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AMS Services
www.amsservices.com

Agency management system vendor that offers customer access Web extensions to its AfW (AMS for Windows) and Sagitta systems.

Applied Systems
http://www.appliedsystems.com

Agency management system vendor that offers customer access Web extensions to its TAM (The Agency Manager) system.

City-Quote
www.city-quote.com

City-Quote supplies complete agency sales sites including comparative quoting. To overcome the difficulty consumers have remembering marketed domain names, City-Quote provides domain names made up of a city name (e.g., Nashville) followed by the word "quote," as in www.nashvillequote.com.

FSC
www.fscrater.com

California comparative rating vendor that provides WebFSC, a comparative rating service agents can provide to their customers and prospects from the agency Web site.

idNET
www.goidnet.com

Provider of on-line self-service functionality for agency Web site visitors -- including access to a 24x7 call center. idNET makes a duplicate of the agency database and hosts it on their servers for agency customers to use. Works with Applied TAM and AMS AfW and Sagitta systems.

NSG
www.gonsg.com

National Services Group, provider of third-party AfW add-on services including i-REP, an extension to the AMS AfW system that provides real-time access to the AfW database, Web forms, and service requests integrated into AfW suspense system and normal workflow.

Web site diagnostic services

These four online diagnostic services detect and correct Web site errors, including HTML coding, broken links, and slow loading graphics -- all of which, if left uncorrected, tend to degrade site performance and download speed.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
www.w3.org

The W3C is an international Web standards organization that was created in October 1994 "to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability." More than 500 organizations have joined the W3C, which is headed by a team of more than 60 researchers and engineers.

Glossary

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Like their counterparts in word processing and desktop publishing, Cascading Style Sheets allow Web page designers to create and apply typographic style instructions (font, size, spacing, color, etc.) to elements on a page and throughout a document. ("Cascading" refers to what happens when several style sources compete for control and which rules are applied to make the correct style determination.)

Sounding Line
June 2001

Online Customer Service

Editorial

Vendor: CityQuote

Speed up web page download

Vendor: iRep

Vendor: WebFSC

Web Site Legal Issues

Strategy: Market Your Site

Resources