From Playing Defense to Playing Offense with Data

For a long time I felt like I was always playing defense in the agency. A client complaint, a slow sales month, or realizing too late that someone on the team was falling behind.

Three years ago I started looking at reports daily on calls, tasks, and sales. It helped, but the reports were raw and messy. Earlier this year I began saving those reports into Excel just to have a record.

At one point I tried running them through ChatGPT, but it was not reading screenshots accurately and the reports came back unreliable. In June I decided to give Claude AI a try. The difference was immediate. Claude could read screenshots and turn them into clean, visual dashboards that made sense.

Now my assistant Sofia runs our weekly screenshots through Claude. We get reports that are easy to understand, compare by department, and share with the team for transparency and accountability.

Here is what we look at every week:

• Tasks: completions by user and category

• Calls: inbound, outbound, and total time on the phone

• Sales: pipeline stages, bundle policies, premium, and lead source

• Service: emails handled, customers helped, and happiness scores

This has allowed us to move from defense to offense. Instead of waiting for lagging indicators like unhappy clients or missed sales, we can spot issues early, whether it is a process, a system, or a person, and make adjustments before they become bigger problems.

👉 If you are not already tracking these basics, I recommend starting now. Keep it simple, make it visible to your team, and it will change the way you run your agency.