Unique immersive training programs for agents.
Farmers Insurance Group began operating in Arizona in 1929, and is currently the second largest insurer of homes and automobiles in America.
Farmers Insurance has more than 48,000 exclusive and independent agents and approximately 21,000 employees. With this many touch points, it was important to provide the agents with as much training and support as possible.
Farmers Insurance Group constructed a $25 Million training facility in North Phoenix, Arizona. The training programs were to be completely immersive, requiring VR and a LMS (Learning Management System) that would be able to track both in-person and remote certifications.
In addition to the training program, digital marketing strategies were required to provide a layer of review and reputation monitoring, providing support for tens of thousands of individual agents and offices.
WEBSITE ADDITIONS
Partnering with Dell Technologies, special Talespin training sections of the internal Farmers intranet systems were developed. The training enhancements required a unique electronic data interchange (EDI) solution to filter into the existing network infrastructure. With minimal coding, the data point mapping allowed for an agent to be certified and onboarded within 60 minutes. Previous processes took up to 4 weeks.
SOCIAL MONITORING – REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Systems were developed to monitor review sentiment for over 40,000 agents in their local geo area in near real-time. This created an opportunity for local agents, and corporate managers to get ahead of negative reviews as soon as they are posted. Subsequently, positive reviews were also considered to create monthly “sentiment scores” for each agent. This data could then be analyzed by a per region basis.
SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION OF LMS
The training programs implemented in the new Phoenix facility are the talk of the entire company. With unique and fun exercises in a laboratory environment, the agents are able to get an accurate feel for real-world scenarios they may encounter in the field. The LMS system integrated into the lab functions helped to continue the education after the agent returned back to their field offices. Agents had an 85% retention rate of the materials after 1 year of taking the courses. Over 18,000 agents have successfully completed the full scope of the online training program.