Technology

Enhancing the client connection

SilverPlume solution helps agency to retain and grow

By John Chivvis

Property and casualty agents are facing two major concerns as the year 2008 progresses. First, there’s the soft market. An informal survey conducted during the 12th annual Property/Casualty Insurance Joint Industry Forum held in New York City earlier this year indicates that 75% of top P&C insurance executives expect a decline in profitability in auto and homeowners, and 80% expect a decline in commercial lines for 2008. (For a more detailed analysis of the Forum, see “Industry Forecast” in the March 2008 issue of Rough Notes.)

Second, there’s increased customer expectation. “Price alone is not enough to sustain a competitive advantage anymore because there are a tremendous number of agents, brokers, and direct writers out there,” says Ron Pitcher, owner of the Chicago-area-based Pitcher Insurance Agency, Inc.

Every customer expects the best price and each expects great customer service—that is now a given. “How do you deal with revenues that are declining and customers that are expecting more?” asks Eric Maki, SilverPlume senior product manager. “Agents are literally asking themselves, ‘What more can I do?’”

For Pitcher it meant turning to SilverPlume’s ClientConnect P&C, a new property and casualty follow-up to its popular ClientConnect solution for benefits and human resources. “We wanted a solution that would help us better connect with clients and prospects—to keep our name in front of them,” says Pitcher. “Plus, we wanted the ability to offer customized, value-added services.”

Valuable resources = value-added services

In a nutshell, ClientConnect P&C is an affordable, Web-based communica-tion tool and risk management resource. Agents can create customized, branded client portals to communicate and deliver content from industry-leading publishers as a value-added service to their clients.

“What’s interesting is that independent P&C agents may be late to embrace this type of service,” notes Shaun McNeill, SilverPlume vice president of sales and marketing. “The concept of client communication as a value-added service is an accepted practice when selling group benefits, but it is a relatively new concept with P&C insurance agents.”

Not Pitcher. Pitcher sets up his clients with customized portals to meet a number of needs. One is to provide an always-available channel for insurance information. “We give them what they need, when they need it,” says Pitcher.

Content—delivered by SilverPlume—includes practical risk management guides, occupational safety programs and materials, and other planning resources. “We include over 200 sample safety manuals tailored to the needs of different industries,” says Steve Hirsch, SilverPlume chief operating officer. “The agent can easily select the content needed for a particular client and have a client portal up and running in no time.”

Says Maki, “There’s a lot of industry-specific content driven by the client’s NAICS code in ClientConnect P&C, and we help an agent easily present resources that will be most applicable for the client. Companies really value having risk management, loss control and cost containment information right at their fingertips—it helps agents establish that ‘trusted advisor’ role.”

Agents therefore become the gatekeepers, deciding what content goes into the client portals, whether their own (such as a newsletter or marketing piece) or content delivered by SilverPlume. “This is a huge benefit for us because we are in essence creating an intranet for our clients and their employees,” explains Pitcher. “So now when a client needs insurance-related information, it’s at their fingertips—with our name on it.”

“It’s critical for agents to be accessible,” adds Maki. “ClientConnect P&C helps facilitate the communication between agent and customers as well as customers and their own employees—with all the name recognition pointing back to the agent.”

The “pointing back” is key because, for those customers who don’t have a risk manager, ClientConnect P&C basically serves as an agency’s virtual risk management department. “This allows agents to provide customers the resources they need while getting them involved in the act of managing risk,” explains McNeill. “Many of them are running their business without any type of plan.”

Pitcher can relate. Newly added electronic OSHA logs and related OSHA resources to ClientConnect P&C were a recent topic of conversation with one of his contractor clients. When Pitcher told him how he now could go in and manage his company’s OSHA logs electronically, the reply was, “What do you mean OSHA logs?” Within a few minutes, Pitcher had shown the contractor how to access the logs and fill them out—thus complying with OSHA requirements and avoiding a potential fine.

Maki says that ClientConnect P&C has a place at all levels in an agent’s book of business. At the lowest level, ClientConnect P&C serves as a branded self-service portal. For mid-tier clients, the portal becomes a point for collaboration. For top-tier customers, it operates as a fully customized portal. This allows an agency to engage clients and the clients’ employees year-round at the right level. “ClientConnect P&C becomes the tool to make business relationships stronger—and more efficient,” adds Maki.

Soft markets and declining revenues mean agents must be better stewards of their time and money, and ClientConnect P&C places emphasis on being an efficient and economical solution. McNeill says that agents need to be able to offer additional services to their clients, and any solution that an agent implements should be one that requires a minimal investment of time and money.

And that’s important for agents. Pitcher said that when doing research, he realized that there were some solutions out on the market that “were so cumbersome and unwieldy, they couldn’t be used.” Pitcher adds, “The way ClientConnect P&C works, it’s so much easier to use—and afford—especially for small and mid-sized agencies.”

“That’s because ClientConnect P&C is a turnkey solution—out of the box ready to go; it is all hosted on our servers,” says Hirsch. “Agents don’t want to have to worry about it—installing, updating, or managing it.”

“Besides being an incredible value, it’s simple to set up,” says Pitcher. “The same day they set it up, I was already uploading information from our system to their servers.”

Hirsch says that it’s easier for large brokerages to offer things like external client service portals because they have the staff, the experience, and the IT resources; but with ClientConnect P&C, smaller agencies can now be seen as more attractive to larger commercial risks that demand more.

As one of those “smaller agencies” Pitcher notes, “We may not be big enough to have our own loss control engineer, but now we are ‘big enough’ to offer risk management resources and loss control/prevention resources.”

The lawyer, the accountant, the insurance agent

“Agents can offer ClientConnect P&C portals and content as a trusted risk management resource to their clients,” says Maki. “This solution helps their clients make more informed decisions about their risk portfolio—and that is what it means to be a successful insurance professional today.”

“ClientConnect P&C is one of those tools that we are using in order to increase our role as a ‘consultative broker’ or ‘trusted advisor,’” explains Pitcher. The branding, the intranet, even the content selection for each portal adds to the value-added services that Pitcher touts to clients and prospects. “As we progress, we’re committed to differentiating ourselves by the value-added services we offer,” says Pitcher.

This extends to offering value in the prospecting phase. McNeill says that some agents use ClientConnect P&C to demonstrate how they can service a customer. “Instead of just putting a proposal in a binder, a portal is set up for the prospect and the proposal is delivered through ClientConnect P&C,” McNeill explains. “Talk about a great first impression!”

“Over the past few years the race in the industry has been on price, but an independent agent’s strength is in building that relationship—providing the guidance and counsel that a client needs,” says Maki.

“ClientConnect P&C has been an incredible value, because we now have something else we can talk about and offer besides price,” says Pitcher. While Pitcher says that price is still important, it is these resources that he believes are keys to future success. ClientConnect P&C provides a mechanism for collaboration and consultation and, according to Pitcher, that is what strengthens his customer relationships.

“Businesses need to view agents in that same trusted circle of advisors that includes their accountant or lawyer,” says McNeill. “It is about more than a software solution; it is a mindset that agents are going to have to adopt if they plan to survive and flourish—especially in a soft market.” *

For more information:
ClientConnect
Web site:
www.silverplume.com

The author
John Chivvis is a Texas-based writer who specializes in topics of technology implementation. His work has appeared in a number of national and regional publications.