In today’s competitive environment, the smallest details are what separates you writing a policy or your prospect buying online. Your Agency Management System (AMS) plays a crucial role in managing these small details effectively and to your advantage. Today we’ll address three things your Agency Management System should be doing to tip the competitive scales in your favor.
1. Integrate your phone system into your Agency Management System - You pay a lot of money for the AMS you use and it is only as good as the information you put into it. The challenge all of our customers face is getting their PEOPLE to put information into it. When your phone system integrates into your AMS, the tedious step of looking up that customer record is automated. This allows your agent to have everything they need in front of them BEFORE the answer the phone. Imagine no longer ever hearing your agent say the words, “Please hold while I pull up your account.” What a dream that would be! As a consumer, I can truly appreciate that as a TOP NOTCH experience that I rarely get from those I buy from.T
The enhanced customer experience is very valuable. The amount of time saved in your agent’s day is very valuable. The increase in documentation with notes, activities, and audit trails you get as a byproduct is the true gem in this automation which you will see in the next two items.
So, get a VoIP system that integrates with your AMS and get that small edge over your competition. See our integration page for the systems we currently support.
2. Discovering cross-sell opportunities – We hear it every day: bundle and save. For the consumer, it’s a great deal as they see their rates drop. For you as the agency owner, it’s a two-fold win. One, obviously increased commissions. Two, when the consumer starts shopping for coverage elsewhere, it’s tough to get an accurate apples-to-apples comparison, which means it takes work and energy to break the ties with your agency.
So what are you doing to increase cross-sell opportunities? Your people have enough on their plates to remember to look into the AMS and see what policies exist for every customer, but did you know there’s software that will integrate with your AMS to alert your people to missing policies? Your agent can know without a click that I have a no auto policy with you.
Systems like ProTrac can identify those opportunities and alert the agent to them automatically and even provide call scripts to the agent for making the pitch. This makes asking for the cross-sell second nature and easy. After all, asking is half the battle so look into products like these to assist your agents and CSR’s.
3. Reduce your E&O exposure – What’s your written policy for reducing errors and omissions? Does it involve ensuring that your people are offering the most accurate coverages to suit your customer’s needs? Do you have a procedures manual that spells out exactly how you handle an incoming phone call? What about calling your customers each year for an annual review of their coverages? Your AMS is crucial to all of these, and when done right, not only will you cover yourself, but you’ll discover cross-sell opportunities that you otherwise may not have known existed. A few simple things most AMS can do that we have seen neglected because they aren’t “standard” settings are:
· Require note entries after viewing a policy
· Attaching call recordings to your customer record
· Providing detailed audit logging
· Integrating with other software systems that require verification of crucial data such as date of birth, current phone number, or identify to the agent that these are missing
Up to date, accurate information on your customer in your AMS is a crucial part to preventing errors and defending them when the need arise so check with your AMS provider to see how these can be implemented and while you’re at it ask them “what else can this thing do?”
