Progressive Insurance

Business Profile.

Progressive Insurance is one of the largest insurers in the United States. It writes insurance across the US through the Internet, telephone and a network of over 36,000 independent agencies. Founded in 1937 and headquartered in Ohio, with a market capitalisation in excess of $10bn USD, Progressive has over 30,000 employees in more than 350 locations.

Solution Overview

VoiceVault Password Reset service provides Progressive's employees with an automated and secure method of resetting their passwords in an environment where access to critical data is of key importance

Value Generated

The solution is flexible, user friendly, and delivers significant annual cost savings in excess of $1.5M over the previous method of using help desk representatives. Progressive are now planning to expand the service to its agents

Progressive's interest in efficiency

Progressive takes pride in offering a first class service and such industry awards as being named as one of the '100 Best Corporate Citizens' (Business Ethics), and, 'Best Online Insurance Carrier' (Gomez), bear strong witness to this aim.

Providing an efficient service means being aware of how technology can benefit operations and save costs. In addition, Progressive considers good working conditions to be of prime importance in order to ensure that employees productivity levels are at a premium.

Voice biometrics was seen as a technology that is continually providing more efficient and secure applications while also being very cost effective. The advantage of voice verification is that it confirms a user's identity based on the unique features of a person's voice, which unlike PINs or physical tokens and passwords can't be shared, stolen or forgotten.

What was Progressive's need?

A common problem in most large companies today arises when employees forget their network or log-on passwords. Gartner estimate that up to 35% of calls made to IT help desks are about forgotten PINs and Passwords. The Meta Group says that password related help desk calls may cost as much as $30 a call.

In Progressive's case, resetting a password using the IT help desk was costing on average $9.00 per reset. Progressive needed a more efficient way of resetting passwords that saved time for their employees and reduced the need for help desk staff to be involved.

Competitive advantages offered by VoiceVault

VoiceVault provided a solution whereby employees reset their passwords over any phone without having to contact the IT help desk.

VoiceVault Password Reset service was chosen as the best solution based on the following key factors:

• Time taken by employees to reset their password was reduced to less than a minute (Typically manual reset can take upwards of 15 minutes including hold time).
• The accuracy and security of delivered by VoiceVault
• Convenient, user friendly and uncomplicated.
• VoiceVault was offered as a completely hosted service (as an alternative to licensed software) enabling fast implementation.
• The hosted service option meant virtually all in house set up and ongoing maintenance overheads were eliminated.
• Progressive have the option to bring the system in-house at a later date.
• Meet Progressive's technical requirements.
• No outlay on hardware and software.
• No upfront capital investment.
• Market leading capability to deal with cross phone verification - employees could call from home, mobile or office phones.

Implementation of VoiceVault's Password Reset service has resulted in annual savings in excess of $1.5m.

Future Plans

In addition to plans to roll out Password Reset to its agents creating a combined user base of over 240,000 individuals, Progressive are also currently examining other areas of their business so that they can use voice verification to add security and reduce costs using VoiceVault.