State Farm helps clients manage the unexpected with Salesforce

Overview

State Farm, which was founded in 1922, presently employs about 58,000 people nationwide and works with close to 19,000 independent contractors to service 83 million policies and accounts. It provides more than 100 products, including banking, mutual funds, commercial products, life, home, and vehicle insurance.

Despite being the biggest property and liability insurer in the United States, State Farm has to change in order to maintain its position as the market leader, "Changes were required to significantly increase our capacities. Our systems, procedures, and entire client journeys must continue to be made simpler, according to Ahmad.

Challenges

The insurance industry is changing, including State Farm. The Fourth Industrial Revolution's developing technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), appear to be changing the world. They provide enormous opportunities for both established players and disruptive businesses to change insurance services and products. Consumer expectations may rise even further as a result of tech giants and insurtechs entering the industry.

According to Fawad Ahmad, Chief Digital Officer at State Farm, "No one can predict what will happen in the insurance industry five to ten years from now." But we are aware that in order to be relevant to our customers, we must constantly and quickly adapt.

Solutions

A unified view of customers will be accessible to the agents

A key element of the change will be Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce's enterprise CRM platform for the financial services industry. This platform gives financial services organizations the knowledge and resources they need to enhance their before- and after-sales services thanks to fully customized versions of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. For instance, it can assist State Farm staff and agents in swiftly locating crucial customer information and creating individualized communications across all channels.

According to Ahmad, "Salesforce gives State Farm agents and employees a comprehensive view of our customers." "By managing a customer's information and interactions more effectively from a single screen, we make it easier for them to transact business with us. This enhanced customer experience ultimately fosters loyalty in addition to the one-on-one interactions between agents and clients on which our business is founded.

For instance, when a client first gets in touch with State Farm to submit a claim — whether over the phone, online, or through the State Farm mobile app — the agent receives an overall view of the client's data as well as an automatically developed action plan with prioritized tasks. Following that, the customer receives updates and information via their preferred channel, whether that be an email confirming receipt of the claim or a text message informing them that a claim payment has been paid into their account.

Customer experience is made simpler via data integration

Access to data is essential to boosting productivity and enhancing customer experience.

State Farm accomplishes this by unlocking data from its third-party systems using MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform. According to Jason Potts, Enterprise Technology Executive at State Farm, "We've used MuleSoft to connect our systems of record, including billing and claims management, to Salesforce to deliver a connected customer experience."

Salesforce features like customer management and search are now able to access data from external systems thanks to MuleSoft. "This allowed us to integrate and automate processes across different business areas, simplifying the experience for customers and associates," he continued. The Salesforce Platform can quickly deliver a unified experience across agents, phone, web, and mobile by reusing these connections after they have been built.

Benefits

According to Potts, State Farm continues its digital transformation while innovating for its clients. For the ultimate benefit of our customers, he added, "Salesforce brings its experience from various industries and continues to challenge us to think differently about how we do business."