https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/569/Customer-Service-The-Agency-Staff-Survey/
Customer Service: The Agency Staff Survey
Find out if your CSRs are willing and able to provide quality client service.
If you can't service your current clients, you don't deserve new ones. And often, when current clients aren't served properly, it's because the staff is demoralized-or at least not in tune with each other. You need to find out whether your staff is happy enough to serve your clients the way you want them to.
Your goal is awesome client service that attracts new clients through endless streams of referrals. Use this five-minute survey to ask your employees how they see your agency.
How do you see your agency? (5 is yes or excellent; 1 is no or poor)
1. Do you understand the agency's goal? 5 4 3 2 1
2. Do you know how the agency operates? 5 4 3 2 1
3. Does management give you helpful feedback? 5 4 3 2 1
4. Does the agency cares about your personal needs? 5 4 3 2 1
5. Does the agency do what it says it will? 5 4 3 2 1
6. Do you feel that turnover is low? 5 4 3 2 1
7. Does the agency support innovation? 5 4 3 2 1
8. Is the agency consistent? 5 4 3 2 1
9. Does the agency develop good leaders? 5 4 3 2 1
10. Does the agency encourage staff ideas? 5 4 3 2 1
11. Does the agency communicate to staff? 5 4 3 2 1
12. Does the agency treat people fairly? 5 4 3 2 1
13. Do employees have a chance to make decisions? 5 4 3 2 1
14. Does the agency support professional improvement? 5 4 3 2 1
15. Is the agency a fun place to work? 5 4 3 2 1
16. Would you recommend the agency as a place to work? 5 4 3 2 1
17. Does the agency provide great client service? 5 4 3 2 1
18. How do you rate the agency overall? 5 4 3 2 1
Take pride in your strengths and zero in on your weaknesses. Appoint a team leader for each weakness, and ask that person to invite two others to join him or her to make a report to management about the steps necessary to increase your score in that particular category. Evaluate again in six months.
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/1910/DESIGNING-EFFECTIVE-SURVEYS/
...vey n: the act or an instance of surveying This article offers ideas... Beyond these efforts, keep asking, surveying, and listening. Engage people in...
https://completemarkets.com/Article/article-post/974/AGENCY-COMPENSATION-SURVEY/
Agency Compensation Survey
AGENCY COMPENSATION SURVEY by Carol Hammes Employee turnover is expensive for an insurance agency. For budgeting purposes in the replacement hiring process, you need to add another 50% of the first-year salary for things such as recruitment expenses, training time, errors made by the new person, and productivity that is lost when experienced workers leave. And now a survey published by George S. May, a personnel-management firm, confirms what we all have been suspecting for some time. It is definitely harder to find qualified employees today than it was even five years ago. Applicants have high expectations for salaries and benefits, but their qualifications and willingness to work keeps getting lower. Given the high cost of turnover and the difficulty of finding replacements, it behooves you to do everything that you can to keep the existing employees happy and motivated. Although very few people will leave a job solely for more money, compensation is nonetheless often a key element in their decision to accept employment elsewhere. It is important for agency principals to know with as much certainty as possible that their salary, bonus, and commission levels are competitive and appropriate for handling the designated job functions and responsibilities in their agency. Then, if an employee tries to start a bidding war between the current and prospective employer, you will be able to resist the temptation to play the game. It is rarely a good personnel-management decision to offer more money to keep an employee who has resigned. First, it is clearly admitting to that person (and undoubtedly to other people in the agency) that the owners or managers are not sure that the existing salary administration plan is correct. Second, it sends out signals that blackmail is acceptable behavior because it produces the desired results. Third, all you have really done is postpone the inevitable anyway. It will only be a matter of time before the employee either tries it again or actually does leave, because chances are good that the money issue was only one of the reasons for the resignation in the first place. Over the past 13 years, our primary motivation for conducting Agency Compensation Surveys has been to give agency managers an idea of what other agencies are paying for comparable positions so that they can develop appropriate compensation programs for their own firms. At the bottom of this article are the survey results for 1996. Make sure that you use them wisely. The definition of CSR will vary from one agency to another, as will the functions assigned to producers. The survey results merely present the averages of responding firms that are located all over the United States and Canada. Adjustments must be made for nontraditional job descriptions in your agency as well as for geographic location. Note that the size of an agency has little bearing on the salaries and benefits paid, since the smaller firms must compete for talent with the larger ones in a designated marketing area. Location, however, is definitely important, so we have separated the results for rural agencies from those in suburban/urban locations. A further distinction should be made, based on the part of the country in which the agency is located. A review of the Department of Labor salary data indicates that a number of states have average per-capita incomes that are significantly higher or lower than the norm. The following is a summary of that data to help you revise the national results of the survey to fit your marketing area. +20% +10 % -10% -20% CT DC MA NJ NY AK CA DE HI IL MD NH NV VA AL AZ ID KY MT ND SC SD UT AR MS OK NM WV General Compensation Information The average rural agency responding to the survey this year had $580,887 in total revenues, with 1.5 agency principals and 7.9 full-time employees including the owners. Revenues per employee were up to $73,530 in these firms. There were 2.2 owners in the average suburban/urban agency, which had a total of 14.7 people generating $1,270,563 in revenues and $86,433 in revenues per employee. Between 27% and 29% of the total number of employees in the survey agencies were involved primarily in sales activities, 14% to 18% were in management, and 53% to 59% of the total employee group were mainly handling service and support functions. The average reported increase in agency salaries was 3.8% in the rural firms and 3.9% in the urban agencies. Over half of the firms said that their percentage increase was the same as it had been the prior year, while one-fourth reported paying a higher increase this year than last. For the past three years, our survey results have indicated that agency raise levels seem to have stabilized near the 4% level, less than the average agency revenue growth rate (which has been between 5% and 7% during this same period). As a result of the positive variance between raises and growth, the total percentage of revenues being paid out to the agency owners has increased steadily over the past several years. Principals in rural agencies took out 26.9% of revenues in compensation and showed a pretax profit of 10.8% in 1996, an ownership return ratio of 37.7% Owners in the often larger urban agencies received compensation of 23.7% of revenues and profits of 8.2% of revenues, for a total return ratio of 31.9%. Non-owner producers received between 13.1% and 15.4% of total revenues, while the managers and office staff were paid 20.6% of revenues in rural firms and 21.6% in metropolitan agencies. Total agency incentive bonus plans are now being used to supplement or replace standard raises in 48% of the rural agencies and 59% of the suburban agencies. Of those firms using such an approach to compensation, more of them base the formula on agency profits than any other single criterion. Increased productivity (usually as measured by the improvement in revenues per employee) is the second most common determining factor. Contingents enter into the bonus more often in rural firms than they do in urban agencies, where revenue growth is used more frequently to help determine the amount of the bonus pool. Most of the suburban/urban agencies (93%) provide group health insurance coverage for their employees, with 88% of them picking up the tab for the employees and 30% paying for dependent coverage as well. Only 71% of the rural agencies have group health insurance available, although 96% of them pay for the employees and 35% pay for the families. Retirement programs are also more common in the city agencies, with 77% having some type of program versus participation from only 56% of the rural firms. Just 10 to 15 years ago, most agencies had profit-sharing or pension plans to which they were often contributing 15% of covered payroll, but the soft market conditions have taken their toll. Today a 401(k) program or SEP/IRA with modest matching percentages of less than 5% is the most common retirement plan. Service Staff Compensation Levels The following charts present the average salary ranges for the major service positions in insurance agencies in 1996. The ranges for the higher paid positions are broader than the others because of the wide variation between expected levels of technical expertise between one firm and another. 1996 Rural Agency Service Rep Salary Ranges Position Salary Range Personal CSR - 2+ years $17,623 - $21,558 Personal CSR - Under 2 years $13,802 - $17,281 Commercial CSR - 7+ years $25,568 - $34,991 Commercial CSR - 2 to 7 years $21,053 - $24,736 Commercial CSR - Under 2 years. $16,200 - $20,167 Employee Benefits CSR $22,175 - $27,636 1996 Suburban/Urban Service Rep Salary Ranges Position Salary Range Personal CSR - 2+ years $24,885 - $27,617 Personal CSR - Under 2 years $17,253 - $20,019 Commercial CSR - 7+ years $30,188 - $38,690 Commercial CSR - 2 to 7 years $23,469 - $27,439 Commercial CSR - Under 2 years. $20,275 - $23,581 Employee Benefits CSR $23,603 - $33,061 Most agencies still give their customer service reps a base salary, with 44% of rural agencies and 55% of urban agencies augmenting the personal lines salaries with some type of sales incentive. Those that pay a flat amount per policy averaged about $15 in the urban agencies and $8.50 in the rural agencies. More agencies use commissions as the determinant, with an average rate of 35% to 39% on new business and nothing or a much more modest percentage on renewals. A number of agencies are now establishing the CSR salary level using the total book of business handled by the person, thereby rewarding both the retention and the new sales activities. The percentage usually varies between 20% and 25% of the prior year's commissions. For example, assuming an average commission rate of 22%, a personal lines CSR that handled a book of $110,000 in commissions this past year would have a salary for the next year of $24,200. To get a raise at the end of the year, she or he will have to increase the book over that $110,000 level. At an attrition rate of 8%, this person would have to sell $8,800 in new commissions to receive the same salary for the next year. If $20,000 in new commissions were sold and the retention rate on the existing book was 92%, the salary would go up by $2,464. This approach can work well, but only up to the point of saturation. Few personal lines CSRs can effectively service a book of more than $150,000 in commissions and also write much new business. There may come a point in time when the really good people are maxed out and they start to see their income shrinking. Then you will have to figure out an equitable way to redistribute accounts to other CSRs or to start delegating some functions to Assistant CSRs and develop a compensation program that will take into account the relative contributions of everyone involved. AVERAGE MANAGEMENT SALARIES RURAL SUBURBAN/URBAN 1996 Salary + Bonus 1996 % Bonus 5 Yr. Avg. Salary + Bonus 5 Yr. Avg % Bonus 1996 Salary + Bonus 1996 % Bonus 5 Yr. Avg. Salary + Bonus 5 Yr. Avg % Bonus President/CEO 108,034 31.4 94628 29.5 145119 32.8 136995 33.0 Office/Adminstrative Mgr. 36,364.00 11.4 40146.00 16.7 49137.00 15.5 52447.00 19.1
|