AAA improves member experience with DocuSign eSignature

As the largest personalized insurance provider in the state, AAA of Washington doesn’t just offer roadside assistance—it provides its customers with a deep sense of security. From travel perks and identity theft monitoring, to defensive driving courses and safety training for teen drivers, AAA looks out for its members over the course of their lifetime.  

AAA of Washington employs 85 agents across 26 locations. But with such a vast market, agents at the local AAA organization serving the Washington community struggled to keep up with the volume of policies. Often on the road to initiate contracts in person, AAA’s agents not only had to deal with manual, paper-based policy processes, but also grappled with bottlenecks as incomplete documents piled up while they were away from their desks. AAA of Washington saw an opportunity to transform its business by digitizing these outdated paper-based workflows at the core of its customer signing process. 

“Agents would print all applications and make demarcations in the margins telling the customer where to sign,” said Chris Lavin, Field Agency Sales Specialist at AAA of Washington. “Then the agent would scan it and email it to the customer. The customer had to print, sign and scan it before sending it back to the agent, who then also had to print, sign, and scan it again, to send it off to our quality control group. All this for a single contract, and we do 1,200 policies a month.”

AAA of Washington chose DocuSign eSignature to transform its contract workflow, making it more efficient, secure and mobile-friendly. As a result, the company saw a massive reduction in the time required to complete new customer applications and a significantly improved experience for both agents and new customers.

DocuSign eSignature’s user-friendly interface drove adoption at AAA

AAA’s old workflow was vulnerable to problems that caused backlogs and inefficiencies. During busy times, applications piled up, delaying reviews and approvals. But DocuSign eSignature reduced this buildup since agents no longer had to spend time catching and correcting manual errors.

To start, AAA of Washington used DocuSign eSignature for insurance policy applications and claims. Because the initial roll out was successful and well received by users, AAA also implemented eSignature for travel and roadside assistance contracts and applications. AAA even streamlined its HR processes with DocuSign eSignature, eliminating inconsistencies in documents used for onboarding with DocuSign templates.

“We’re pretty close to 100 percent of usage at this point. Our adoption rate is really high because it’s so easy to use and removes so much pain from previous, paper-based processes,” Lavin says.

DocuSign eSignature delivers cost and time savings

Since the company began using DocuSign eSignature, the ROI for AAA of Washington has been profound. The time it took to complete new customer applications was reduced by 85%, from 14 days to just two. The rate of “Not In Good Order” contracts has also been drastically reduced to zero. And there was an unexpected yet positive environmental impact as well—AAA no longer has to shred nearly as many documents, going from six bins per quarter to just two every year.

AAA of Washington trusts the safety and security that DocuSign eSignature provides. “We can trust DocuSign. We can trust that the encryption is taken care of and we don’t worry about losing anybody’s data,” Lavin said. “It completely helps in an audit because the insurance carrier actually sends us back a list every week highlighting any forms they haven’t received back yet.” DocuSign eSignature also ensures ongoing compliance. “We know from this day forward we have correct forms and a record of transactions. We can now find what we need through a simple search of completed DocuSign envelopes,” according to Lavin.

Postage, gas, time, paper, ink, printing—these are all areas where AAA of Washington has seen significant savings since adopting DocuSign eSignature, but Lavin says it goes beyond the upfront hard-cost savings. “We’re actually selling more than we did prior to DocuSign. After six months of data we were able to show that the agents who used DocuSign sell more business because they have more time to sell than the agents who don’t. That combined with a great experience translates to more, happier members.”