Web 2.0 and Company Sponsored Agent Mash-ups - Now We're Talkin'!

By Mike Wise, IdeaStar vice president of Insurance Technologies

October 31, 2008 - Agent Productivity.  Reduce Costs.  Competitive Advantage.  These three issues seem to be the “Holy Grail” in the executive suite in the insurance marketing business today.

Web 2.0.  E-business.  etc. etc.  At the same time, there are a thousand buzz-words and techie concepts floating around the industry.  Executives often “know just enough to be dangerous.”

Internal IT Departments.  To make matters worse, many internal IT departments really don’t understand most of it and yet are expected to be the experts.  To save face, they often “pose for the role” but when new sites actually role out there are significant issues.  Problem is… the executive sponsor then says, “Well I guess that didn’t work … won’t try that again.”  And the proverbial head goes into the sand and significant opportunities are missed.

With that as the back-drop, and understanding that there are reasons and exceptions to all this, the purpose of this article is to, in plain English, connect the dots, in one small corner of the business, between technology and the realities of the insurance marketing business.

Competition for the Best Independent Agents

No doubt about it: 20% of agents sell 80% of the business. Thus insurance companies and large agent distribution organizations continue searching, sifting, scratching, and clawing for the top producers.  And once they find them, the want to do everything they can to attract, enable and retain them.  But what does the typical insurance company really do for these top-producing agents to harness their power?  Do they provide an automated-hierarchy-assignment, e-signature-based, third-party-integrated, on-boarding/contracting process to super-charge their recruiting efforts and quickly build their down-line?  Do they provide integrated Web-based training and certification?  Do they establish seamless connections to supply depots for marketing supplies? 

With the price of gas, dry-cleaning, food, etc., how much do they invest in e-signature-based quoting and enrollment engines so agents can sell virtually?  Have they deployed a real-time, easy-to-use mash-up or portal that shows business status, commission details, reward-trip updates, down-line productivity, appropriate news and upcoming events?  Oh, and by the way, is all of this ‘tuned’ to the agent hierarchy level, meaning that all information is presented on a need-to-know basis, and with marketing department administrative controls for the non-techie?  Oh yeah – and an extremely professional look-and-feel design?  Yes, it’s a lot to bite off.

Anonymous, Informal Survey of Chief Marketing Officers

I recently ran an anonymous, informal survey of Chief Marketing Officers and related functions within insurance carriers and IMO’s (see side-bar comments).  I used open-ended questions (v. Y/N’s) so as to get the respondents thinking about the issues.  To answer my previous questions about what the carriers are actually providing the agent market, here are a few answers from the survey. 

Wow!  That’s tellin’ it like it is.  Here’s the thing:  Agents talk to each other.  They talk at community events, rewards trips, in the county jail on Sunday mornings (kidding) – they talk! - especially when they are trying to recruit each other into their hierarchy.  So there’s no hiding what one carrier is doing versus another.  They share password log-ins, compare pricing and contract deal points – nothing is off limits for agents.  And the savviest ones are quick to brag to their buddies at the golf course about how much business they wrote last week – without ever leaving their office.  Yet we all know that agents don’t want to spend a dime developing new tools - and rightly so.  The insurance Company has the deepest pockets, the most to gain, and the broadest audience from which to recoup expenses.  But the brokers and agents do come up with great ideas.  So having a finely tuned listening ear within the agency field is a big asset.  And if you really hit the nail on the head with your Web-based functionality, that loyalty will ensure stable growth and profitability – assuming of course continued competitive products.

“Connecting the Dots”

So how do we “connect the dots” as I mentioned earlier?  You may be asking, “How can my technology drive competitive advantage, productivity, and cost reduction?  How do I leverage Web technology to get my agents selling more policies faster, with lower costs, less chasing of missing information, fewer headaches at the home office – and through all of this get them to tell their buddies about it and help my agent recruiting and retention efforts?”

First of all, you need speed.  Then you need to be on-target technically.  And on top of it all, you need a dash-board that the agents themselves have basically designed.  And you need tools and access points for the home office – a work-space for your agent administration folks to do their work in.  Oh yeah, you also need to track everything for compliance and audits. 

Speed

Taking more than 6 months or even years to roll out new tools for the agents is a killer.  It’s death – living hell.  Avoid it like the plague.  It’s a guaranteed failure.  People are going to be so burned out by the end of the roll-out that the new site will often launch with defects.  And the agents will be so frustrated and impatient with the delays that they will hyper-criticize it.  Not only that, but the word will get around, and it will be years before you fully recover. 

Case in point: One insurance company took 2 years to deploy an agent portal that should have taken 6 months.  Of course the agents hated the thing.  (In that case, it was pretty bad – an agent sent me their user ID and P/W “Mike, you gotta see this...”)  The debacle happened about 3 years ago now.  PEOPLE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT IT.  Mention the company name, and that’s one of the first things that come up.  The best bet is to work with someone who already has what you need so as to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

On-target Technically and a Great Dashboard

This is a no-brainer, but time and again people are rolling out tools for agents that are the obvious stuff, things that are the easy things to implement technically.  So the agents say, “OK, that’s cool.  But what about ____?  That’s what I really need.”  And back to the drawing board the company goes when all they had to do is get a bunch of agents in a room and ask them what they want.  Show them comparable Web sites.  Do some market research. 

Don’t assume that you know what the agents want.  You may have a great idea, but validate it against the real world.  It doesn’t take a lot of time.  Use screen moch-ups with some faked-out hyperlinks to secondary pages and see what the agents say.  (By the way, all major cities, and most second-tier cities, have a company that leases out a Usability Lab.  Hire them.  Done properly, the knowledge is worth its weight in gold.)  So give the agents what they really want – it’s a sure thing toward increasing productivity and ultimately recruiting and retention of the top agents.  Definitely consider outsourcing to a proven Web development partner.

A Work-space

As to tools and access points for the home office – a work-space for your agent administration folks to do their work in – this is another often over-looked piece of automation that is wreaking havoc in the insurance home office.  Not only agents, but home office folks as well, are familiar with Web functionality, timeframes, usability, quality, etc.  So when new sites are rolled out to the agent force, complementary tools should be rolled out to the home office staff as well.  There’s nothing worse to an agent than to have to deal with disgruntled home office folks complaining about technology or worse yet making mistakes because of bad technology.

Example:  If you’re rolling out a new portal for the agents that has a news feature, make sure the news poster dashboard is easy for the home office person to use (Usability Study) so they are autonomous and aren’t dependent on the IT department.  Also make sure the news poster has the capability to distribute the news according to agent level so that the news can be targeted to the proper level, thus making it more meaningful and appropriate, eliminating confusion and perhaps ill-will, and keeping everyone happy – agents, home office, IT – everyone. 

Ensuring compliance

Last but certainly not least is compliance.  With all things, the anti-sales department needs to give their stamp of approval.  The interesting thing to note is that if things are setup properly, compliance is actually easier with a Web portal and online functionality.  Some tips:  Give your compliance team access to the staging site (pre-live work area).  Keep them in the loop as new things are being designed and developed.  Allow for input from a compliance perspective.  Perhaps even include some functionalities that are specifically for them, making over-sight easier, and ensuring compliance with less effort.  Yes, these are indeed possible with the right commitment, knowledge, and internal communication skills. 

Conclusion

From recruiting, through contracting, training, and equipping, there is so much that can be done effectively to super-charge the productivity of an agent distribution machine.  But like anything else, building a solution that only works if agents adopt the solution is a VERY tricky business.  And getting home-office and compliance buy-in is also critical.  The rewards can be great, but the risks are great as well.

However, doing nothing is not an option any more.  The “table stakes” are all too real.  Find someone who’s “been there done that”, engage a Web-savvy executive sponsor, a hard-working project manager, link in several third party specialists, and you’ve got a recipe for significant competitive advantage.  As always, product comes first, marketing second, and technology third.  You can have a great site, spend big bucks on marketing, but if the product stinks, nothing will sell. 

Likewise, you can have a great product, spend big bucks on marketing, but if the Web site stinks, nothing will sell.  The same is true for a paltry marketing budget. It’s an Equilateral Triangle.

Learn more about Mike Wise at his blog, InsuraTech.