Customer Service Centers Can Help Your Agency in Today’s Competitive Environment

The Key May Be Finding the Right CSC Partner

In today’s soft market, transforming your agency to a sales culture is no longer optional.

Like most agency principals, I know that quality service is critical to customer loyalty and business retention. But in today’s soft market, even the best service won’t ensure that we remain competitive. The fact is, as important as customer service is to our business, it must never come before sales.

At ADP/Statewide Insurance, we use customer service centers to support both areas — delivering high quality service effectively and efficiently, and helping to establish a thriving sales culture where we can remain focused on driving new business growth.

The key is to partner with the right customer service centers. Then fire everybody. Sort of.

Why Customer Service Centers?

Some agencies shy away from customer service centers because they believe CSCs are not cost effective, or because they fear losing control of customer relationships. However, our experience proves the opposite is true: When the right CSCs have been selected and properly integrated into our agency’s operations, the result has been increased efficiency and lower costs associated with routine service delivery and, most important, more time available to devote to increasing sales and building our business.

The 75 percent of personal lines business we outsource to CSCs accounts for only 37 percent of total annual costs, whereas the 25 percent of personal lines business that is serviced in-house accounts for 63 percent of costs. Also, we find that the best CSCs keep us thoroughly apprised of all significant customer transactions.

Among the best at this is The Hanover Insurance Group, which provides timely, detailed reports that alert us to certain types of transactions. In this way, a producer is prompted to call his or her customer, ask how they are doing, assess the level of service they are receiving, and possibly identify new coverage needs and sales opportunities.

The relationship between producer and customer remains open and up-to-date, and with less time spent on routine service needs.

New Roles, New Responsibilities

But even the best customer service center can help only so much. After a decade of steady growth, we realized that taking our business to the next level would require a fundamental change in the way we thought about sales — not only embracing the idea of CSCs, but implementing a new culture in which every individual in the company embraces his or her role and personal responsibility for generating new business.

To launch this transformation, we invited all of our personal lines customer service representatives to a meeting where I informed them that they were “fired.”

Then, I re-hired everyone on the spot, but with one provision — they would return to work as business development specialists, no longer responsible for routine service transactions, but rather, for new business sales.

For those who were skeptical that a CSC could deliver quality, professional service, I challenged them to call the service center and make changes to customers’ accounts. Once they personally experienced the fast and efficient service, they were satisfied and confident enough to concentrate on new business sales.

A simple new mission statement — “Nothing happens until somebody sells something” — supported by fun internal sales competitions, helped inspire and motivate the staff. In a fairly short time, we witnessed a significant surge in sales.

We began our transformation to a sales-oriented business in 1997, with 4.5 personal lines employees and approximately $1 million in personal lines revenues. Today, the same number of employees is generating approximately $3.05 million in personal lines revenue.

Getting Started

Based on our positive experience, here are some tips for selecting a customer service center and transforming your agency to a sales-focused environment.

First, visit the customer service centers you are considering as partners. Meet the actual phone representatives, listen to their conversations with customers and ask yourself — are these people well trained? Are they professional and courteous? Are they well prepared to quickly answer different types of questions? Is this how we treat our customers? Would I hire this person?

If you answer “yes” to all of these questions, then the CSC may be a good fit.

Next, determine precisely what business will be outsourced and how. In personal lines, we find that for most routine questions — What does this item on my bill mean?, How much do I owe?, How do I replace my lost ID card? — customer service centers provide answers faster and more efficiently than internal employees.

With this in mind, we developed a simple approach to triage customer calls — a series of questions to assess the customers’ immediate needs and to probe for possible sales opportunities.

Routine matters are directed to our “service department” — in fact, to the carrier’s customer service center. The call switch is smooth and seamless. Our customers’ experience is that they very quickly are provided with the answers and information they need and want.

Focusing on Sales

In today’s soft market, transforming your agency to a sales culture is no longer optional. It’s an absolute necessity. Our experience is that customer service centers save time and money, and improve customer satisfaction. At ADP/Statewide, we have committed to use this found time to focus on generating new business, maximizing our employees’ excellent customer relationships and positioning our company to compete and win into the future.

Topics Market