Insurance Company Gathers Customer Feedback

MECC, Midwest Employers Casualty Company, is a Missouri-based workers’ compensation excess company with clients in all fifty states and total annual premiums well over $300 million. In order to maintain client loyalty and increase client retention, they provide online resources and webinars (web-based seminars) on the subject of workplace safety. With Key Survey, they’re tracking client opinion of these resources, enabling them to better focus on the material that clients find most useful.

"We’re an excess workers’ compensation carrier," explains Online Resources Manager Darrell Toenjes. "We provide coverage once employers’ claim levels reach a certain amount; the companies are typically self-insured up to that point. My department works directly with our clients and brokers to identify needs and provide solutions, so that our clients stay with us - if they choose a competitor, they won’t get the wealth or the depth of services that we offer."

These services include employer workplace-safety training and a detailed set of online resources on safety - for instance, a set of pre-written policies and procedures that clients can adopt for their own safety programs. MECC also provides value by educating their clients; they conduct online webinars about various aspects of workplace safety.

"One piece of how we use Key Survey is when we train our clients," said Toenjes. "We send follow-up surveys asking what our training experience was like, what we did well, and how we can do better. Then, after sixty days, we send another survey to see which parts of the training they’re now utilizing."

MECC also uses Key Survey to question clients about which online services they use the most, and about their interest in others. The purpose being to find which areas aren’t being utilized - and decide if that information still needs to be there - and to identify gaps and needs in the information that is being offered.

MECC began with Key Survey in March 2005. "We were going to be doing this training for our clients," Toenjes said, "and we needed a way to measure whether we were meeting their needs. Someone in our IT department had demo’d Key Survey and mentioned it to me; it sounded interesting, so I contacted them about a free trial."

Toenjes was pleasantly surprised by Key Survey’s ease of use: he was able to become productive almost immediately.

"It seemed, not having any training about it, that it was very user-friendly," he said. "The wizard walked you through every step about how to build it. There wasn’t any real training that was necessary; you could get started immediately. In fact, when I made it available to other people in the organization, I just gave it to them and it was something they could put into action immediately. They could use it right away. That very day they could put together a survey and send it up, the learning curve was that quick."

"We send out different surveys to different industries, but the format and the questions are basically the same. We have one survey template - I like the fact that you can copy a previous survey. And the presentation options are very helpful - before Key Survey, putting together the information was much more time-consuming. We had to compile our own Excel spreadsheets and do the graphics manually."

MECC’s response rate for emailed surveys regarding the web resources is only about twenty percent, but when webinars are held, clients are given a bonus - a copy of the presentation and a free online course that MECC usually charges for - if they complete the survey. As a result, the response rates for the webinar-feedback surveys are usually between eighty and ninety percent.

"Before we got Key Survey, we didn’t have a formalized process to gather this information, and we were kind of inconsistent in our knowledge. Overall, I think Key Survey has been a good process - it’s worked well for us."