7 Secrets: Using Technology to Grow a Large, Efficient Agency

1. Customer Relations

Its no secret that maintaining good relations with your clients will get referrals. What makes people think highly of you or your staff is no secret either. Make them feel like they are important to you, and do what you promise, when you promised it. If the carrier screws up, fix it before the client calls it to your attention.

Simple things matter. When you call someone by name, they think you have a good memory, but when you asking about their spouse or children using first names, you have just put yourself into their circle of friends. The ABS^® Account Screen puts all that information in font of you in a split second. Imagine being able to say; "how is Suzie doing? Isn't she going to have a birthday next month?"  You might be able to do that in a small agency, but with growth, it would take a special kind of memory very few of us have.

ABS Agency Builder can let you record pending tasks, and even pop up reminders when they are due. Never, forget what you promised.

2. Prospect 

Yes, you still have to x-date, but now its easy. When you first started out, you knew that x-dating was the way to get business. After you reach a certain size, its easy for service work to get in the way of prospecting. Besides, shuffling x-date cards each month is a pain in the, you know what. 

There is a better way, but we must remember why we x-dated in the first place. It was to get a list of people to call when the time was right.

Many senior agents will tell you that they still have most of the clients they got when they were brand new, and x-dating like mad. There are reasons why. When you x-date, you are target marketing -- selecting clientele based on some criteria that made you think they would be good prospects. That's good.

Now you can enter the information into ABS Agency Builder that you have stored on the x-date cards you have tucked away in that dusty old shoe box. Many of them will be too out of date, but at least you can use the ABS^® x-date reports to get back into prospecting the easy way. 

Another thing that works is to make sure you enter client information into ABS Agency builder every time someone calls for a quote. In ABS^®, the renewal date for any prospect policy is automatically an x-date, and will appear on the x-date report -- even for existing clients. 

3. Market internally

There is an old dairy farmer's saying; there are only two ways to get more milk -- milk the cows harder or get a bigger herd. When you market to your existing book of business, not only are you milking the cows harder, but you are fixing yourself in the minds of your clients as their insurance agent. That loyalty keeps them with you. For every account you lose, that's one more new prospect you must sell. Keeping is easier than selling.

Since the renewal date for any prospect policy is automatically an x-date, the x-date reports will help keep things from falling through the cracks. When you write that auto policy, but miss the fire policy, you should still put the fire policy into ABS^®. That way, when its x-date rolls around, the x-date report helps you remember to make the call.

There are other internal marketing tools. Queries help you identify households that are candidates for certain policy types. With a couple of mouse clicks you can have a list of every household with an auto policy, but not a fire policy. There are dozens of other such queries that help you sell virtually every policy type known.

Taking it a step further, the ABS^® marketing campaigns provide a system that greatly increases your chances of success. Not only can you target a policy type, but you can target a specific group, or demographic. The success rate of marketing campaigns is phenominal. 

4. Keep good records

Some businesses don't even know what E&O means, but as an insurance professional, you do. It is critical that you record details of your interaction with your clients. It is also important that you record other activities you do on your client's behalf. For example, details of any transaction you have with an underwriter, or the claims office should be recorded. We don't mean on the note pad from the glass shop.

Sticky notes, and scratch pads are the absolutely worst way to keep records, but we have all taken the short cut. The phone rings, we answer and jot down some cryptic message with the idea of translating it later. Then the phone rings again. Pretty soon we are out of time, and stick the note in the client's folder -- half the time without a date. We know we should do better, but _________ (fill in your own excuse here).

The Account Activity Log in ABS Agency Builder, is awesome. It makes log entries for you, automatically. For example, create an auto binder, and the log entry will be date stamped, and identify the person who created the binder. It also includes the year, make, model, VIN, and policy number. All you have to do is click the OK button to enter the log into the client's electronic folder. The same is true for letters, and other activities. You can even log phone conversations here, and forget transcribing the sticky note.

When you are able to reconstruct an activity or phone conversation months after the fact, your client will be impressed, and so will underwriting and the claims office. You know what we mean. It can save your bacon.

5. Minimize paperwork

We believe insurance agencies will be paperless when bathrooms are, but all the same, we want to minimize paper handling. If you are putting insurance forms in the typewriter or filling them out by hand, you can do a lot better.

Creating binders, certs, and EOIs are as easy as a couple of mouse clicks, and they look so professional. Years ago one of our clients was closing on the purchase of their new house. There were some last minute changes in financing and the title company. Within a 30 minute period we had to create and fax four different EOIs. Fortunately, ABS^® allowed us to create changes to lender, loss payee clause, vesting name, and premium payment instructions. We have all been situations like this, but with these time constraints, a typewriter would not have allowed us to respond.

Now, this is more on the order of customer satisfaction, so lets talk about document storage and retrieval. Agents talk about batch filing, chronological filing, medical office cabinets, and so on. The efficiency problems associated with all of them is not filing. It is information retrieval. How easy is it to lay your hands on the document you need. With ABS Document Manager, you can scan a document right into your client's electronic file. You can even store photos of farmer Olsen's barn taken with a digital camera. The nice part is when you need to have a hard copy of the document, it is as easy as 123. 1) - locate farmer Olsen's account (sub second activity), 2) Bring up Document Manager, 3) locate and print the document. Okay so step 3 is really two parts. The bottom line is that you have the hard copy in one or two minutes, and you have never left your desk.  If the document is requested by underwriting, you can even fax it right from your computer instead of printing it. 

6. Provide great service

This is where the computer can really be your buddy. It can remind you to do things, and make it easier to do most of them. If you make your client wait in the title office because you failed to provide the Evidence of Insurance on time, they are going to shop for a new agent.

This really gets back to item one - customer relations. If you give your clients great service you will keep them. If they should leave for whatever reason, they probably won't get the kind of service the expect, and you'll get them back.
It is important to note that technology is the friend of service. It helps sell because of easy information retrieval, but the impact on service is arguably 10 fold. That is because the perception of good service is the speed with which you can accomplish customer requests. If they need a document, and you can give it to them "while they wait", that's good service. If you must type it, or worse, request it from the carrier, that's lousy service. Service is a perception. Speed and accuracy equals good. Slow and inaccurate equals bad. ABS Agency Builder increases both speed and accuracy.

7. Keep happy staff

If you are stressed because of lagging sales, or mounting service work, so are they. They get it from you, and from the escalating work load they must do. Psychological studies have shown that providing staff with efficiency tools will make them more efficient than can be accounted for by the tool itself. It's all attitude. Remember, a happy employee will treat your clients better, which goes back to the first secret - customer relations.

Here's a little story that exemplifies this concept. A couple of years ago we spoke to an agent's CSR. She told us that she had an opportunity to work for a different agent and get a nice raise in pay. In her interview, she queried her new prospective employer about his willingness to begin using ABS Agency Builder. When it was clear he would stay with his "old fashion" way of running his agency, she turned down a job where she would make more money and have a shorter commute.

If you think technology can't impact your staff's level of satisfaction, think again. Naturally, one must be careful about the technology that is employed. We strongly believe ABS^® will make your life, and that of your employees much nicer.

You should know that the CSR mentioned above works for an agent that does more than just buy good software. By the way, he is one of the larger, better respected agents in Northern California.