If You Were to Open a New Agency Tomorrow

Like the insurance policy itself, most agents and brokers have been around a while. You’ve seen the agency slogans: “Serving Centerville Since 1902.”

But being traditional isn’t good enough. In fact, there’s a downside to all this tradition—industry practices that are stuck in the past. Don’t you do some things in your agency simply because “That’s the way we’ve always done them?” Maybe you’ve heard the related adage: “If you keep on doing what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

If you were to take your existing customers and open a brand-new agency tomorrow, what would you do differently? Here are a few suggestions:

First, think big, or at least bigger.

“Independent agent” doesn’t have to mean small. With your industry expertise and client knowledge, you’re a major player in this economy. But in order to get to that next level, you need professional management. In so many agencies the Peter Principle is at play—people rising through the ranks simply because they’ve hung around. The best producers aren’t necessarily the best managers. You’ll need to hire professional managers with understanding of a balance sheet; consumer marketing, which is harder to do for agents than selling; and, most important, recruiting and retaining the best employees.

Speaking of employees, you don’t just need great producers. The second key aspect you’d want in your new agency is service staff capable of consultative or solution selling as opposed to order taking, processing and paper pushing. You might start by meticulously hiring personality types who relish consultative sales. Those who don’t mind asking about the missing umbrella policy on the account. Or offer a free life insurance quote by someone else in the agency. (As opposed to those who are more passive and wait for the phone to ring).

But it’s not enough to have a new level of human resource to create a new agency around consultative selling. The third piece in a new agency is technology, such as customer relationship management tools, that assist agents in anticipating customer needs. CRM tools provide management teams with more actionable knowledge about their customers than ever was possible.

In your new agency, technology begins with a new strategy and a new mindset around service. Sure, service is important, particularly in today’s market where insureds are paying more for coverage. So many agents are viewed as passive; the truth is, you’re too busy on busy work. Because you don’t have any extra time—at least the way you’re doing business today—you hope (expect) the consumer to call when they need something.

We in the industry are immersed in our old bureaucracy and processes, undermining our ability to do a better job for the consumer. We incorrectly label busy work as “service.” Many of these tasks can be handled with technology tools that allow agents and their staff to spend more time helping clients address business issues of concern to them, not just paperwork issues. Some of these tools are provided to your customers by carriers themselves; some of them are provided by carriers through your agency’s Web site; and still others can be provided online by the agency itself. These services include: billing inquiry; policy inquiry; replace, edit, remove or add a driver; real-time claims status; request a quote; request an MVR; “call me, I have a question” one-click button; certificates of insurance; and a change to personal or insured company information.

Consumers view these modified customer services as very valuable. For example, we know that many contractors are going online for their mission-critical insurance certificates after normal business hours. Why is this? Because that’s when it’s convenient for them; that’s when they’re thinking about it; that’s when they want them handled! Why not provide these “outfacing” customer services, especially when they’re so easy to do?

Traditionally most of our industry’s improvements in communications have occurred only between agencies and carriers. These “infacing” services aren’t enough. Your agency should be more collaborative with business partners in the industry to reach out to your customers and prospects. In doing so you’ll provide a better product to the consumer—not just the insurance policy itself, but the whole customer experience.

Sure, it might be nice to start over with a new agency. Since for most of us that’s not possible, why not take a fresh look at what you’re doing and make some changes? Even some incremental steps—such as offering your customers more self-service options—are better than nothing.

It’s a nice slogan, but it no longer is enough for us to say, “Your Friends on Main Street Since 1902.” It’s time our industry catches up to 2002.

Morgan (rmorgan@confirmnet.com) is executive vice president of San Diego-based ConfirmNet Corporation, which provides Web-based services designed to meet all the needs of those managing certificates of insurance. Among the applications is CertificatesNow, which delivers online certificates of insurance.