Intermediary Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Guarantee Steps: The Guarantee steps include activities required for the Intermediary customer to keep the product or service in working order for the Final user

B. Resources: Reduce resources required for the use of the product

2. Time – Reduce the time the customer must spend with the product

b.
Improve wait times in the process

NO.	SIC	YEAR	EXAMPLE
1	3531	1992	Caterpillar delivers replacement parts within 72 hours, 99.7% of the time.
2	5712	1987	Rent-A-Center promises free delivery and repair service within 24 hours. There are no credit checks and no obligation to keep renting. But for these extras, there is one heck of a hefty finance charge; easily twice credit card rates.
3	2834	1993	Perrigo's retail customers very pleased with its service: "I can pick up the phone and talk to the people at Perrigo and say: I have a problem and need action within 24 hours. Things are on my desk immediately."
4	3669	2002	Marks & Spencer, Britain's retail giant, recently purchased smart tag computerized product identifiers, which can read about 50 plastic merchandise containers at once, cutting down the average individual, manual scanning time by 83%, from 29 to five seconds. Marks & Spencer expects its $3 million smart tag investment to be recovered in three years.
5	6300	2005	Carriers create local presence to support their independent agents and still control costs with a "thin branch" operating model. In this operating model, two to four people working in a local market are supported by centralized services for rating, administrative support, transaction processing, underwriting analysis and information collection. This model reduces overhead and allows the local underwriters to work out of their home or car, while spending most of their time on site with agents.
6	6300	2005	It is difficult for a carrier to meet the needs for a large national broker in the same way as it does for an independent small agency. For large agencies, carriers offer dedicated service teams, on site representatives and guaranteed service levels. For mid-size agencies, the carriers provide local underwriting support and personal attention. Smaller agencies may draw on centralized call centers and high quality self-service technology tools. The carriers are thus providing different levels of service to the agencies depending on their size, profitability and growth.
7	6300	2005	Progressive Insurance has a company website named ForAgentsOnly.com, which allows its independent agents to conduct almost all of their business online. This includes getting quotes and submitting applications, processing payments, and making changes to existing policies. Even though Progressive's commissions are relatively low, agents continue to provide them business because they are so easy to do business with.

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