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Strategic Review Of System From Group Of Skeptical CSR’s

This week I had a group of skeptical CSR’s jump into the system to give me their feedback on it. I wanted to see how well I was doing at creating an easy-to-use system that’s flexible and powerful.

Let me share a little bit about this group of CSR’s and my strategically having them test drive the system…

  • The agency owner was frustrated with their current system because of how complex it is, especially for the producers to use, and wanted his staff to see just how easy the CP Manager is compared to their current system.
  • Everyone signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) before gaining access to the system. We have many exclusive features in the system we’re holding close to the chest we don’t want to get out at this time.
  • The agency owner is a past client of mine.
  • Their current system is one of the most expensive systems on the market and is that vendors flagship product. No, I’m not naming names. Let me just say it’s a well known vendor and system.
  • Up until the CSR’s signed the NDA’s they didn’t have a clue they would be test driving a new product being introduced to the industry. The CSR’s didn’t know anything about us and had no time to learn about us. The day they signed the NDA was the same day they did a test drive. All they were told was to jump into the system, add a client, add information, spend some time jumping through out the system and report back to us their feedback on the system, both the pro’s and con’s.
  • The CSR’s were provided absolutely no training or an overview of the system. Their first and only experience of the system was from their own experience and required the CSR to figure out how to do things on their own. That’s because I needed to know where we needed to tweak the system and what areas needed the most training.

Now let me share with you what they reported back to us:

  • Across the board, all of the CSR’s stated how amazingly easy this system was to learn and use. We received comments like “intuitive”, “common sense”, “fluent workflow”. The lead CSR summed it up this way … “If easy to use is your goal, you nailed it!”
  • They LOVED how the policy information was predominately all on one screen. They hate the tabs in their current system and love how we work right off industry standard ACORD forms. Because of how we put policies together they found entering policy information significantly easier and way faster.
  • They loved how everything was right at their fingertips. If they wanted to add a note they just clicked on the Note button. If they want to add a letter, fax or email they just click on Correspondence, as just a few examples. Then they really got excited that all of these “service tools” are also located on the policy and how, for example, when they clicked on Notes from a policy it just showed the notes for that policy and when they added a new note from the policy it was automatically attached to that policy.
  • They loved how easy and common sense it was to add a new client. Easy, easy, easy. It didn’t matter if it was a personal lines client or a commercial lines client, it was very common sense.
  • They also loved how after adding a new policy section they could see if that section would be downloaded.This allowed them to save time by just entering the section header and letting the download populate the policy details, or if it wasn’t a downloaded policy it told them they needed to manually enter in the details. Like they commented after seeing this, “They [us] really do understand this industry, what we go through day to day and really focused on the little things that make a big difference like this feature.”
  • They loved how the policy tasks were at the top of the policy and how each one automated and simplified the process by walking the CSR right through the process. Just so you know, this is in addition to our Workflow Task Manager. Also, for your information, the policy tasks they are referring to are Renewal Quote, Renew Policy, Renewal Re-Write, Re-Write Policy, Re-Issue Policy, Re-Instate Policy and Cancel Policy. Then under the Service Tools is Claims, Endorsements, ID Cards and other policy functions.
  • They also loved the tight relationship between the policies and the carrier record. For now I can’t tell you about this tight relationship because here again we’re introducing another exclusive feature to this industry. What I can tell you is you will love it, especially when you’re working with a Carrier, an underwriter or a field rep. We really focused on your relationship with carriers in addition to client and policy management.
  • They loved how a follow up could be a Client Follow Up or a Carrier Follow Up, and how from within a Follow Up they can jump to either the Client record, the Carrier record or the Policy.

I could go on and on. Overall, the CSR’s were very impressed with the system and the agency owner was excited about how much easier the system is to learn and use for his producers. Then I told him [the agency owner] the price of the system. He about fell out of his chair and said, “No way. It has to be more than that.”

He just could not believe the price was as low as it was, especially after experiencing the system first hand. “This system is so much easier to use and it does a lot, far more than most of the systems on the market, it’s got to be more than this,” he said.

He just could not believe the price was as low as it was even after explaining to him how important it is to me personally that it’s priced so all agencies can afford a highly productive easy to use system. He still felt the price should be 3 or 4 times more and really felt like I was leaving too much money on the table.

I don’t care. I’m adamant about what I’m doing to help all agencies in this industry, and it’s been my experience that the small agencies need a system like this the most because of their limited resources to hire CSR’s.

The agency owner believed an agency would be a fool to not own this system, especially at this price.

At the end of the test drive the CSR’s asked the agency owner, “when can we put this system in place in our agency?” They loved the system that much. This really says it all, don’t you think?