How to enhance Shareholder Value through a Customer support in the Insurance industry : A BUSINESS DRIVEN APPROACH TOWARDS MOBILE- AND SELF-SERVICE- BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Abstract: An increased competitive climate has enhanced the importance for companies to differentiate from other companies. Today, the customer support within service organizations are often disregarded as a source of value due to the focus on costs. Further, it has become more important to leverage the contact with the customer at all encounters. New technological advancements within Business Intelligence have also enabled companies to increase their competitiveness through improved decision support. The objective of this thesis is through a case study investigate how an insurance company could leverage its customer support as a source of creating shareholder value as well as how to apply trends within Business Intelligence for increased decision support. This was done through developing a conceptual model based on academic theory in order to provide a tool for analysis and development of a customer support. The research questions intends to investigate how an customer support can contribute to, and balance a focus on service quality, costs and sales in order to enhance shareholder value. A business driven approach was further used in order to understand how a customer support could leverage the emerging trends of Business Intelligence. This since the thesis also aims to provide some first insights into how to leverage the trends of mobile- and Self-Service- Business Intelligence within the customer support within insurance companies. The research emphasizes the need to have a holistic view of what drives value and costs with regard to the retention, growth and acquisition of customers when viewing the customer support as a source of value. The thesis concludes that both the trends of mobile- and Self-Service- Business Intelligence could enable an insurance company to gain new insights through utilizing existing internal as well as external data in order to conduct a more continuous and flexible analysis of important matters.