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For The People: Allstate's President of Social Networking

I recently alluded to Allstate Financial's creation of a "president of social networking" position and the appointment of Desiree Rogers to the position. I wondered aloud about just what Rogers' role would entail. Since I wrote that post, I've been able to interview Rogers for an Executive Close-Up article for an upcoming issue of I&T. And from the interview, I got the impression that Rogers, who is well known in the Chicago area for her community involvement, will focus her efforts on overall v

Recently I alluded to Allstate Financial's creation of a "president of social networking" position and the appointment of Desiree Rogers to the position. I wondered aloud about just what Rogers' role would entail, writing:

From the press release (we're hoping to speak with Rogers herself in the near future), it's difficult to tell just what kind of social networking-specific expertise Rogers has. Although, she did reportedly launch several strategic customer service and technology integration efforts at Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas. Further, is Allstate's definition of "social networking" consistent with what the term means to Facebook and Myspace users, or is the carrier defining the concept more broadly?

Since I wrote that post, I've been able to interview Rogers for an Executive Close-Up article for an upcoming issue of I&T. And from the interview, I got the impression that Rogers, who is well known in the Chicago area for her community involvement, will focus her efforts on overall vision and organization, and less on the technology specifics behind the effort.

Let me be clear though, it's not that she won't be involved in all aspects of the project, it's just that her expertise lies more within the realm of customer experience than it does in the technological details of Web 2.0 technologies like XML and Ajax.

from my interview...

Rogers: "Basically, my career has been working with companies and working internally with companies to ensure that they are as customer-centric as they can be. In this case, the mechanism for getting closer to the customer or communicating with the customer is a social network. I was hired because I have been in regulated businesses before where I've had to work on something that might be new, both externally in the industry and also internally in a company."

In many ways, choosing a relative outsider to head up an effort such as this seems like the way to go. Allstate already has a capable IT team -- one that I'd expect could design a well-developed social networking site - and third party partnerships can be made to fill in an gaps in technological expertise.

What's needed at the top of a project like this is someone to ensure that the social network is intuitive, and simple enough for Allstate Financial customers and potential customers to use. It can't be built from the perspective of a computer programmer, but from the perspective of a common user. That's particularly true in this instance because the social network project is aimed in part at individuals of retirement age who are likely to be less tech savvy than the general population.

As Rogers puts it:

from the interview:

I think it's very important to have someone... looking at things from a customer's perspective and is able to ask the right questions and make sure that we don't deviate and build something that may be a technological marvel and may look like the greatest social network on paper ever, but doesn't work in terms of securing that relationship and that feel we want with our customers."

I recently alluded to Allstate Financial's creation of a "president of social networking" position and the appointment of Desiree Rogers to the position. I wondered aloud about just what Rogers' role would entail. Since I wrote that post, I've been able to interview Rogers for an Executive Close-Up article for an upcoming issue of I&T. And from the interview, I got the impression that Rogers, who is well known in the Chicago area for her community involvement, will focus her efforts on overall vision and organization, and less on the technology specifics behind the effort.

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