With a view to leverage the impact of social networking, leading insurer Max New York Life Insurance is mulling an initiative whereby its customers can connect with the company through SMS to get the complaints resolved.

"Social media has become an effective tool to increase networking and business development efforts. To leverage the impact of social networking on businesses, we are planning to start an initiative whereby our customers can just send an SMS and get their grievances resolved," the company's Director and Head (Information Technology), Hitesh Arora, told PTI here today.

Max New York Life Insurance, a joint venture between MAX India and New York Life International, plans to launch the initiative in the third quarter (Q3) of FY 12, he said.

"We want to use the SMS platform for connecting with our customers. Under the initiative, when a customer sends an SMS, he would get either an SMS or an email from our side informing about the registration of his complaint. An executive will then contact the customer and help him resolve the issues," he explained.

The company had, last year, started a similar interactive initiative on Facebook by creating a community titled 'Igenius' for parents to discuss opportunities that would help hone their children's hidden talents, he said.

"We have around 2-lakh members including parents and experts in the community who share their experiences as well as information. This platform has also helped us in reaching out to the parents to inform them about our new policies for children, thus generating business for us," Arora added.