canada Life Assurance Company
Helga Orviss
Senior Quality Service Consultant
Telephone: 416-597-1440 x 6270
Fax: 416-204-2454

 

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