Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung Case

Deutsche Allgemeinversicherung was founded in 1966 by Andreas Steininger. It was one of the world’s largest insurance companies. Around 51% of its business was in Germany with a 60% of its business in the field of retail insurance. Its keys to success were the traditional insurance management and its remarkable customer service. In DA, a typical process flow of a new policy would start by either a customer going to one of the companies branches or contacting a company agent. The customer would fill out an application – sometimes a check was attached- and the application was then sent through the company mail to the Retail Transaction Processing (VEG) division in Hamburg. Also, some customers filled out applications at home and sent them directly to a number of DA locations which would then transfer them to the Hamburg operation. Once the application was received, VEG separated the various parts of the application then scanned it and digitized. The electronic image was then retrieved from a server and delivered to associates desktop client computer. The associate would enter the information on the form into an appropriate database. If the information available in the application was complete a confirmation would be sent to the customer. In case the customer find out something wrong on the notification notice he/she would either call a toll number or send a letter describing the problem. At that point the Customer Problem Resolution division would deal with the problem. On the other hand, if the information in the application was not complete another associate responsible of talking to customers would call the customer to obtain the needed data. The management of DA knew that they delivered a high quality service, but what bothered them was the percentage of the first time accuracy. This number was 99% which made the management believe that there was something wrong with the peoples’ data. Around 10% of the forms were entered into the system with some mistake. The