Douglas is serious, but Citizens customers may be a little skeptical. After all, this is the homeowners insurance provider that does not publish its phone numbers for consumer calls, making its customers instead call their agents.

That policy is changing, and that's just the beginning.

Last week Gov. Charlie Crist signed an insurance law that makes significant changes to Citizens' eligibility requirements. Those changes are expected to add hundreds of thousands of policyholders to the "insurer of last resort."

Citizens officials say the insurer was already in the midst of a transformation into a very different company. But after a special insurance session that focused a great deal on Citizens, the need to change is taking on a new urgency.

The revisions to the company's procedures include:

• Allowing Citizens to compete with private insurers for the first time.

• Eliminating the requirement that Citizens charge more than other carriers.

• Removing the mandate that policyholders leave Citizens if another insurance company wants to take them.

• Allowing customers of private insurers to seek out Citizens if they can get a reduction of 25 percent or more in rates.

• Canceling two of the company's planned 2007 rate hikes.

• Promises of rate decreases of between 5 percent and 10 percent.

Citizens executives expect that the new rules could push the company to as many as 2 million policies by the end of 2007.

Last year, Citizens grew from about 800,000 policies to more than 1.3 million as other insurers abandoned or scaled back their property insurance coverage in Florida.

Accommodating that new business is going to take a lot of work — and a lot of new employees. A new director of employee training, who will oversee plans to increase staff training, started this month and is busy getting up to speed.

Scott Wallace, who took over as interim president of Citizens this month, expects to hire 500 employees in the next year.

Those hires are on top of about 800 employees today, up from 250 a year ago.

So many people are being hired, in fact, that a book containing pictures of new managers was passed out at Thursday's meeting in Jacksonville. 

Wallace acknowledged that adjusting to the changes will be a challenge but said Citizens can handle the growth.

The key to success will be putting infrastructure in place to support it, Wallace said.

Already in the works are substantive changes aimed at improving employee training, including a plan to increase company audits and investigations if there are allegations of staff wrongdoing. The provider also plans to better monitor agents.

Agents by the thousands

Dealing with 8,300 insurance agents is a huge task on its own, said Joe Bouthillier, Citizens' director of agency operations.

He acknowledged that there have been significant issues with agents in the past.

Citizens allows any agent in the state to sell its policies, as long as he has a valid license and represents at least one other carrier.

By comparison, State Farm, which is No. 2 in homeowners policies, has fewer than 900 agents, and they sell primarily State Farm products.

Under the new rules, agents will be subject to more performance audits and written tests to show they know proper policies and procedures, Bouthillier said. Those who repeatedly give consumers wrong information or are unable to show they understand Citizens' underwriting rules and regulations will be fired.

But the focus of Thursday's staff meeting was on customer service. Consumer frustration can be alleviated, at least in part "by giving great service,'' Douglas told about 100 managers.

It is up to managers to ensure employees are sensitive to policyholders, he said.

It can be done even if a consumer is upset, he said. At one point, a thank-you letter from a customer was held up as an example. It sang the praises of a representative despite the fact that he had denied her claim.

Listening intently was Steve Bitar, Citizens' newly named manager of consumer services. His department will help consumers who are unable to get satisfaction with their claims adjuster or agent, whether it be by settling the claim or simply helping explain the terms of a policy.

"A lot of times within the insurance world there are a lot of language and jargon and provisions that are very hard for the consumer to understand," Bitar said. "So the customer-care representative will work with the consumer to help them understand it and make sure they're supported.''

Citizens already has more than 100 customer-care representatives, but Bitar's customer-care unit will consist of a second layer of representatives. They will step in and assist customers who aren't satisfied with their initial representative or field adjuster.

Bitar doesn't have a staff running yet, and like a lot of things at Citizens, his department is a work in progress. But he acknowledges a need for change, and he's drawing from experience in his previous job running Citizens' call center.

Often consumers calling for help were pushed back to their agent for answers. But the answers weren't always forthcoming, and many consumers ended up frustrated, Bitar said.

Another Citizens department starting from scratch in coming weeks is the commercial department, which will carry out the provider's newly expanded mission to insure more businesses.

Citizens also has put a new centralized purchasing department in place. It was formed to ensure that goods and services are bid out for the lowest price, something that didn't always happen in the past.

A senior purchasing representative asked managers attending the Jacksonville meeting Thursday to alert her to any personal purchasing arrangements they have with vendors so she could see whether they are subject to bidding regulations.

One year ago, employees were permitted to have private purchasing arrangements with vendors. It was not unusual for an employee to go to a local appliance store to purchase television monitors.

Those days are over, Wallace said.

Legislating customer service

State lawmakers mandated some of Citizens' more consumer-friendly changes. The legislature last year mandated the creation of Bitar's consumer unit.

The new standards promise prompt and professional claims and customer service.

"We are a different company than we were 2 ^1/2 years ago,'' said Douglas, the 72-year-old investment adviser who serves as the unpaid chairman of Citizens' board. "If people could see the facts, then their attitudes would be so different.''

Citizens officials need to present the governor and other top officials Tuesday with a plan of operations that shows customer service standards.

Andy Martinez, Citizens' director of outreach and education, said the company can improve and that he wants to hear from consumers.

Citizens plans to hold public hearings once each quarter in different parts of Florida to gather input.

"People are going to yell,'' Martinez said.

He is OK with that because comments will help Citizens be more responsive to consumers. The first hearing likely will be held in South Florida in the next few months, he said.

But there also is movement behind the scenes, including at the catastrophe operations center.

"We will have a best-in-class response if there is a major hurricane,'' said Tim Loftin, Citizens' new senior vice president in charge of claims. He left his job as claims manager for 12 Southern states at Safeco, another insurance company, to build Citizens' claims operation.

Citizens' problems handling about 120,000 claims from the 2004 storms are not hard to understand when you know what was happening in the background, Loftin said from his office in the Jacksonville building that will house the center.

Citizens had just two supervisors in place to deal with the 2004 storms. They were, in turn, dealing with more than 1,000 outside adjusters.

Loftin conceded that 10,542 complaints in 2004 was a high number, as was the 4,662 complaints filed after the 2005 storms. But he said the 2005 total also reflected a pool of claims that was about 50 percent higher than in 2004.

Although Citizens increased the number of supervisors from two to eight, it still was not enough, he said.

Now the troops have arrived.

Staffing has been beefed up to 52 supervisors in the catastrophe center, with 23 others expected to be hired by the time hurricane season is in full gear, Loftin said.

Those 75 supervisors work out of a large warehouse-type room with computer monitors and new claims-adjusting software.

That technology will enable adjusters to monitor the changing 

price of construction material after a storm to ensure Citizens provides windstorm victims with enough to rebuild.

Further, Loftin said Citizens has contracts with more than 2,000 outside adjusters and should be able to avert past problems that left it with inadequate field personnel.

Citizens also is working on improving its non-hurricane response, Loftin added.

Of 25,000 claims handled last year from Jan. 1 through October for fires, water pipe breaks and other damage, there were only 266 complaints, Loftin said. That's less than 1 percent.

But Citizens still ranks high compared with other big insurance