Many years ago, I encountered two situations that demanded immediate action:
- One of our offices flooded. We had to remedy the situation and, simultaneously, handle the calls and service work that were normal to the office while we addressed our issue.
- A few years later a major event occurred and ALL of our 12 offices were affected simultaneously.
What we learned from the first event saved us during the second issue.
Regardless of the accolades I’ve gotten as an agency problem-solver, I must admit that there was a time that I, too, was young and stupid and thought much more highly of my management prowess than reflected by my results. At that point I learned most from making my own mistakes and the saving grace was that I was smart enough not to repeat those mistakes.
Now I’ve lived long enough that I’ve made all of the common mistakes (and many uncommon ones) and have learned enough to look smarter than I am because I’ve implemented Disaster Recovery Programs and alternative systems to address those situations before they happen.
When one office flooded, we were still in the “dumb telephone” era and we were out of touch with our clients until we arranged for remote-call-forwarding and at least we answered calls in another office, paralyzing our service in that office since we more than doubled the call volume. Meanwhile, we were flooded with claims and recruited everyone in the responding office to handle the claims reporting and responses. So, we backed up on normal customer service from BOTH offices. Meanwhile, I had several other offices whose staff was operating at normal pace since they weren’t involved in the crisis management.
As I said – I learned from my mistake. Subsequently, I created a Disaster Recovery Program and matured it year-by-year to address the flooding issue and many more situations that may occur to disrupt our normal operation.
Then it happened – a major “Perfect Storm” set of criteria occurred in our geographic area and all 12 of our offices were inaccessible for much of a week.
As the event unfolded, so did our Disaster Recovery Program. We rented an entire hotel in a neighboring state (away from the effects of the weather) and invited every employee and their families to join us at our temporary abode. Simultaneously we triggered a process with the telephone company and our new telephone system to transfer every line to our new temporary home. Our system was live (from our nightly backup) and we were working from our new location within a few hours. As more employees arrived, our capacity increased so that we were able to handle claims immediately with steady communications with our carriers and whichever of our customers were able to communicate with us.
This event was a “high water mark” for our work efforts (tongue in cheek pun)… but it also proved to me that with the right procedures, staff from various offices could work together and talk to clients to process transactions and solve problems.
The concept of FLEXWORK was born.
FLEXWORK is a system in which employees from various offices can handle workloads that cross geographic lines as long as the staff is equally trained into the same procedures and are technically qualified to do so. In other words, the staff that accomplishes the client’s or agency’s needs and transactions doesn’t have to be sitting next to each other in the same building.
This concept was further proven in several rural agencies with multiple locations who only had one or a few staff members competent in commercial lines. While personal lines was handled within local offices, commercial lines staff was located where convenient to the staff while the clients and producers they serviced were in other offices. The service staff didn’t have to be where the customer or the producer were located.
FLEXWORK became a full reality during the Pandemic when so many offices were closed but the employees worked remotely and still serviced the customer as needed.
Is it preferable to have your staff centrally located? Of course. But is it necessary? NO! It is necessary to have competent, motivated and MONITORED staff with sufficient technology (Agency Management System and an advanced telephone system) to permit them to converse (telephone) or video chat (i.e. Zoom) with customers, producers and carriers.
Docked laptops have replaced desktop computers to permit portability and allow an employee to work from home, central office, remote location like hotels or conference facilities or from whichever remote office is most appropriate to the situation (in case of emergency).
If you have multiple offices, the same CSR can handle an equal workload of calls and transactions as measured by phone volume and serve the agency’s customers regardless of their location within or outside the geographic footprint of the agency.
Other industries already permit their telephone system (or live receptionist) to distribute calls to equalize workflow among a department service staff. Imagine doing that in a two or ten location insurance agency in which one office is inundated with claims calls on a CAT loss while other offices have no change in call volume. With FLEXWORK the claim calls could be distributed to multiple servicers to respond to the customer’s needs. The same can be said for vacation transfer of calls, urgent needs after the departure of a former employee or heavy advertising and marketing periods resulting in multiple prospect calls.
Call Al Diamond at 856-779-2430 (al@agencyconsulting.com ) to discuss how FLEXWORK or other organizational development could help your agency smooth the workflow, especially in unusually busy periods.