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Karen Peterson, Marsh US Consumer

  

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Company: Marsh U.S. Consumer
Company Description: Marsh is a world leader in delivering risk and insurance services and solutions to its clients. Though leadership and innovation for clients and the insurance industry — introducing and promoting the concept and practice of client representation through brokerage, the discipline and globalization of insurance and risk management services and many other innovative tools and service platforms.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Young Customer Service Professional of the Year

Nomination Title: Karen Peterson, Program Specialist

    Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

When Marsh U.S. Consumer took on the administration of a major new client this
past summer, the Contact Center was faced with 5,500 new policyholders
subscribing to dozens of unfamiliar products provided by 100 new-to-Marsh
insurance companies. Karen Peterson closed that familiarity gap on her own
initiative, and all by herself.

Now the 23 service representatives newly onboarded to work expressly with this
major client will know exactly what to do to swiftly and efficiently address
customer issues . . . as well as bind new or expanded coverage in less time with
shorter underwriting periods than before Marsh earned the business.

“She had onboarded clients, but never on such a grand scale,” describes
department supervisor Wendee Prom. “She set up the system we needed to assume
customer service absolutely seamlessly”—the premise that won Marsh U.S. Consumer
the multimillion-dollar book of business in the first place. The client had
serviced its own business before contracting with Marsh.

In the grandest-scale operation of her three-year tenure at Marsh, Karen:

•     created a thorough reference guide to carriers and products within three
months for a client that had no such work in place;
•     greatly eased representatives’ ability to solve customer problems by reducing
number of templated document types by 10 percent; and
•     supervised the hiring and orientation of 23 new hires in three months to
service the new book of business.

“Because of the number of policyholders, carriers and products, this client was
far more complicated than most,” says Sheila VanderSchel, whom Karen reports to.
“And because they had done their own admin, they had no reference to all their
products and carriers. There was nothing in hand to train new representatives.
Karen created it.”

The matrix, which Karen created using an Excel spreadsheet, can be sorted by
carrier, line of business, date of issuance, policyholder name, and a host of
other categories. And it can serve as a model to onboard similar clients.

Karen, who has been with Marsh for three years, was the perfect person to take
on this task, VanderSchel says: “She is calm; nothing stresses her out. She can
take a complicated situation, figure out how to deal with it and go on to the
next thing. And later, she will return to what she’s done to figure out ways to
improve it.”

    List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

    Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:

Name     Karen Peterson
Title Program Specialist, Marsh U.S. Consumer
Years at Marsh   3
Total years in
insurance industry   5

Education, degrees, institution degree received from, and related coursework or
professional development
•     B.A. in Art and Design, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa – 2004
•     B.A. in Advertising, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa – 2004
•     Associate in Insurance Services (AIS)