FROM GOOD TO GREAT: ONE AGENCY'S ODYSSEY TO IMPROVED CUSTOMER RELATIONS
by Edgar J. Higgins Jr., CPCU
For nearly 10 years, our agency has focused on improving efficiency and changing internal workflows to maximize our automated environment. After engaging in a war on keystrokes for every transaction, we had gone as far as we could go.
But though our efficiency helped us excel in the execution of customer service, it still did not clearly distinguish us from our competitors in the eyes of prospective customers. Our only distinction was transactional logging, which eliminated client waiting and gave us total internal documentation.
Last year, using the Best Practices Customer Survey, we began to chart a new course. The survey yielded some very interesting replies and also confirmed our belief that most of our clients were very happy with our service.
Our clients advised us to provide more access, with an after-hours voice mail service and extended business hours. They also asked us to install a mailbox outside our office to add convenience for customers picking up and dropping off documents after normal office hours. They were challenging us to do even more than we thought was necessary to satisfy our customers.
As a result of the survey, our staff made a unified commitment to respond with action to all suggestions. Some of the suggestions, like the extended hours and the mailbox, were easy to do.
After-hours voice mail was approached from the base viewpoint of a computer application because the digital voice-mail board provided better clarity than a simple answering machine. It also gave the opportunity to store and transfer voice files for future documentation. We then became aware of the capability of using computer voice-mail boards to operate with Centrex phone systems. This feature was exciting to us because it offered the opportunity for seamless integration without having to start over when we upgraded our phone system.
Customer Response Initiates Change
The voice mail specifically excludes effecting coverage change requests. Return calls the next day and complete those service requests. Not only does this practice expand client accessibility, it also minimizes E&O exposure.
After installing the voice-mail system and conquering the electronic difficulties that went along with it, we experimented with extra features that we discovered were included. Paging notification, for example, is possible using the voice-mail board. We also found a way to establish a claims mailbox that could automatically page an on-call staff person. Now providing a 24-hour claims service became a possibility.
We believed this could give our agency the opportunity to provide a clearly distinctive service when dealing with our clients. It was too much of a temptation to resist! The very depths of our commitment were tested, however, during the several-months-long process of coordinating the totally automated paging process. Our fax service also was tied to this system, which compounded the frustrations.
24-Hour Claims Service
Our biggest challenge was synchronizing the voice-mail board with the external vendor paging system. Now clients have merely to call the office phone number. They don't need to know the pager service access phone number or the individual pager identification number. This benefit simplifies the process and also maintains pager-access security. Now that the two are synchronized, our customers can call us anytime of the day and receive
24-hour claims service. Even better, the staff person who returns the call is the same person who will assist them with follow-up the next day.
Once we announced our actions to the survey responses, our customers became interested in how we were able to provide 24-hour service. We discovered that having our customers in awe of our commitment to serve them better is a fun experience. They were especially impresed that we were able to custom-fit our service model to their needs and desires.
Our customers' excitement caused us to press ahead even further. We discovered that the same voice-mail board with built-in fax also has a fax-on-demand capability. As a result, we also offer our clients fax-on-demand access to more than 60 different documents ranging from coverage explanations to Department of Motor Vehicles accident report forms. And all when we are closed for business! We believe that the demand for this service will grow with the proliferation of personal home computers that come with built-in fax boards and modems. One client, employed by an international railroad air-brake manufacturer, now uses fax-on-demand services with several of his vendors. So awareness of the technology is already building.
Voice-Mail Board Doubles as Service Menu
Finally, we turned to the multi-tiering capacity of the voice-mail board and created a way for prospective customers to access a menu and hear descriptions of agency products and services. After listening to any description, they are offered the opportunity to select other descriptions, or to end the call by asking us to call them back for a proposal.
The internal efficiency opportunities created by our agency management system have created a less stressful workplace for our staff and at the same time increased our productivity. We have added the pride and excitement of creating a whole new value-added service platform that distinguishes us as a unique business, focused on improving customer service. This new platform provides distinctive benefits for the customer that can be readily identified by the prospect and the client. This is what was missing in our previous years of keystroke battles to maximize efficiency. And besides all that, we are really beginning to have fun!
Now our agency is not only ahead of the curve for our Personal Lines clients, but we're leading the forward edge of practical technology applications. The benefits are already obvious: We are enjoying a new growth rate unequaled in the past six years in an enduring soft market in an economically depressed geographic area.
Reprinted with permission from ACORD.