Movie lovers may remember Mel Gibson’s gaining the ability to read women’s minds in “What Women Want.” And we market researchers sometimes wish for this kind of direct insight. Living in the real world, when we want to know what people want, we turn to our research tools: surveys, interviews and focus groups.

And in a recent survey of 1,498 independent insurance agents, we validated what many industry leaders already know: among all the important factors that agents consider when choosing their “go-to” carriers for personal lines, claims service quality matters most. Not technology, not their own agency compensation – but the service their clients get from insurance carriers.

But carriers want to know what “great claims service quality” means. So we asked more detailed questions.

We found that the speed of the first call to the insured matters more than anything else – even more than getting the claim paid quickly. Carriers can use this information to prioritize their efforts to improve so that they deliver on what agents really want.

You can read more about a few initial findings in “Agents’ Top Rated Carriers Make Fast Claims Adjuster Contacts,” an  article in the Insurance Journal, which sponsored the research study. The full report of this survey, conducted by Channel Harvest, is available as of early June.

For more information on purchasing the survey report, contact Peter van Aartrijk at peter@Aartrijk.com.