The MapQuest Platform: Meeting the Needs of Policyholders, Streamlining Internal Processes through Customized Mapping Solutions

Successful insurance companies must master the art of balancing multiple priorities in innovative ways. With more choices and information available to them, today’s consumers are much more likely to shop for the right insurance policy, the most responsive agents, and the best price – which has dramatically raised the competitive stakes for insurance providers.

To thrive in this new market, you must first cultivate new relationships by increasing your profile in key markets and making it easy for potential customers to connect with agents. Second, you need to maintain good relationships with existing policyholders by helping them quickly recover from the losses they’ve incurred and streamlining the claims process. And finally, you need to keep costs low by reducing your exposure through more accurate underwriting risk analysis, while enabling your call centers and insurance adjustors to fulfill claims in a conscientious and efficient way.

With the MapQuest® Platform, you can build custom insurance mapping solutions for your website that give your customers and employees easy access to the location information they need to help you meet these multiple demands. MapQuest Platform Services also makes it easier to do business by providing a single license for a search; routing and mapping platform you can use across your enterprise helping you forge long-term relationships with your insurance policyholders and maintain the highest standards of service.

Beyond Maps and Driving Directions for a More Dynamic Online Experience

Because different visitors come to your website with different needs — from finding an insurance agent for a quote to locating a repair shop for a claim — the MapQuest® Platform gives you the tools to build highly flexible business locators for your website that support customized inquiries. The capabilities include:

• Advanced Routing and Searching – Your customers can get custom-tailored driving directions to your agent offices, insurance claim centers, and preferred service centers based on shortest trip time, shortest distance, and avoiding highways or toll roads. Other search criteria could include radius, zip code, neighborhoods, drive time or distance and services provided. You can build custom applications to help your policyholders help themselves through easy access to information on claims centers, authorized automotive repair shops, and preapproved licensed contractors.
• Wireless Capabilities – Your policyholders and other website visitors can use their cell phones and wireless web-enabled devices to access your insurance agent or repair shop locator when they’re on the go.
• Points of Interest – MapQuest Platform Services offers an extensive database of millions of Points of Interests that can help your customers find other relevant services and attractions on the way to repair centers and claim centers and keep customers on your website longer.
• Interactive Maps – Aerial or satellite imagery, hybrid views, and drag and pan capabilities allow your policyholders to explore your business location and the surrounding neighborhood in detail.
• Send to Cell – Your customers can interact with your insurance agent locator, repair center locator, or claim office locator on a home or business computer and send maps and driving directions directly to their Web-enabled wireless phones and devices.
• Multi-Language Support –With the MapQuest Platform, your website can provide your policyholders and potential customers driving directions to your business in multiple languages.

Simplifying Access to Insurance Agent Location Information

Even with advances in call center and self-service technology, the insurance business thrives on good relationships between agents and policyholders. The MapQuest Platform provides the tools so you can build online insurance mapping solutions with capabilities that connect customers with nearby agents through easy-to-use business locator functionality so customers can find convenient agents near their home or workplace.

Optimizing Territory Coverage and Agent Mobility

By providing mapping software as a service, MapQuest gives you the underwriting tools to build custom insurance mapping solutions for strategic purposes such as evaluating your coverage within specific areas and analyzing potential new territories. Custom mapping capabilities added to your website can help you define geographical sales territories to assist with lead distribution and to maximize agent coverage. The advanced routing and trip planning functionality you build with the MapQuest Platform can also help your insurance agents find the most efficient directions between multiple stops to make the best use of their time in the field.

Improving Claims Fulfillment for Policyholders and Adjustors

The MapQuest Platform can help make your website a gateway to a wide range of location information on the vendors and services related to claims fulfillment for commercial and personal lines. You can customize your business locator to point policyholders to pre-approved body shops, windshield replacement vendors, contractors, roofers, electricians, plumbers – virtually any service your policyholders need. Your insurance mapping solution can also help accelerate the claims process from the outset by providing claims adjustors advanced trip planning for multiple stops and optimized routing so they can plan their time in the field more efficiently.

Understanding Location and Risk for Informed Underwriting

The online mapping solutions you develop with the MapQuest Platform can help you analyze a home’s or business’s proximity to risks such as flood plains, high-crime areas, fault lines, and fire zones, as well as the availability of fire department and police services. Agents can also quickly calculate driving distances for more accurate quotes on automobile policies.

Streamlined Data Management

With the MapQuest Platform, you have access to simple tools to upload and manage information on your policyholders or agent and claim center locations help keep your website accurate and relevant. The MapQuest Platform also gives you greater control by allowing you to host your data on your own website, behind your firewall.

Building Your Brand with a Reliable Partner

MapQuest’s reputation as an industry leader can strengthen your own image as a quality insurance company. Independent studies have shown that the MapQuest brand stands out as the most reliable, most visited, most trusted, and easiest to use online mapping service.* The MapQuest Platform allows you to incorporate the MapQuest® brand into your website so you can benefit from this association.

Want to Improve Your Service and the Way You Do Business?

Contact MapQuest Platform Services today for more on how you can use the MapQuest Platform to develop online mapping capabilities that strengthen relationships with policyholders, sharpen your strategic analyses, and make your internal processes more efficient for greater competitiveness.

*Keynote Systems Survey, September 2006; Landor & Associates, Brand Asset Valuator Study, June 2007 and comScore media metrics, US Mapping 2004-2007 rates MapQuest as having the most Unique Visitors.