“The important thing is that we have to meet the needs of the customer. And as the customer changes, we have to change.”

During a recent drive to work in Southern California, Jeff Dailey felt a jolt on the side of his car. A piece of road debris had punched a huge hole in one of his doors.

An insurance claim of this kind previously would involve an insurance adjuster visiting him, recording the loss, and estimating the damage. It was a complex, time-consuming process that needed fixing, and Dailey was in a unique position to do something about it: He’s the CEO of Farmers Insurance.

“We’ve created a claims reporting platform using Salesforce technology with our customers top of mind,” Dailey explained. “The average time for Farmers to take a phone call to report a first notice of loss is approximately 12 minutes,” said Dailey. “With the Enterprise First Notice of Loss, or EFNOL platform, it can take as little as three minutes from start to finish.”

Accessible on the Farmers Mobile App or from a computer, EFNOL gives an agent assisting a customer or the customer alone the ability to report a loss and upload images so that a Farmers adjuster can be assigned to the customer’s loss, the customer can find a repair shop of his or her choice, get in a rental car, and complete the whole process quickly and seamlessly.

Embracing technology to deliver new products and services that today’s customers want — and now expect — isn’t new to Farmers.

Back in the 1950s, the Los Angeles-based organization bought one of the first available mainframe computer systems, and early adoption of remote data backup protected its operations from the ill effects of a destructive 1971 earthquake.

The organization’s openness to new ideas and innovation is driven by its commitment to constantly improve the customer experience from start to finish. And, that commitment begins with a greater understanding of customers’ needs. Farmers used insights gained from customers to redesign the website and upgrade its mobile app.

 “In the last five years, there has been a dramatic acceleration of thinking about how the customer interacts with Farmers on multiple levels, and also the technology required to accomplish this goal,” said Mike Linton, Chief Marketing Officer. “When we invest in digital, we invest in customer service first, selling second, and marketing last, because that’s how consumers use it.”

Farmers has used Salesforce technology through the cross-discipline Customer Success Platform, which includes Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, Einstein Analytics, and Salesforce Platform. The platform provides Farmers customers, employees, and agents with a single sign-on into Salesforce from 15 different entry points.

It allows secure data and knowledge sharing, and in the future it will offer a single view of customers across their entire portfolio of insurance products. Farmers uses success managers, program architects, and signature success support teams from Salesforce Cloud Services to help customers get the most value from the Customer Success Platform in the least amount of time. 

“Our goal is to help make the customer even smarter about insurance and empower Farmers agents to improve that experience at each and every interaction,” said Ron Guerrier, Chief Information Officer. “Whether it’s from a phone via a mobile app or in person, technology could make all of that better.”

This technology can help reduce time spent on routine tasks and provide Farmers agents with more time to develop meaningful relationships with customers, which is part of the Farmers “customer-centered, agent-powered” strategy. New technology and intuitive data also enable Farmers agents to better understand customers and deliver a faster, more efficient, and more responsive level of service. Technology will never replace the importance of human interaction, and engagement between a Farmers agent and the customer remains paramount. The personal relationship, however, can be enhanced by the benefits of technology. “At the core of our strategy, we’re trying to facilitate fantastic relationships between our customers and Farmers agents,” said Dailey. “We’re trying to do everything we can with technology to support that relationship.”

The Farmers Customer Self-Service (CSS) community now ranks as one of the largest Salesforce communities on Community Cloud launched to date, supporting millions of policyholders. While the CSS community offers Farmers a direct connection with customers, Salesforce also helps support the customer-agent relationship.

“As we look at Marketing Cloud and how an agent can elect to use it in their day-to-day operations, our ultimate goal is to provide tools agents can use to enhance their existing communications with customers,” said Amanda Reierson, Head of Digital. “At Farmers, we want to help customers come away feeling smarter about insurance. Salesforce allows the organization and agents to communicate more widely with our customers at scale through a variety of different channels.”