State Farm Insurance Case Study

Problem at State Farm Insurance: there is too much mail sent to the clients. Despite the wonderful customer service and reputation that State Farm Insurance has, they are also known for mailing out an abundance of mail to their clients. Agencies receive regular client complaints that the mail sent is excessive and confusing. Unlike many insurance carriers that list all auto’s on the same policy, State Farm creates a policy for every home or vehicle insured creating individual mailers for each policy. For example, a household with five cars will get ten renewal letters in one year at minimum, if there are no changes to the policies. As part of the policy update process by the automated system, all changes made to a policy generate a mailer
with a new copy of policy declaration page.
This becomes problematic as clients resent vast amounts of letters and being to ignore them. In many cases the clients refuse to read the letters which contain very important information (such as a cancelation notice or time sensitive requests for information) and their policies lapse. A recent example of this took place when an angry client named Kyle complained that he was not informed that his policy had canceled. When Kyle was told that State Farm mailed him several letters his response was: “I get so many letters from State Farm that I don’t even bother opening them!”
This system I also useful and helps State Farm retain its clients by diligently reminding the clients of late payments to prevent cancellation obtain current policy holder information ensuring State Farm is collecting the correct premium. Automation also frees up time for State Farm employees to do more important tasks and saves the company money. If the problem of excess mail fixed and State Farm went paperless, State Farm would be considered a green company. The employees affected by the change would be the underwriters that could go paperless and become more efficient; however, the printer maintenance people would be out of a job.