5 Smart Minutes: Agency CFO Reveals Power of Connecting With Insurance Customers
Beth Bell, CFO of A/SCD, shares how they’re completely transforming their agency, creating a unified culture that focuses on the client
Michael Jans: Hello, everybody this is Michael Jans, CEO and founder of Agency Revolution. I’m really thrilled to have one of our clients here, Beth Bell. She’s the chief financial officer of Atlantic,Smith Cropper & Deeley. Beth, how are you?
Beth Bell: I’m great, how are you?
Michael: I’m very good. Beth has agreed to a short conversation to share with everybody some of the transformation that’s happened in her agency. I’m thrilled to be able to ask you a few questions, thank you very much. First of all, Beth, can I ask you a very brief description of the agency, like its composition?
Beth: Sure. We’re a second-generation led agency, our president is Laura Bren, and we serve commercial lines, personal lines, employee benefits. We have 75 employees, and we have been in existence since 1929.
Michael: Got it, all right. And you’ve been with Agency Revolution for how long?
Beth: I believe it’s a little over two years, maybe three years.
Michael: Okay, that sounds about right. I’ve heard a rumor that somebody saw me do a training for 4DX, and it was kind of a stimulant for maybe some cultural change there.
Change at the top…leadership first
Beth: Yes. We have spent the last couple of years really focusing on our leadership team, and that obviously spurs a lot of changes; one of the things that Laura was involved in, and actually read the book; and I’ve read the book as well for 4DX. And then we pulled in your video webinar that you did, and we showed it to our leadership team as a summary of what the concept of 4DX is.
We in turn created our own 4DX program, and we created a part of- our incentive plan is individual goals, and they’re all aligned with our agency strategic goals. We have kept that in place, since of being in 2015, and it has been great.
Michael: That’s terrific. I understand the agency is on a steady path of growth and that you really built the culture that has united and align the entire team.
Beth: It has. One of the things that we realized in all the changes that we have made is that everyone in the agency was asking for us to unite. And they felt they were in their own silos. Our leadership team, we spent a year with leadership development training, and that just naturally united them; everything else has fallen suite from that.
We have a lot of initiatives going on right now, where we have cross-departmental training, and social events, and just understanding the different departments, and how they all flow up to the same agency.
Michael: Got it, all right. My recollection is I first met your team at a NetVU conference and you areAMS 360 users. I’ll ask you questions, obviously Beth, we provide a software program that makes it easy to communicate with your customer base, and hopefully make those relationships richer, deeper, and increase their level of loyalty, and connection to your agency. Why has that been important to you?
“We want to connect more with our customers”
Beth: We’ve also shifted focus that if you’re in a client serving position, that you should focus on retention; that’s how you can help us drive growth in the agency. We have new business positions, and we have customer service positions. So we have utilized AR and leveraged it in every discussion along the way of how we can do that. We have sat down and started looking at our procedure manuals and our best practices.
And AR is always in that conversation, because we want to connect more with our customers, which just drives our retention, and makes everyone else happy.
Michael: Yes, okay. Do you sometimes hear anecdotally from customers gratitude, or appreciation for the way you’re reaching out to them?
Beth: We do, we hear it from our customers.
Our customers are always happy that we are connecting with them and using your technology to do that.
As you know the times are changing; it’s more and more difficult to connect over the phone, so they love the technology, they love that we are reaching out to them in other ways and staying up with the times.
Michael: Right on, okay. By the way, I understand that you guys are power users of Agency Revolution, so congratulations on that. I hear you —
Beth: Thank you.
Michael: — are pushing the envelope. To wind it up, if another fellow AMS 360 user, another agency was considering Agency Revolution as a communication tool; would you recommend it to them?
Beth: Absolutely!
Michael: Thank you very much. All right, great to talk to you, have a wonderful day.
Beth: You too.
Michael: We’ll be in touch.
Beth: Absolutely, thanks.
Michael: Bye.
To learn about how marketing automation can transform the way you communicate to your clients — and make your clients love your agency — download a copy of Buyer’s Guide: Marketing Automation For Independent Agents & Brokers
Michael Jans is the CEO and founder of the award winning marketing automation platform, Agency Revolution. He is the author of over 50 books and courses on insurance marketing for independent agents and brokers, most recently “13 Critical Conversations You Must Have With Your Customers & Prospects This Year: How Insurance Agents & Prospects Can Easily Earn More Policies, Higher Retention, More Referrals & Faster Growth In 2016.” Readers may get a free copy here.
