| FROM THE COMMISSIONER |
Instant Communication
Instant Chat with KID
KEN SELZER
Kansas Insurance Commissioner
I
’m sure your clients stop by your offices to
chat about their insurance. We have a similar
situation at the Kansas Insurance Department,
but our chats usually take place online instead
of in person.
Our department is nearing the first anniversary of our
live online chat feature for both consumers and agents.
Since our hard launch of the feature on our KID website
in May 2016, we have had a steady stream of monthly
typed questions and answers. We have averaged 186 chats
each month through the service, which is available on our
home page at www.ksinsurance.org.
Trained consumer and agent assistance representatives
follow the chat daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday
through Friday. Consumers type their concerns to a
representative instead of talking live to one on the phone.
And the same goes for agents.
With an average of about 10 agent chats per day, our
Licensing/Market Regulation representatives answer
questions ranging from printing licenses to lines of
authority changes to renewals. Many of those types
of online questions can be answered quickly. Some
questions, however, require more time and information
than an online chat can provide. When that is the case,
our reps will let you know how to contact us for any
detailed explanations.
Our consumer assistance chats range in topics from
property replacement costs, the claims process and
prescription drug concerns.
The consumer/agent chat feature, an innovation that has
caught the attention of other state insurance departments
across the country, provides access to many common
questions. But for those complex consumer insurance
concerns, our department publications can often be
valuable.
Most of you are familiar with the types of publications
we have available, both for online viewing and printing
and as hand-held hard copies. As we move toward more
efficient methods for operating our state agency, we need
your assistance.
Through do-it-yourself printing of the information
from our booklets that are posted in PDF form on our
website, you can have the updated information for your
clients sooner. That’s because as soon as the information
is updated by our department, we post it online. The
information doesn’t have to wait to be distributed until
after the hard copies are printed, a process that has a
variable timeline.
We have no qualms about your printing the PDFs from
our website. It saves all of us time and money. We would
encourage you to tell your clients to use the same method
for their personal use.
Communicating insurance information can be a tricky
scenario because of its complexity, as you are well aware.
Our chat feature and our publications provide two
important ways to transfer insurance knowledge to you
and to your clients. We invite you to use both, if you
haven’t already. And, as always, if you have suggestions
about improvements in either process, please contact us.
| March - April 2017 | KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER
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