Gerber Life Insurance Company specializes in juvenile life
insurance (term life, accident, college plans, etc.). Formed in 1967 as a
subsidiary of Gerber Products (which has been owned by Nestle since 2007), Gerber
Life today has nearly 3 million policies in force with a total value of $33
billion. Its headquarters is in White Plains, New York. The main About
Us page is here. (For those following @CorpHist Twitter feed, the Gerber Baby is a girl who grew up to be a novelist: read all about her here. We believe she's the best rep for Gerber Life's corporate history, per below.)
OVERALL GRADE: C
Products/Services: C
The main About Us page (Meet Gerber
Life Insurance Company) states the company’s purpose in its first line: “Since
1967, Gerber Life Insurance Company has provided quality life insurance,
especially for young families on a limited budget.” It goes on to
elaborate, and includes an image of a family plus a few statistics about the
amount and geographical areas covered. All this is good, but the page could be
much improved by adding links within the text to pages such as Products
and Customer
Service.
Another issue: there are two awards at the foot of Meet Gerber
Life Insurance Company, with icons (bravo!) —but the awards date from 2009
and 2012. Are these the latest awards that can be mustered, or is this a case
of not keeping the site updated, per our Commandment
10 of About Us pages (“Remember to keep holy the updates”)?
Personality: B
The personality of Gerber Life shines through most in the page
that’s misleadingly labeled About the
Gerber Baby. It turns out to be corporate history told with charming
personal anecdotes about the founding of Gerber Baby Food, soon followed by the
search for the perfect baby face to use in advertising. This page ought to be
mentioned and linked to on the main About Us page: it’s a great introduction to
Gerber. Its final paragraph, “Another way to help baby,” sketches the
establishment of Gerber Life.
If this page hadn’t been so misleadingly labeled or had been
linked to within the text of the main About Us page, we would have given Gerber
Life an “A” for personality.
Accessibility: D
The Contact pages on this site are confusing. The link in
the header takes us to a page
with phone, email, and mailing addresses (U.S. and Canada). It has a link to a
standard online
form for submitting email. The Contact page’s sidebar has a link to
Customer Service, which repeats much of the information and links back to the
Contact Us page, with the promise that we’ll find “A directory of customer
service phone numbers and payment addresses.” We don’t. These pages should be
combined and simplified. Our Commandment
8 of About Us pages is, “Remember to make yourself and your organization
easily accessible.” Insurance companies have a reputation for being difficult
to deal with; special care should be taken not to confirm that impression.
TAKEAWAY
Look through your whole site for great material, and make
sure it’s easy to find, either by repeating it on the main About Us page or by
adding links to it.
Does your Web site’s “About Us” section
accurately convey your organization’s history and capabilities? Every two weeks
we evaluate one example, grading it in three areas that are key to potential
customers: Personality (Who are you?), Products/Services (What can you do for
us?), and Accessibility (How can we reach you?). To talk about your About Us
page, contact us!
Today’s example was chosen at random;
CorporateHistory.net has no ties to this company.
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