Why Your Client Experience Starts From the Inside

Welcome to the Agent Leader podcast. My name is Brent Kelly, your host. I am honored and excited you are with me on today's episode. And just like every episode of the Agent Leader podcast, my purpose, my goal of this podcast for you, the insurance agency leader, is to help you, first of all, gain clarity. Help you gain clarity in areas of where you want to go and of course, why do you want to go there? Why is that so important? I don't think we asked that question enough. Secondly, it's about consistency. What are the habits, what are the behaviors? What are the things that you need to do as an agency leader and your team needs to do consistently to get the results you want? And lastly, it's about a commitment. It's about a commitment, first of all, to yourself, that are you going to equip and resource yourself to become your best version? And then secondly, commitment, of course, to your team. Once you fill your cup, can you overflow that cup and fill your team, add value to your team? And last, it's a commitment to others, and that's your clients, it's your community, it's your centers of influence, it's your insurance carriers. But that commitment to yourself, to your team and to others is vital. And that's really what the AgentLeader podcast is all about, is helping you to get better in those specific areas. Now, just a quick programming announcement. The next three episodes of the Agent Leader podcast are going to be covering different areas of the client experience. Now, I can tell you the client experience is talked about quite a bit. I mean, you hear that buzzword, client experience. It used to be talk about, you know, customer satisfact or maybe even customer loyalty. And then the client experience became the big buzzword. But I do think many agencies talk about the client experience, but they don't execute it very well. And so what I want to do is break this podcast up or break this, this topic up the client experience into three podcast episodes. And this first episode, I'm going to talk about the internal part of the client experience. But because before you can deliver a great client experience outwardly, right, to those clients who are working with your agency, you've got to figure out internally what do we have to do? And I'm going to focus on one key area of that. So before I get into the specific internal focus of the client experience, I think an important question to ask is, why is this even that important? Right? Why should you, as an agency leader care that much about the client experience? And I think the obvious answer is, well, you know, because retention, because improved morale. I mean, better relationships. Yeah, those are all great reasons. And I think everybody's got to have their own reasons of why it's important. But here's the reality of this, is that you can be pretty average and quite honestly, many agencies are very average at delivering a true client experience. And you can still do pretty well in this business, in this industry. In fact, I was talking to one of our newer members of the Sitkins network, our private client group. And the ownership of this agency, although they have insurance backgrounds and work with insurance people, obviously, is that they're very entrepreneurial focused. Right. They're business growth focused. And as they're talking about the insurance industry said this is a great industry. And I said, of course it is, because you can be average and maybe even below average and still have a retention of 85 to 90%. What does that mean? It means that you can really do almost nothing. And some agencies, outside of sending out a policy, you know, the actual policy, maybe e policy, but maybe an actual mail policy, and then saying, hey, your renewal is coming up, don't do much and yet their clients stay with them so that almost 9 out of 10 people and or businesses will stay with your agency even if you don't do much. So that's the positive side, I guess, in the sense of the fact this is a great business. But on the flip is what is the opportunity? What if you were able to increase your retention by just a few points? It's huge. And by the way, don't we owe it to our clients to give them the best possible experience? I think we'd all say, yeah, of course we owe it to them. But are we willing to do some of the things that is required to get there? Because many agencies go, good's good enough, it's okay, it's fine, we're doing okay. But the elite agencies, the high performing agencies, understand from one component is there's an opportunity for their agency to maximize performance, to maximize revenue, to maximize retention, which by the way, leads to more opportunities for their entire team. And they also understand that it's not just about the retention. It's not just about the revenue that's great, that's the outcome. It's about doing what's right. Right. It's about being great. It's about, you know, as a human being living up to the potential we're created to achieve. And part of that is giving our clients a great experience. Now, I know there's a lot of facets to client experience. I know that Agencies listening to this podcast. Some of you might be commercial lines focused, some of you may be personal lines focused, some of you may be benefits and life insurance focused. So there may be different types of clients you work with, but ultimately we really owe it to our clients to give them a great experience. And by the way, if we don't, somebody's going to. Now, maybe they're not going to give them an amazing client experience, but maybe it's different enough or better enough to move from you. Because clients today have more choices and more opportunities and more freedom than ever before. They also have more education than ever before. And so in fact, if you would go out and you would just ask the average insurance buyer, I don't care if it's personal lines or commercial lines. I'm not talking about the most sophisticated buyer, I'm talking about your average insurance purchaser. And you say the word insurance to them and you say what's the very first word that comes to mind? Typically, it isn't pretty. I do this at live seminars quite a bit and ask that same question. Put yourself in the mindset of your insurance consumer. And by the way, this is called what's in it for Me? We always have this radio station of thinking about our clients, what's in it for them? But if you would just go out and ask the average client, they would say things like complicated, expensive. Sometimes they give me two words, necessary evil. Maybe you've heard some of these words before, but typically insurance is not painted in the best light, right? Oh, insurance. Glorious, wonderful, fun. Now, of course, we're not selling entertainment products, so you're not going to get some of those. But I hopefully, as I go through the next few episodes here on this podcast, hopefully if you begin to do things the right way, they would think about you or your agency maybe in the words using indispensable resource, valuable, right? Those are the kind of words that we really want our clients to think about when it comes to the client experience itself, right? So first of all, we have to think different. This goes back to Apple's marketing campaign from the late 90s, early 2000s to think different. Because most agencies are kind of all look the same, they walk the same, they talk the same, but we also have to act different, we have to think different and we have to act different. So what I want to start today talking about is the internal component of a client experience, of a great client experience, a top level client experience, a high performing client experience. Now, when we work with insurance producers and I am a recovering I have my quotes in the air. Recovering insurance producer. I spent 15 years in insurance production, so I know this really well. There is a disease that many insurance producers, and whether you call them account executives, risk advisors, the ones that are going out and selling the product, there is a disease that many insurance producers have and it can be labeled as an acronym, S A K U Saku and Saku stands for source of all knowledge in the universe. If you talk to most insurance producers when it comes to the relationship with their clients and just general thoughts, they know it all. Just ask them. They know it all. And so when it comes to their client experience and the relationships with their clients from beginning to end, producers set themselves up by saying things like what? They say this, if you need anything, and I mean anything, call me, right? I'm here for you 24 7. Here's my cell number. Now why do they do that? Well, first of all, it's a way when you're trying to sell a policy that makes you look like, hey, I'm a top level service person, I'm here for your needs. And I think it's out of good intention. I'm having fun here, but it's not a good intention, right? They do build a relationship. In many cases they do have a lot of deep conversations with their clients or at least the good ones. And so they want to be there for their clients. But what does this do? It puts all the pressure and all the time on them, on that one person to, to do all of the work. Now I have never seen any team sport where one person did absolutely everything. Now there may be a star player, right? There may be someone who stands out that you notice, but it always takes a team. I've never seen whether it's, you know, you talk about a movie, you talk about a Broadway show, you talk about a group musical performance. Again, there may may be somebody on the front of the stage, but I guarantee you there are people behind the stage that are doing a lot of the work. In fact, in some cases they may be doing the most important work. So it's really important. First of all, when you think about the client experience that you have to understand as an agency, this is a team sport. We are all uniquely gifted. And I'm hoping in your agency that your salespeople are doing and living and breathing sales stuff. That means they're proactively, really good at pipeline building, they're proactively, really good at relationship building. They're proactively, really good at being in front of people and asking Questions and having conversations. They should be. And I also hope that your service team is uniquely qualified and gifted and being able to give really top notch service. Right. To be able to communicate when the client calls and has needs or concerns or wants or desires that they are there to help to do those type of things. And both are equally important. There is a complex oftentimes that there's the producer and then there's the service team. No, no, no. They are a team. This is together. We are not greater, we are not better than. We all need each other to function at a high level. And by the way, it's not just about the existence of the producer and the service team as far as maximizing their time performance. That's part of it. But what's best for the client. What's best for the client. I'm amazed. So often when I do training seminars and typically I'm in front of producers, but oftentimes I get the opportunity now to also bring in the service team and we'll talk about what that looks like and feels like. And I always ask the service team when the producer is taking a change. I don't care. I mean some of the changes are pretty simple, but anything from an auto change to a location change, whatever it may be, how often are their changes accurate and complete, meaning that they get all the stuff they need to do. And most times they will say not very often. In fact, I was just at an insurance agency. They said about 98 out of 100 aren't fully complete or accurate. What does this mean? Well, it means then the service person has to then call back the client and say, well, I know you called the producer who was the source of all knowledge in the universe, but they forgot to get something. So I need to ask you for this. What does that do? Well, it wastes time, it wastes energy, it, it makes the client feel like you're not doing your job. We could go on and on and on, but it's not a very good experience. Right? So we have to understand first of all from an agency perspective that we all need each other. We have to function as a high performance team. And that's one of the key philosophies that we teach and preach around at the Sidkins Network is building high performance teams in your agency. The sales team has to empower and equip and introduce and love on their service team, the service team, in many cases they need to be able to look back at the producer team, the sales team and say, listen, here's what I need from you. Here's what's going on, by the way, during the week, leave me alone so I can do my job at a high level. I'm amazed at how many salespeople interrupt distract their service team just because they got nothing else going on or because they just want to check in. Maybe again, maybe it's out of good intent, but it's amazing how many distractions that service team have to deal with when salespeople call in or stop in or bug them for whatever. It may be not being proactive, but just hey, what's going on? Alright, so understand this is a team sport. The sales team needs to empower and equip and the service team needs to be freed up to do that. The best example I can give of this is my own marriage and yes, you know, personal life does imitate business life in many regards. And I can tell you I am guilty of this by the way, many times I have a long way to go. Just ask my wife. But I can tell you that when we are proactive together and we talk about our calendar, right, where our kids are going to be, where we need to be, where I'm going to go, where you're going to go, what we need to do, we talk about what we're spending our money on that week, we're being very intentional with our time and our money. The week seems to flow better. We don't seem to disrupt or distract each other as much. We have a plan together and we go out and we conquer the week. Same is true in insurance agencies. When a sales team and the service team do not have proactive, intentional conversation with each other, we call this a high performance team meeting. Throughout the week, we just kind of guess what's going on, we interrupt each other, we distract each other, there's no real plan, we're not productive. And guess who suffers ultimately? Our clients. Right? Talking about the client experience, our clients suffer this. John Maxwell and I've said this on previous podcasts, I love this slogan. It says we're either preparing or we are repairing. And it's the same thing with Truth High performance team meetings that we're either preparing for the week together to set things up or we're going to repair all the mistakes and problems that we have throughout the week. That's why this is so important with the client experience, we've got to have an ongoing conversation and a communication that's intentional with purpose. Every single week we teach around our private client group at the Sidkins Network. Every single week, every single Monday, there should be some form of high performance team meeting, which, by the way, is led by the service person. Right. The service person leads that meeting. Well, why do we say that? Well, because the producer, again, I'm a producer, recovering producer. We're going to get busy, we're going to get distracted. Something else is going to be more important. So the service team needs to schedule and run and lead those meetings. By the way, they only have to be 15, 20 minutes long. They don't have to be very long, but just enough to have a proactive conversation is critical. And again, I'm spending a lot of time talking about this internal dialogue. But again, why is it so important? Because to have a greater client experience, we have to have a great internal team experience. First, we have to get our act together internally, work together and be a team. No more socus, source of all knowledge in the universe. We are a cohesive team that's going to empower and equip each other. Now, saying all this, it sounds like a little, oh, ooh la la, you know, let's all do kumbaya and light a candle and we're all going to be great together. Is this going to be hard work? Yes. I have worked with agencies where I can tell you there is a lack of trust between the sales team and the service team. So why does the sales team take all this on? Well, because I don't feel like I could trust the service team. Could be true, right? Certainly, as an agency leader, we have to make sure that our teams understand and respect each other. And if there is an issue, we need to address that now. Right. We need to go to the sales and service and bring them together and say, okay, listen, if we have a lack of trust with each other, we have a problem here. Why do we not trust each other? Let's give specific examples. Let's talk about. Let's work through it. Can we improve it? Can we fix it? Or maybe there's just a person issue that we need to deal with. But the longer you wait to do that, the longer that the client is going to suffer, the longer that your internal team is going to not perform at the level they should perform at. So as I go through these episodes, the next two after this, we're going to dive deeper. The next two, we're going to take this internal thing, this high performance team that is so vital for agencies and begin to say, well, what does this look like to the outside? So now we're starting to talk about having a cohesive team. We let's talk about the client experience. What do they specifically want? Are we documenting that? And then from there it's how do we truly become an indispensable risk partner. So it's going to be the next two episodes. Next episode I'm going to talk about the idea of defining rules, defining expectations. Not what we think, but what our clients think so that we can play the game together right in a cohesive way with our clients. And then the next episode is going to be about really understanding what does it mean? How do you become indispensable? Because that's not easy to do. It's easy to say, but it's not easy to do. So what are some things you can do? So those can be the next couple episodes. I hope that this episode on High Performance teams and internal dialogue with your agency was helpful to you and if it has been helpful to you. If any of these episodes of the Agent Leader podcast have added value to you and your agency, I would love a rating and review. I'd appreciate that. Again, my goal is to help agencies like yourself gain clarity, build consistency, and make a commitment to become your best version possible. We'll talk to you soon. All the best in your success.