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Competitive advantage for collision repair centres that demonstrate knowledge of auto insurance reforms: Insurer


August 19, 2010   by Canadian Underwriter


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Collision repair centres demonstrating a broad understanding of Ontario’s reformed auto insurance product will have a competitive advantage over centres that don’t, The Dominion president and CEO George Cooke said at the 20-20 Vision CARSTAR industry conference in Huntsville, Ontario.
Cooke was speaking to CARSTAR franchise partners from across Canada.
Cooke said his message was not limited to Ontario collision centres. He sensed reforms were also likely to happen in private auto insurance markets in Eastern and Western Canada as well.
Cooke noted Ontario auto insurance reforms to be implemented on Sept. 1, 2010 would provide average consumers with far more coverage options than they have had before.
“Part of the immediate future is that [when an insured comes to a repair centre with] a claim on the 15th of September or the 2nd of November, they’re likely to be a lot more confused about their insurance coverage than [prior to the reforms],” Cooke told the CARSTAR franchise partners.
“To the extent that you guys …[have] a little broader understanding of the situation in which Mom or Dad find themselves in, vis-à-vis their entire insurance purchase, that gives you an advantage on somebody else that’s in a different location.
“I suggest to you that a broader understanding is valuable in the sense that it might just help you relate more so than somebody else to how that particular consumer is feeling.”
Cooke provided his keynote address after Tom Connellan, author of Winning With Customers, discussed the importance of “memory management.”
Connellan urged franchise owners to make sure consumers remembered a good experience for each of the various ‘touch points’ at which a consumer comes into contact with the collision repair centre.
Cooke said his advice about the empathetic handling of a claims experience in the era of auto reforms had a wider application than just in Ontario.
“It’s a period of great change for them in this particular province [of Ontario],” he said. “And I suspect that that kind of reform is going to migrate East and West of here.”


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