[Insurance Vlog] CSRs Actually Like Renewal Calls? With Dan Muhlenkamp Preferred Insurance Center
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Kelly: Hello everyone out there, our wonderful viewers and followers. I have a special guest on our video blog today. The one, the only, Dan Muhlenkamp from Preferred Insurance!
Dan: Hi everybody.
Kelly: You doing good today, Dan?
Dan: Yep, I’m doing fantastic. How about you, Kelly?
Kelly: Really good. So, for those of you that might think Dan looks familiar, that’s because he is an insurance celebrity. He was on the cover of Rough Notes earlier this year, and he sticks out with a pink shirt. So, if anyone would like, we are selling autographed copies for about $15 each.
Dan: Thanks.
Kelly: You’re welcome. Well, we’re super excited to have you here today Dan. So what we want to talk about today is a little program that we launched with your agency, what was it? About two, two and a half years ago now?
Dan: It’ll be three years in March.
Kelly: You know, the problem is that we keep looking younger and younger, so it’s hard to tell.
Dan: Exactly, yeah, that’s it.
Kelly: So, why don’t you tell our viewers here a little bit about what we did and basically how we got to the place of saying we’re going to do this crazy thing and call everybody once a year at renewal.
Dan: Well, basically, we were very, very busy trying to play catch up and react to clients and things along those lines and Kelly came to us with the idea of “Well, how about we be proactive about the whole thing and we call every homeowners renewal. Let’s call every one of them, every year, and get ahead of everything that’s going on. Stop trying to guess about what they feel, how they feel about their rate or whatever it may be and actually find out.” So it took some convincing …
Kelly: I’m just putting it politely, by the way.
Dan: My fantastic staff eventually agreed to give it a try for a quarter. We kept some stats and it went amazingly well.
Kelly: So, why don’t you tell a little bit about when you did launch it. What were those stats at the end of the quarter? What are you seeing by doing this now, almost three years into it?
Dan: Well, first of all, the auto insurance rates are going up quite rapidly now. Previously, the homeowners insurance rates were going up, though that settled down. We’re actually running about a 96% retention ration in personal lines. So, I think that’s unbelieveable, and in retention we’d always been good, but not that good. The other thing that has happened is that the number of times that we requote clients in a month actually has gone down because it used to be that you’d see something come up and think: “Oh, I’m gonna have to requote this” and the CSRs would requote everything ahead of time and then make the phone call. Many times the people didn’t want to change companies, so now if you do things properly, I’m not saying you’re never going to have to requote anything. That’s a great exaggeration. You wouldn’t be an independent agent if that was your stance. The number of requotes is down, which gives the CSRs time to work on things that actually need to be done, and not on things they think might have to be done. Which is a huge deal, and it also allows for like right now when auto rates in some companies have spiked. Yes we’re doing more requotes for that company, but that’s easier to handle when you’re not requoting everything you think might need requoting.
Kelly: Right.
Dan: Now, in reality, the biggest advantage to this and when I knew it was a winner was when I did my employee reviews and two of the CSRs, which is half my force, said: “You know, I just feel like my job is so much more rewarding because we’re actually going over things with people, and we’re reaching out to them,” She goes, “I don’t feel like I’m just putting out fires all the time. I feel like I’m actually providing service.” and that’s a big deal. I want everyone on my team to have rewarding jobs and rewarding lives, and when that happened I thought it was an awesome thing.
Kelly: That’s great. Now, has it led to the opportunity for more cross-sales for your crew, too?
Dan: Yeah. Now, we’ve always been really, really good at packaging auto and home. Now we reward for adding an umbrella and life insurance opportunities. So, I have a life person, and when they get that opportunity over to the life person, it took a little while to actually catch on. This year it has skyrocketed. Our life insurance revenue is almost twice as much at this point it was in 2017 as it was in 2016 for the whole year. So, that’s a big deal.
Kelly: It’s huge, that’s huge. The final thing that you’ve shared with me that I think our viewers might be interested in is that I think over time you were able to decrease staff a little bit, right? Not replace anybody, but now you’ve got someone working in commercial and personal lines, and have a little bit more flexibility there.
Dan: Yeah, again, because you’re not constantly putting out fires we were able to when somebody is nearing retirement, things along those lines made everything work out better because everybody had a handle on what they were doing. Then, when you have a spike in activity and rates like we’ve had now, yes, it makes everybody busy but it’s temporary. Rate fluctuations happen all the time, and they’re better able to absorb it for a period of time, and then things lessen back down, and like right now they feel like they’re catching up again. So, not only is it a tremendous benefit on all fronts, but it makes the CSRs life better, and their time at work better. It’s more of a better fit to the CSRs than it is to the clients. It’ll take them about a year to figure that out, but when they figure it out, they won’t go back.
Kelly: I think it’s overwhelming at first, it’s like: “There’s no way we could call everybody, I can’t keep up today!” and you kinda have to get through that hump and it all starts clicking after a little bit.
Dan: Absolutely.
Kelly: Does your sales team use it as a selling feature as well?
Dan: All the time. Yeah, you know it is a constant thing because a lot of people when they call in to the agency, they’re calling in because they just got a rate increase or something like that. When you tell them, “We’re placing you here, we think you’re going to be here for a long time, but you’re going to hear from us. You don’t have to check everything, and we’re going to stay on top of your account and be sure to let us know when things change, but you’re going to hear from us once a year. A real life person on the phone” I guarantee they say it all the time.
Kelly: That’s great, that’s great. Well, is there anything else you want to add to our viewers out there?
Dan: Let me think. Be good to everybody at Christmas, I don’t know, but no. It was a wonderful thing to do and Kelly was not trusted at all when she came up with this idea. Everybody thought she grew horns. It’s a great idea, go for it.
Kelly: The bitter beer comes out.
Dan: Exactly! That’s exactly what happened, “No, no, no.”
Kelly: I think I was chased out of your Coldwater, Ohio location a few times, but that’s not the end. We’re tougher than that. Well Dan, I appreciate you allowing us the opportunity of being one of the first agencies we put on the program, and it’s great to kinda check in almost three years later. See how you’re doing and see that you’re sticking with it. For any agencies out there looking for the same program, let us know. We’d love to do the same thing for you guys and help you out with it because I do think that some of the things Dan has said about the team buy-in and things like that definitely helps if there’s some guidance from an outside party, some scripts that are brought to the table, a whole plan, and really just the belief that you can get through it. Then if you hold that first quarter down it does get a lot better, and that you don’t give up.
Dan: It is. When you’re asking staff to do something, teams to do something, that is very difficult and unusual I’ve never ceased to be amazed at how if they hear it from me, that’s one thing, but when they hear it from an outside source it’s like, “Okay, maybe we should do this.” They go along better, and the scripts and everything make a huge difference. So, I’m not sure I would even advise you to attempt to try it without some advice from somebody who’s done it before.
Kelly: Well, thank you Dan for your time, and thank you guys for watching. If you need anything just look below the video blog and you can get some resources on how you can help the same thing in your agency. Bye guys!
Dan: Bye, bye!
