Agency Operations

Do you respond to reduced revenue by cutting expenses, usually in the form of payroll? Or, do you respond by eliminating unprofitable customers and establishing priorities for serving the balance?…

Questions, questions, questions: “Is customer retention important? How do you know? How do we measure it? Is there any measurement that we can perform that tells us if we’re getting…

The process of service center can work. But it can only do so if the insurance company and the insurance agency form an allegiance that is extremely difficult for either…

Customer standards tell your employees and your customers what you expect of your staff, how your staff is expected to perform, and what your customers should expect from their interaction…

This is a follow-up to the article, “Establishing Customer Standards.” In this article, I’d like to explore how you can test your ability to deliver the service you believe you’re…

Whether you know that your business needs a great deal of improvement or whether you think that you are the best in the business, the Customer Satisfaction Survey (sometimes in…

We, as an industry, have gotten some pretty rotten publicity regarding service. The bad news is that much of it is well earned. Uncaring employees finding reasons why claims should…

With more intense competition from banks, direct writers and the internet, agencies are going to lose customers. This is not a bad thing. Let them have the low margin customers…

What’s the best thing you can do to make your customers happy? Screw up! Yep, that’s right, make a mistake…then fix it. According to one study, customers who had experienced…

In The Odyssey, Homer tells the famous story of the three Sirens leading sailors astray. Insurance agencies have their own insidious Sirens leading them astray and one of the most…