Every week I get an agency who asks me, should I use a service center? Service centers are becoming a more common occurrence. It sounds great right? Sending your customers to the carrier, fewer headaches, better shot at account rounding and less headache on your end. But you need to carefully think through that decision.
When agencies ask me the question I immediately ask 3 questions back to them:
- Are you a good manager of people?
- Are you amazing at sales and have no interest in service?
- Are you interested in running a lifestyle agency, no real focus on growth just quality of life?
So let’s break these questions down. Are you a good manager of people? If you have no interest in managing people, you either have to hire someone who can or make the decision to use a service center. You absolutely need to manage and lead your team. If you are not willing to do it you need to make decisions.
If you are awesome at sales and that is all you want to do, then outsourcing your service makes sense. You can’t outsell any of the lost business because it is not in your control. You will need to focus all of your energy on new business production. The challenge is you will never really grow. Your referrals will be minimal, your account rounding is in someone else’s hands and your relationship with your clients is as shallow as a teaspoon.
The lifestyle agency is a hard one to admit. Some of you reading this blog may actually have one but didn’t know the name of it. This is where you are riding the book and selling whatever lands in your lap. The focus is maintenance not growth. Eventually this turns into survival or sale. However, your quality of life is great. You are golfing, vacationing etc. Unless you have someone else at the helm running the operations, use the service center.
Now, if you want to grow, and truly grow, you need to service your book. If you believe a service center can do better than you can yet you say you want to run a growing agency you need to look in the mirror. Servicing your clients is a revenue generating experience when you do it well. So if growth is your goal, start by designing processes and procedures that generate revenue and then hold people accountable to them.
Next, this industry needs to fight. I mean fight hard. When we send out books to the carriers for service who is going to make sure they stay better than us? Not them! How will you survive and thrive with someone else running your service. It’s impossible. The time is now for your agency to create customercentric processes and procedures that define a ridiculously amazing service. Agency Performance Partners will be launching AppX soon which is the premier process and procedure experience for your customers.
