You can distinguish your customer service from other 'ME TOO' agencies by dividing the paper processing and service functions. Whether your agency has one owner and one employee or many owners and many employees, the problems are universal-reduced commissions.
Shrinking markets, and required use of company service centers or single terminal interface: these problems not only cause agencies to lose profits, but they also diminish the amount and type of customer service agents provide their clients. When I ask agents what differentiates their agencies from others, the answer is usually 'service.' But the kind of service most agencies provide is not true customer service; it is processing.
Answering the phone, taking down information, relaying that information to companies, and sending customers written verification on a timely basis makes you a 'ME TOO' agent. Almost every agency provides those services, and customers have grown to expect those things from any agency. If this is the basis of your customer service, then the only way you can acquire and retain clients is to provide a lower price, rather than requiring the CSR to perform services that could give your agency a unique business advantage.
To provide a customer service beyond what the competitors provide (i.e., annual personal insurance reviews and personal lines risk management), an agency must become more efficient, adapt its procedures and structure to take full advantage of new technologies, and rethink the way it processes paper.
Agencies provide four types of work: sales, service, processing paperwork, and management. In visiting agencies throughout the U.S. and Canada, I have observed that when a person is assigned a paperwork function plus any of the other three functions, the employee gives paperwork precedence. The mindset usually hinders the employee's ability to perform either function satisfactorily. It also explains why personal lines CSRs don't spend as much time on account development as most agency owners would like.
When I ask CSRs, 'Why don't you do a better job of account development?', the response is, 'We don't have time.' When employees have large piles of paper to process, it is not difficult to understand their aversion to generating more paperwork by asking for X-dates. CSRs who are responsible for both processing and customer service are bound to fail. This phenomenon is not new, but until now, there have been few solutions.
Have you ever had to clear your desk so you could leave on vacation? What did you do? You went to the office on a Saturday or Sunday and you processed a large pile of paperwork in hours when it usually takes days. This proves that paperwork should be performed by people who are not interrupted. This arrangement also frees up the CSR to perform services that could give your agency a unique business advantage. You could provide the service that the other agencies talk about but don't deliver.
The toughest obstacles to separating the processing and customer service functions are the psychological implications of changing the way things have always been done. But casting off the anchor to the past is necessary if an agency is to improve customer service and increase profit. With the advent of databased management systems and the use of transactional filing, the separation of processing and customer service becomes not only easier, but also more efficient, and it allows the agency to achieve sales, servicing, and processing goals.
CSRs who perform both the processing and service functions must be full-time employees. They have to be in the office all day to provide the customer phone service and to process paper. But when these two functions are separated, a part-time individual can handle processing. Why? Because the processor is never on the phone.
Let's focus on the part-time employee. Agency management consultant Gary Holgate suggests the following sources:
Former Agency Employees:
These people know personal lines, the agency's automation system, and the agency's way of doing business.
High School Students:
If trained properly, students can perform 40 to 50 percent of the agency's paperwork, such as auto and homeowners renewals, new business, policy changes, and direct bill, late, cancellation, and reinstatement notices.
After-Hours Employees:
These offer a side benefit in that there is no need for extra terminals because the after-hours employees use the CSRs terminals after the CSRs leave for the day.
Off-Site Processors:
As long as the part-time processor has a personal computer and a modem that can communicate with the agency's main computer, this approach makes a lot of sense and can work to the agency's advantage. Off-site processors work on a contract basis, so the agency does not have the added expense of employee benefits. If the agency works with several off-site processors, the problem of finding back-up workers to fill in for absent employees is solved. Also, work can be delivered and picked up several times a week at the agency's convenience.
For an agency to survive and prosper, it must rethink how work is done and how new technology can improve processing and operations. The division of responsibility for customer service and processing allows the agency to really serve the customer and develop the accounts the agency needs to grow and prosper. At the same time, it addresses the bane of all businesses-paperwork.