Operating Results, Trojan Horse and Accessibility without Vulnerability - Part 1

Act cFluent Newsletter, August, 2006 - Subscribe today Subscriber benefits include early evaluation of new products and discounts.

Information for independent insurance agents about issues at the confluence of technology, consumerism, marketing and agency practices. Subscriber benefits include free trial evaluation of new products and programs.

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Part I of a multi-part series (Part II, Part III, Part IV) that explores what you can do to make your website relevant to your agency, your employees, your customers and your prospective customers. These articles focus on agency strategies and initiatives apart from the internet and then suggest ways to make your website tools pay off in the context of those initiatives.

Moving policy changes to insurance company service centers has obvious benefits but often results in lost opportunity. Shifting requests like change of address, mortgagee and lien holder changes, vehicle additions and deletions to a service center typically makes good sense when viewed from a spreadsheet point of view: commission paid to the company can be less than the salary, training, management and related costs of keeping these transactions in house.

But more than a few agencies have noticed a drop off in additional policy coverage sales, account development sales and referrals. Many policy changes create exposures that call for a needs review and insurance program recommendations. This kind of contact keeps agencies top of mind in a positive way and often results in policy upgrades, account sales and referrals. So what to do to get the opportunities back? Cancel the service center contract?

The problem is not the company service center but rather the absence of customer contact. Most agencies, because they are so busy, do not have time to initiate customer contact. As a result, contact that does take place is at the volition of customers, often when they need a basic policy change. When that contact is moved to a service center a void is created. The answer to recovering lost opportunities is not cancelling the service center contract but instead filling the void with proactive customer communications.

One way to do that is to take agency account managers and give them some new job requirements that include outbound calls. We have to remember though, that our service staff may have been conditioned by years of reacting to customers and initiating contact may make many uncomfortable; overcoming resistance to change may require more management time and energy than an agency owner or manager has available.

The trick to managing the kind of culture change a service center decision should engender is to identify the path of least resistance. Don't expect to turn all your service staff in to sales staff or customer consultants. You'll kill yourself trying. Instead, pick those most likely to adapt to proactive service and sales. You can use any one of a number of tests available on the market, such as CSR Select, to evaluate sales staff aptitude. Then work with those employees that have the most sales aptitude to implement account review and new marketing programs above and beyond what you are already doing.

But even employees less adaptive to sales activities should have requirements for outbound contacts. But for those employees you should tailor requirements so you don't push these employees so far that they mutiny. Outbound calls simply thanking customers for business can have surprisingly powerful results. You may require employees with sales reticence to perform a certain number of these each week.

Another way to keep outbound contacts less threatening and employees less resistant is to use calls to draw attention to agency web services. If your agency has annual review capabilities, calculators, FAQs or newsletter articles that are of interest or use to customers then use these calls as a way to get customers into the habit of using your agency website. The calls need simply point out the convenient alternatives your agency offers for getting questions answered and making sure insurance protection stays up to date. To maximize the chances customers get to your website, service staff should offer to email links to specific agency web resources.

An added benefit to this approach is the capture of email addresses for future communication programs. Additionally, you are providing exactly the kind of convenience and options more and more consumers are expecting from their insurance provider and the kind of conveniences that pay off in greater customer loyalty and lower account costs.

Loss of transactional contact to a company service center doesn't have to mean the loss of opportunity. Implementing an outbound communication program can fill the communication void and recapture the opportunities. In fact, an outbound communication program built around the aptitude of each staff member can create far more opportunities and result in greater sales levels than before the move to the service center. The key is to fill the communication void in a way that's best for your customers, your employees and your agency's bottom line. Comment About This.

Displaying the logo and names of the insurance companies your agency represents on your website seems harmless enough. But displaying a name, logo or even a hot link back to the carrier misses an opportunity to please your customers by leveraging your website and free up staff time for sales and value added service. And hot links back to insurance company home pages can even be harmful to your business.

Many clients will bookmark those pages from your agency website. That in turn will promote website traffic and use of other online services you may offer. As more customers begin to avail themselves of these options your staff will spend less time on basic transactions that provide no value differentiation. Agency, company and customer all benefit through increases in the use of basic, low cost, convenient online transactions. The challenge is building and maintaining the pages for every carrier in your office. We have a solution or you at the end of the article. Read on. Comment About This.

So how can displaying a company logo or hotlink be damaging to your agency? There are several issues here. First, indiscriminate display of logos of varying shapes, sizes, colors and styles can obscure and confuse any brand message you may be trying to promote through your own logo or website design. If you are not keeping carrier logos up to date you may also be diluting the brand identity of the insurance company.

Worse, if you don't keep hot links updated you may be linking back to the wrong company. Confluency did a quick sample of agency websites gleaned from one insurance company's agency locator. A random sample of 180 agency websites showed they contained out of date links or logos or links to the wrong site 63% of the time when carrier links were provided. Sometimes the links were "broken" and went to an error page, sometimes the links went to a website for a non-insurance business, and quite often, the out of date links went to the website for an insurance company's direct-to-consumer brand.

More than a few insurance companies compete directly with their agents through direct marketing. We're not going to weigh in here with an opinion about that practice but we are going to suggest that your agency not hand deliver your customers and potential customers to any competitor.

Several insurance company website homepages include a blandishment to quote and buy directly and some of these are very prominent. In these cases, direct links from your agency website to the insurance company home page can cost you real money. Nearly 50% of agencies linking to their carriers are providing a direct line for a customer or potential customer to be quoted elsewhere. Even worse the average number of links to insurance companies who present website offers like these is 3.5. That's like taking customers and prospective customers from your office to the offices of three or four competitor agencies to see if they would like a quote. Comment About This.

Real benefits for all constituents, your agency, your carriers and your customers, can be gained by integrating online direct service via carrier websites. But simply linking to an insurance company homepage won't bring about customer convenience or agency time and expense saving. Links have to be to carrier site service pages specifically. Business leakage through links to carrier pages that act as a competitive siphon to your agency can be stopped by disabling those links. Finally, a periodic review of logos and links on your agency website should be undertaken to uncover out of date or inaccurate links and logos.Comment About This.

You want the contact information for key agency employees to be available for your customers and prospects. Providing intermediate contact waypoints alone, like info@ or service@ email addresses can result in communication delays that can mean lost business. A logical place to put this contact information is on the web but the downside is, unless certain precautions are taken, you could end up with a lot of unwanted spam.

Back in April we talked about how to protect yourself from spam as an individual but what about protecting yourself while making yourself accessible as a business provider?

Spammers use the same technology as search engines like Google and Yahoo to "crawl" web sites and gather email addresses. One way to protect you and agency employees is to put security in place that requires a log in ID and password. But even this has a drawback: most of us have to keep up with so many IDs and passwords that we may not have them in mind when needed. The result is frustration and a phone call your customer is forced to place for a question or service. That's the best outcome. The less desirable possibility is your customer going elsewhere on the internet to get what they want.

Another, more customer friendly way to thwart spam crawlers is to put a screen on your website in front of email addresses. Crawlers can only see regular characters like text, symbols and numbers. Shapes and images are impenetrable to them but can be seen by human eyes. Confluency uses an approach like this with a new web module, which can be installed on any website, called Spam Out Directory. To get a look at how this works visit our demo agency directory and Contact Us page. A spam screen like this both protects agency addresses from spammers and lets customers and prospects access the direct contact information they want.

That takes care of your website but what about other websites that may display your email address? You have little control over those and your address may show up in more places than you realize. Your local Chamber of Commerce may display your email address or email addresses of other agency staff. Agency locators on insurance company websites, agency association sites like PIA, IIABA, Trusted Choice and program sites like the National Flood web site can all create spam vulnerabilities. Many of these sites require the entry of a zip code, town or some other information before email addresses are displayed. This requires a level of crawler sophistication and the bots used by many spam perpetrators may fall short of this capability. But it is safest to assume that at least some spammers are able to get through. To protect yourself on third party sites it is best to use only a generic email address like info@confluencysolutions.com .

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About Confluency Solutions
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Confluency Solutions specializes in solutions that generate growth through high customer satisfaction. Easy to implement technology combined with traditional independent agency strengths vault your agency into the ranks of the top performers. Confluency Solutions provides complete business solutions, not just technology. We free you up to compete at an advantage, with any size competitor, in a way that just isn't possible without the right tools and without knowing how best to use them. Confluency Solutions makes the web work.
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