While overall customer service by insurance providers is remaining steady this year versus last, a new study shows the industry is performing well in phone customer service, but lagging in web customer experience.

The study was conducted by eGain Communications Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., a provider of customer services and knowledge management software. The firm’s 2010 State of Customer Service Study evaluated numerous aspects of web self-service and contact center customer service of industries including insurance, healthcare and pharmaceuticals sectors.

Overall service performance for the insurance industry was unchanged with a “below average” score of 1.8 out of 4.0, according to eGain.

Cross-agent experience fell from an “above average” score of 2.2 in 2009 to a “below average” score of 1.2 this year, with the firm noting disparities across contact center agents in answers, query handling process, business policy and offers.

Officials at eGain said, for example, some agents would cross-sell contextual offers while others would not, passing up revenue generation opportunities. Some agents would answer questions and provide quotes, while others transferred the call to another department or directed the caller to the broker channel or company website.

The firm also found “significant” disparity in the quality of agent answers in some instances, it said.

The survey’s authors identified an insurance industry lack in adopting eService best practices, noting 84% of the companies participating in the study did not send an automatic acknowledgement of email queries, a common best practice it says can help “set the right expectations and elevate customer experience.” The study indicated that 28% of the companies did not respond to email queries at all, ignoring revenue opportunities.

“eService channels such as email, web chat, and co-browsing continue to increase in popularity, partly driven by generational preferences,” said Anand Subramaniam, vice president of marketing for eGain, in a statement. “Forward-looking insurance companies have the opportunity to get ahead of competitors by not only implementing strong capabilities in these channels but also by improving cross-channel and cross-agent consistency of knowledge and practices through a Customer Interaction Hub strategy.”