ATLANTA, March 31, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan provides a full range of insurance services, including life, home, auto and retirement to more than 565,000 families across the state. Founded in 1949, the company has nearly 450 agents who, until several years ago, were all relying on their own techniques and processes for managing sales efforts and campaigns.
To provide agents with the tools needed to maximize cross and upselling opportunities, Farm Bureau Insurance leverages Aptean's Pivotal Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. In addition to deploying the technology to its agents, the company's home office and special investigative unit also rely on Aptean Pivotal to reduce customer resolution times and deliver a more personalized customer service experience. In all, Farm Bureau has more than 2,300 Pivotal users.
"Our business drivers for implementing Pivotal were simple," said Lisa Derby, client product development management specialist, Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan. "We wanted to increase sales and make it easy for agents to identify opportunities to maximize their respective books of business."
The flexible framework of Aptean Pivotal provides an activity log for both home office and agents to see notes and tasks, as well as includes a "household view" of customers, showing agents what products they could potentially sell a customer.
In addition to tailored features including intuitively matching members to products, Pivotal provides customer service representatives with access to each member's financial timeline for a more personalized level of service. The framework also enables easy integration with Outlook and other common office systems, delivering an easy deployment option for agents who work remotely and use their own hardware under the company's Bring Your Own Device policy.
"The integration with Outlook is critical for our field force as they can now link emails from underwriting right to their customers," continued Derby. "In addition, Pivotal's reporting functionality provides the field with a complete view of each of their customers without replicating data between systems."
Pivotal's reporting functions have enabled Farm Bureau to integrate data from other systems, including its contact management system. In the first quarter of 2011, the company had 931,000 contacts. There are now 1.5 million contacts in the system and nearly 750,000 households – up from 457,000 households in 2011.
About Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan
Farm Bureau Insurance was founded in 1949 by Michigan farmers, who wanted an insurance company that worked as hard as they did, gave honest service and cared about Michigan's future.
Today the company, known as Michigan's Insurance Company, is dedicated to protecting the farms, families, and businesses across the state. Its nearly 450 agents across Michigan provide a full range of insurance services - life, home, auto, farm, business, retirement, Lake Estate®, and more - protecting more than 565,000 Michigan policyholders.
About Aptean
Aptean helps businesses profit, innovate and grow where the work gets done—in the call center, on the floor of the factory, at the end of the assembly line. That's where Aptean's CRM, Complaints Management, ERP and Supply Chain software applications enable nearly 5,000 organizations to satisfy their customers, operate more efficiently and stay at the forefront of their industries. Aptean is where software WORKS. For more information, visit www.aptean.com.