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* The Situation" Insurance call centers are beginning to lose their predominance as revenue drivers.
* The News; Improving their performance has focused on how callers are "walked through" various stages of call center interaction.
* The Upshot: New training methods, coupled with analysis of real-time customer dialogue, have yielded a playbook of proven sales techniques.
Call centers play an important role in auto insurance sales, providing a healthy chunk of the strong origination volume now being achieved through so-called direct channels that include telephony and the Internet. Across the industry, call centers conservatively accounted for more than $15 billion in auto insurance premiums in 2008 alone, according to Novantas research.
