48 Years of Paper – Changing the Culture of the Allstate Financial Contact Center

presentation by Theresa Calabrese, Jenny Matya, Barbara Miller & Nancy Wise of Allstate Financial
9 August 2005 (Tuesday)
5 - 7 pm at Allstate with webcast to Factiva (see sidebar for directions)

Strategic Challenge
Allstate Financial has several contact centers located in three different states, each of which operations semi-autonomously. As we have integrated these call centers to handle calls from other locations, we discovered a need for sharing of information by customer service representatives. Much of the information used to answer customer and agent calls was inconsistent among representatives and across service centers and largely paper based. Life insurance and annuities are, by and large, heavily regulated by state. Approval of all content by our Legal, Tax and Compliance departments created a challenge many organizations undertaking content management do not have to face. Training already takes far too long and taking representatives off the phone for training they may not use immediately is not effective.

Solution
We needed to create a content management solution that would transform existing paper and scattered on-line documents into dynamic, interactive knowledge delivered at the moment of need.

We developed a new paradigm, where the employee/learner is viewed as a knowledge seeker, with constantly changing learning needs and timeframes.

Presenter Bios
Theresa Calabrese is a graduate of National-Louis University and has over 24 years of experience with Allstate Insurance in Human Resources, Training Design and Delivery and front line management. In addition to co-leading the Knowledge Management initiative, she is working on a project to enhance Leadership development and accountability

Jenny Matya is a graduate of Indiana University. She interned two years with Allstate Financial training and accepted a permanent position upon graduation. In 2004, Jenny joined the Knowledge Management team and has worked extensively with our technology partners to create system specifications and the automated workflow in Interwoven.

Barbara Miller brought 21 years of personal trust administration experience to Allstate during the inception of the Allstate Bank. Barb has a MLIS from Dominican University and earned her 6 Sigma Black Belt certification in 2004. Her library science and 6 Sigma skills are a great asset to the Knowledge Management initiative. She has worked extensively in developing and analyzing measurements for the project.

Nancy Wise brought over twenty years of management experience when she joined Allstate Financial in 1998. Since joining Allstate, she has managed the training department that supports the Allstate Financial Operations service centers and most recently is managing the Knowledge Management team.