I Put Myself Back in the Call Queue

I put myself back in my agency's call queue a few weeks ago. 

In the round-robin with everybody else, taking whatever comes in. 

That works because everything runs through one main agency number. We don't use our direct lines for prospect and client interactions. This way when someone joins the team, we can simply add them to the distribution. When someone leaves, we take them out, and the calls keep flowing. The clients only need to remember one phone number. Zero interruption. 100% visibility for the agency. 

But the routing isn't what this newsletter is about. 

A client called to add a vehicle. Five-minute change. While I was adding the vehicle, I asked who depended on his income, and that call ended with a life conversation we'd never had in the years he's been with us. 

A monoline general liability client called for a certificate. Thirty-second request. I asked how the business was going and asked if she had any employees. I pitched the workers' comp, which she did not have with us.  

A client called upset about her rate increase. We went through the entire account. Everything was accurate, so there was nothing to correct. What we found was coverage she was carrying that she didn't want, and taking it off brought the price down. She got off the phone happy, and not only because of the money. Now she understands her policy better. It was a good refresher for her to make sure the policy still worked for her.  

None of those were outbound account review calls. All three turned into one. 

Meanwhile we spend real effort trying to reach people on purpose. Smart cycled leads, monoline homes, and win-backs. Most of it goes to voicemail. Proactive outreach is slow and you're interrupting somebody's day. An inbound call is the opposite. They already stopped what they were doing. You have their undivided attention and they want to talk to you. 

This the biggest kept secret in our industry. Right in our faces.  

So now my goal is to teach my team to solve the problem and then keep going. Build some rapport. Underwrite the account while you’re in there. Verify and update the information. Look for all the discounts nobody's checked in years. Make sure the coverage still does what they thought it did when they bought it. 

I'm not saying you do all of that on every call. I'm saying there should be some effort every single time to do more than the thing the client called about. 

People set up a policy and forget about it. Life keeps changing anyway. 

It's easy to be an order taker. Answer, process, log, next. It feels like efficiency. It's just speed, and I've been guilty of it for years. 

It's never just a call. It's the only time that client is thinking about their insurance. 

They already dialed us. Let's make the most of the conversation.