If you’re not paperless, your agency, employees, and especially your customers, are suffering.
With the advent of Internet E-commerce, the local independent agent is in jeopardy of losing a substantial amount of its Personal Lines and Small Commercial Lines business. More and more insurance-related Web sites are advertising discounts because there’s no agent involved and thus no commission. These discounts range from $200 to $800 on Private Passenger Auto policies.
The Internet is an equal-opportunity competitor that affects agents in big cities and rural communities alike.
Let’s face it. People will pay more, when they feel that they’re getting more. Customer service can no longer be a nebulous term. Your agency’s focus must shift away from processing to perceptible customer service. But, how can your staff spend more time with customers when they’re still bogged down with processing paper? The answer: Electronic Filing (E-Filing).
BEYOND TRANSACTIONAL FILING
Many agencies saw Transactional Filing (T-Filing) as the answer to the paperless office. However, although it offers an effective interim solution, T-Filing still requires paper. Neither does it solve the problems of reconstructing files, misfiling, and so forth. T-Filing has also challenged producers, who usually aren’t as computer friendly as CSRs. Producers resent having to look up dates, and then search through T-Files, only to be told they can’t remove anything from the file.
During the past few decades, CSRs have been processing more and more paper, to the point that many of them feel that their job has degraded to that of a paper-pushing processor. For a CSR who has been in the business for 10 to 20 years, this can be depressing. Studies have shown that people’s mental attitudes have a direct correlation with their effectiveness and productivity.
THE E-FILING SOLUTION
Many agencies continue to work with traditional customer files, and have not yet made the move to T-Filing. For these agencies, we recommend a move directly to E-Filing.
E-Filing allows your CSRs to eliminate handling paper, and focus on what’s truly important: The customer. E-Filing impacts not only paper, but also the mindset of the CSRs and agency. It encompasses filing, distribution of information, and the whole spectrum of customer service.
E-Filing will give your CSRs the ability to do virtually everything from their desk, with few or no interruptions. This will save the average CSR the more than two hours per day that they now spend on faxing, filing, copying, printing, and mailing. E-Filing empowers CSRs to use their knowledge to help clients protect their assets, which is certainly more satisfying than processing paper. E-Filing is a mindset and a way of life, with the objective of eliminating the problems with paper, not just paper itself.
E-Filing will generate an immediate hard cost savings for your agency, something that T-Filing could never do. Postage costs have escalated to the point they represent a substantial percentage of an agency’s expenses. E-Filing can reduce these costs substantially. In order to do so, you’ll need to retrain yourselves and your customers to move away from costly, old-fashioned snail mail to an economical electronic method.
Mailing expenses also include the major costs of personnel, toner, paper, etc. Studies show that the average cost for mailing an envelope is not forty-five cents, but two dollars. Multiplying this by the number of items mailed every day, you arrive at a staggering figure.
Agencies are beginning to think and communicate electronically. In a perfect world, no one would ever print or mail anything. Why mail something when you can send it electronically? With scanning software, your CSRs will be able to combine a scanned document with any other document from the Electronic File and fax or E-mail it to a company or even a client.
Let’s say that your claims person wants to send a Loss Notice together with an E-File copy of a Dec Page, plus a scanned copy of a police report. The Loss Notice and the Dec Page can be printed to scanning software, stacked on top of the Police Report, and sent directly to the company, without the CSR ever leaving their desk. Individual supporting documents such as receipts and doctor’s bills can be filed in the computer until the claim is settled, and then archived to disk for future reference.
The CSR can also scan a copy of a Commercial endorsement, copy the invoice and cover letter to the scanning software, and send all three documents to the customer in one step. Both the agency and the customer copy can then be tossed.
Another benefit of electronic communication is that most fax/e-mail systems keep a log of all items sent and received. This provides proof that a customer received their document. Logs can be printed and stored on paper, or copied to software and stored electronically. Not only will E- Filing cut costs dramatically, the productivity of your CSRs, marketers, and claims people will increase dramatically — from 25% to 50%. They can spend the time freed up from handling paper to provide the quality customer service that will help overcome some of the lower prices that your competitors offer on the Internet. E-Filing can also show you how to integrate agency management technology that matches, and even exceeds, the benchmarks in the Best Practices Study.
Although the hardware and software costs of E-Filing are minor (with systems less than $300 per workstation), there are many new techniques involved. You’ll need to replace your agency’s manual and T-filing procedures with new ways of doing things. Just like the trapeze artist who must let go of one rung to grasp another, you’ll need to let go of the old way of doing business and grasp this new concept.
If you’re more interested in selling insurance than in re-inventing the wheel, we can help. Fries & Fries Consulting is providing the ProImage program to agents nationwide. Our trained professionals will teach your agency to make the transition to E-Filing. You’ll learn how to set up your E-Filing system, decide which documents to scan, and what hardware you’ll need. Depending on your state’s requirements, you might also receive Continuing Education Credit of three to six hours per person.