Mailing a bill to a customer seems like a simple task for a company to perform, but as with most matters of business these days, complications can ensue. Studies conducted by the Robert E. Nolan Co. have shown nearly half of the inquiries made of personal lines insurers are billing related, according to Steve Discher, a senior vice president with the consulting group. “If you are going to have one out of every two calls be billing related, hopefully you can either minimize that number or try to add some value when the call is occurring,” he advises.

Most carriers are expending effort to minimize the number of calls, Discher believes, by providing some self-service capabilities in billing so policyholders can pull their bill off the Web, study the statement, and make a payment by check or credit card. “There’s quite a bit of investment going on to allow customers to do what they want to do when they want to do it,” he says.

Another front for progress is bill redesign. Some carriers have determined their billing statements are not customer friendly, so they are working to simplify the bill, reports Discher. Examples of this include new color schemes to make it easier for a customer to read a bill as well as the use of different type fonts so a customer can understand the difference between a bill and a declaration sheet. “There has been quite a bit of investment in making the bill easier to use,” he says.

Personal lines, particularly automobile and homeowners, is where Discher observes the majority of inquiries being made into billing as well as where he sees the majority of investments occurring. “One interesting thing some carriers are doing is they are using the billing opportunity for interaction for other services and to inquire how things are going with the customer,” he says.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

To achieve a better level of customer service, FCCI Insurance Group’s Carey Geaglone, assistant vice president of information services, explains it was imperative for the carrier to present a single invoice regardless of which of the carrier’s three policy administration systems the policy was issued from.

A single view of the billing information was necessary in order for the carrier’s customer service reps to answer calls from customers, she says, adding, “We also wanted to post invoices online so [policyholders] could go to our Web site and view their information.”