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Agency Marketing Technology Generational servicing Each generation has a different definition of what exceptional service is By Steve Anderson Do you provide good customer service? This is a question I often ask agents in my seminars. Inevitably I get a positive response from everyone in the room. Everyone thinks he or she provides good customer service. But when I follow up by asking them how to define what “good” service is, I get a variety of responses. For some agents, “good” means issuing and delivering certificates the same day that they are requested. For other agents, “good” is delivering an auto ID card, returning a phone call quickly, or providing an answer to a client’s question. By my definition, these activities aren’t “good” customer service. While it is important to deliver these services to our clients, I view them as “expected,” not “good.” What agencies should be striving for is exceptional customer service. To get to that level, we need to move beyond processing transactions to providing services that add value to the relationship between our clients and ourselves. This column is the third in a series where I have been looking at generational differences. Different generations expect different things when it comes to defining exceptional customer service. As a refresher, the accepted generational groupings are: Seniors—born prior to 1946; Boomers—born somewhere around 1946 to 1964; Generation X, born between 1964 and 1978; and Generation Y (or the Millennials), born between 1977 and 1994. Most agencies understand very well the service expectations of Seniors and Baby Boomers because a good portion of the agency service staff is composed of these two groups. For customers in these groups, building a relationship involves having the opportunity to sit down and talk with your staff face-to-face. These are the clients who want to come into your office to pay their direct bill payment. They just feel better if they can give it to you. Seniors and Boomers are okay with calling you up to make a change in their policy. In fact, they are not as comfortable with online and electronic communication. They feel better if they can talk to your staff so they can explain exactly what they need. And frankly, members of your staff believe that they are providing better service using the same model. For these two generations, this service model shouldn’t change unless specifically requested by the client. The problem, however, lies in the GenX and Millennial generations. Their definition of what comprises exceptional customer service is far from what I’ve described above as the standard in most agencies. Both of these generations are much more comfortable using technology as a primary communication and relationship-building tool. In fact, they expect their service providers to be comfortable with the same communication technology that they use every day. The problem comes when you have Baby Boomers as customer service agents trying to provide service to GenX and Millennials. A short story will illustrate my point. The 15 1/2-year-old son of an agency owner I know decided that he wanted to purchase a motorcycle when he turned 16. As you can imagine, his mother was not thrilled with the idea; but instead of just saying he couldn’t get a motorcycle, she told him that he would be responsible for paying the insurance. So he did what every 15 1/2-year-old would do and began researching the options online. On Saturday, he first went to his father’s agency Web site and submitted a request for a quote for motorcycle insurance. When he didn’t get an immediate response, he searched it on the Internet. The Google search results listed Progressive, GEICO, Allstate, and Foremost (try it yourself and see what results you get). Clicking on these individual sites he was able to obtain three different quotes. The quotes were all very expensive so he printed them out, put them in a folder and gave them to his dad and asked, “Can you do any better?” When his dad went into the office on Monday, the office manager came in chuckling with a printout of an e-mail from his son asking for a quote a motorcycle insurance. The dad’s response? He handed the folder with the quotes that his son had printed out to his office manager and asked, “Can we do any better?” This story illustrates very well the different mindset that younger generations have when it comes to their perception of what “good” service is and how they expect to be serviced. Here are a few ideas of some things that you should be considering in your agency to more effectively address the service needs of the younger generations. • Text messaging. It is hard to imagine using text messaging as a means of communicating with clients. Agency owners immediately think about the problems involved. How do we document a “conversa-tion”? Will CSAs need to use their cell phones to text message a client back? There are a couple of ways you can begin experimenting with text messaging today. Every cell phone service provider allows you to send a text message to one of their subscribers by going to the provider Web site. Assuming that you currently track cell phone numbers for your clients, all you would need to know is their current service provider. Another option is Teleflip, a service that makes it easy to send a text message to any cell phone, as long as you have the cell phone number. Teleflip simplifies the process that I just described. As long as you know the cell phone number, you can send a text message through the Teleflip service simply by sending an e-mail to (TheCellPhoneNumber)@teleflip.com. The service uses the telephone number to determine the service provider and forwards the message to the correct text message address. Currently, there’s no charge for the Teleflip service; however, there may be a charge on your phone bill to receive short mail, e-mail or SMS messages (text messages). Currently, Teleflip works only with mobile phone services in North America (Canada, U.S., Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam). • Live chat. Peter Anderson (no relation) of Anderson Insurance Services in Marshfield, Massachusetts, recently enhanced his agency’s Web site by adding the ability for a user to click on a button and begin a live chat with a person in the agency. The service, called Provide Support (www.providesupport.com), is software that, when you add it to your Web site, provides a “Live Chat” option. You set up individuals in the agency who are part of the rotation. When someone clicks on the Web site button, a box pops up on the computer of the next person in the rotation. They begin an instant message conversation. The cost is around $400 per year for six users. (In Anderson’s case, just he and the account managers are live). They could get a transcript of each conversation after the call and a management recap at night. According to Anderson, “My goal is to offer a way to get to get in touch with us anyway clients want to: phone, sneakers, e-mail, Web, call center, CSR24/Inscope live access, etc.” These are just two examples of new communication options that all agents should begin experimenting with so that they can figure out how to make them work most effectively in their agency. There are many questions on how to actually implement these in an agency environment. I don’t have all the answers yet. But I do know that we need to better understand the service expectations of these new generations of clients. Those agencies that invest the energy and effort will be respected for providing exceptional customer service. * |
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