This post is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
If there’s one area where insurance agencies and carriers can stand out, it’s in the quality of the producer experience they offer. After all, compensation tends to be standardized; benefits usually all boil down to about the same thing; and the actual job of selling insurance just is what it is, regardless of which products you’re selling.
All things being equal, a talented and high-performing insurance producer can choose to work with the distribution partners that make their job easier and more enjoyable.
A personalized producer experience
Everyone likes to feel special and know they’re seen as an individual. Insurance producers are no different. Creating a custom and personal producer experience (starting with onboarding and lasting through commission payments and the entirety of the relationship) is one way to do just that.
But, if you’re an agency or carrier working with tens, hundreds, or thousands of licensed producers, you might be wondering what exactly you can do to add personalization to your business operations. How can you give producers white-glove treatment at scale without needing an army of administrative staff to do so?
The key can be found in using the right type of technology to create an experience that each producer will appreciate while not adding extra administrative burden to get there. Here’s just one example of how a solution like AgentSync can help in your quest to provide producers with the type of experience that stands out in their minds and makes them more likely to want to work with you (and tell their friends to do the same!).
Customized onboarding portal
What does it look like when a producer agrees to join your agency? If your answer includes lots of paperwork to fill out, or many different websites to visit and enter information into, you could be losing producers before they even start.
A customized, branded, and user-friendly onboarding portal transforms the tedious process of getting a producer ready to sell into something that measures up to the convenient online experience producers have come to expect in their personal lives.
This setup allows producers to access a pre-populated profile, with up-to-the-day license information, based on basic inputs like their NPN. Because the system pulls each producer’s information from the industry’s source of truth, they don’t have to enter details that already exist. They can also double-check that their information is up-to-date in the producer database and request corrections if it’s not.
In addition, the portal allows producers to upload documents like their E&O insurance, answer background questions, and can also be integrated with other technology solutions like background checks and compensation management to eliminate the need for duplicate data entry in other places.
A customized producer onboarding portal not only removes roadblocks for the producer, it takes a load off compliance admin staff as well. They can see exactly where each producer sits in the process and don’t have to chase each one down for missing information. This dramatically reduces their workload while improving their experience, all while getting producers ready to sell faster than ever.
Two-way daily data sync
A personalized experience can only truly be “personalized” if it includes accurate data. It doesn’t help producers or administrative staff if a pre-populated form is full of bad information. That’s actually the opposite of helpful!
A two-way sync with the industry’s source of truth is vital if your goal is to provide a personalized experience. With this advanced capability, which updates each day with any new information, producers can speed through their onboarding process, only entering information that’s new or different from what’s already on record. They can even initiate change requests if they see something that’s wrong – all without leaving their browser tab.
Some technologies have the same data sync but only do it on request (and for an extra charge). Such periodic updates just aren’t the same as having accurate-to-the-day information baked into the system to ensure what you’re seeing really reflects the industry’s source of truth on a daily basis.
There’s nothing “personalized” about requiring a producer to enter information into your system that they’ve previously updated with the insurance industry’s system of record, but which you don’t have access to due to an outdated data source.
Personalized license renewal and CE reminders
How many people would it take to send out personalized emails to every producer at your agency, or with whom your carrier contracts, to remind them of upcoming license renewals and any continuing education credits they need in order to renew those licenses? Don’t forget to multiply this number by how many states those producers hold licenses in and by their different license types.
The answer would be “zero” if you had AgentSync!
Using technology that draws information from the industry’s source of truth for state licenses and carrier appointments, AgentSync can automatically alert any producer in advance of any license expiration date, including reminders about missing CE credits they need to complete before submitting their renewal application.
This is a level of personalized service that most agencies and carriers can only achieve for their producer force if they have a massive team of administrative staff. Even if you had unlimited resources, no one really wants to be in charge of manually contacting each producer to remind them of their renewals and CE deadlines. This is a job much better left to technology. The result: Producers feel personally taken care of without burdening licensing managers and other compliance staff with tedious tasks they hate.
How personalization drives engagement
When someone sees a generic message, their instinct is to tune it out. We can point to evidence of this in our daily lives. After all, how many emails do you ignore because they don’t pertain to you? On the other hand, when we receive highly relevant, personalized messages, we tend to pay attention and take the necessary action. Voila! Engagement!
An engaged workforce is essential to a successful business. With producers acting as the front-line revenue-generating people in your insurance organization, keeping them engaged is pivotal to your overall success. And personalization is key to that engagement.
Personalizing more than producer onboarding
Producer onboarding, licensing, appointments, and continuing education are a few areas where technology can take personalization from a tedious, manual task to an effortless experience. Producer compensation management is another.
When you provide producers with a personalized and transparent view into how they’re earning commissions, they become more engaged. They can see where their efforts pay off the most and where they have room for improvement that’ll earn them real dollars and cents.
For a personalized and engaging producer experience that can differentiate your insurance carrier, agency, or MGA/MGU from the rest with a unique combination of trust, transparency, and technology, check out AgentSync.
To go even further and integrate seamless personalized producer compensation management into your workflow, read our partner Varicent’s blog on this exact topic.
