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And the winners are…

Top CSRs are honored by The National Alliance

By Elisabeth Boone, CPCU

When the chips are down, the clock is ticking, and the heat is on, whom do you call?

In virtually every independent agency around the country, there’s a three-letter answer to that question: CSR. Customer service representatives (customer service agents or account managers in some agencies) are often—and rightly—described as the lifeblood of a successful agency. Working largely behind the scenes, they artfully juggle a myriad of tasks, keeping customers happy and boosting agency profits and retention.

CSRs often are the unsung heroes of their agencies—but for each of the last 16 years, top CSRs have been brought into the spotlight by The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research. Among The National Alliance’s numerous professional designation programs is the CISR (Certified Insurance Service Representative), an educational initiative that teaches insurance knowledge and service skills to CSRs at all levels of their profession. The Alliance also offers the course of study that leads to the Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) designation.

Each year since 1991, The National Alliance has sponsored the Outstanding CSR of the Year Award. A national award winner and four finalists are selected on the basis of their contributions to their agency and community, and on the quality of their essays on a topic that relates to customer service.

To be eligible to compete in the essay contest, a CSR must be nominated by letter from an agency principal, supervisor, or colleague, and then must provide letters from two insurance business references (clients or colleagues).

Nominees first compete on the state level; state winners are automatically entered in the national competition. From this pool are selected the four finalists and the one national winner.

Each of the four finalists receives a gold and garnet pin; the national winner is given a gold and diamond pin and a $1,000 cash award; and the winner’s employer receives a scholarship to any National Alliance program. Finally, the name of the national award winner is inscribed on a sculpture that is on permanent display at National Alliance headquarters in Austin, Texas.

For 2007, the essay subject was:
The CSR position has evolved and grown into one of significantly greater importance, including both men and women with wide ranges of insurance experience. Twenty-five years ago, CSRs attended “Gal Friday Seminars.” What four factors or changes in the insurance business have been responsible for the evolution of the CSR position into its current professional status?

Meet the winners

This year, the Society of Certified Insurance Service Representatives and the Society of Certified Insurance Counselors selected four finalists and one national winner from among the essays submitted by 37 state winners.

The 2007 National Outstanding CSR of the Year Award was bestowed on Peggy S. Lund, CIC, with RJ Ahmann Company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

The four finalists were:

• Sharian L. Brown-Taylor, CIC, CISR, ACSR, ASLI, AU, with Marsh USA in Austin, Texas

• Genell Cradic, CIC, CISR, CPIW, with Price & Ramey, Inc., in Kingsport, Tennessee

• Jeffrey Michael Crigger, CISR, with Finance Insurance Co. Ltd. in Honolulu, Hawaii

• Michelle S. Parker, CIC, ACSR, with Sky Insurance in Wooster, Ohio

Peggy Lund

National award winner Peggy Lund is a 15-year veteran of the insurance business. She began her career in 1992 as a sales assistant for Federated Insurance, a direct writer. She moved to the independent agency side in 1997, and for the past six years has been serving as a commercial account manager with RJ Ahmann Company.

Volunteering at church and in her community is an important part of Lund’s life. Among her activities are teaching Sunday school and confirmation classes, driving for Meals on Wheels, and volunteering at the VA hospital and VEAP (Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People) as well as Feed My Starving Children.

In her winning essay, Peggy cited the four factors that she believes have been key in the evolution of the CSR position to professional status: (1) advances in technology and automation; (2) a more competitive industry; (3) added opportunities for continuing education; and (4) society’s newest exposures to loss.

With respect to technology, Lund writes, “New broker tools available today combine business knowledge with technology. As a result, CSRs are expected to handle much larger books of business, have an understanding of insurance coverages, and serve the varied needs of a wide variety of businesses.”

Turning to the issue of competition, Lund cites a number of factors that have served to create more intense competition. “Coverage has become more varied and complex, and clients have become more demanding and sophisticated,” she observes. “Market cycles are becoming shorter, requiring a better understanding of how to cope with a hardening or softening market.”

Also serving to intensify competition, Lund comments, is the accelerated pace of agency mergers and acquisitions. “With acquisitions often come problems arising out of the differences in the agencies’ business cultures and tolerances,” she writes. “An experienced, well-educated CSR can be a valuable asset to management by using his/her experience and people skills to recognize potential problems, advise management of possible issues, and provide ideas for possible resolution of a simple problem before it escalates into a full-blown issue that disrupts agency flow and production.”

Another key factor in the advancement of the CSR position to professional status, Lund writes, is the availability of “more opportunities for continuing education, personal development, and advancement.

“Knowledge has become equally as important as relationships in securing and retaining quality clients for the agency,” Lund asserts. “Programs available to CSRs today offer the tools needed to effectively handle the varied personalities of producers and underwriters, and at the same time understand the opportunities and challenges of the ever-changing marketplace.”

Also enhancing opportunities for CSRs to become more professional, Lund writes, is the fact that “New exposures to loss are constantly evolving in society. Along with the new age of technology comes the need for protection against threats to Internet exposures, protection of confidential information, network security, and identity theft.”

Not surprisingly, Lund receives high praise from top executives at RJ Ahmann Company. Says agency President Richard J. Ahmann: “The flexibility Peggy brings to her job has enabled us to enact and make changes to the new technologies and processes required to meet client needs. Value added is an approach that Peggy embraces and is always working to upgrade. If there is a better way to bring more value to our clients, Peggy will find it.”

The agency’s chief operating officer, Dean Hildebrandt, says of Lund: “Besides being a joy to work with, Peggy is a take-charge person who is able to present creative ideas and communicate the benefits. She has successfully brought superior service to some of the largest, most sophisticated accounts in our agency. During her tenure, she has consistently maintained one of the highest client retention ratios in our organization.”

Sharian Brown-Taylor

With 25 years of insurance experience, Sharian Brown-Taylor is clearly a valuable asset to her employer, Marsh USA, where she serves as a trainer at the Austin, Texas, office. Being chosen as a finalist in The National Alliance CSR competition is a high honor for her, but not the only one she has earned. In 2006 she was named Texas ACSR (Accredited Customer Service Representative) of the Year, and she was chosen as the AICPCU (American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters) Outstanding Course Leader for 2004, 2005, and 2006.

Brown-Taylor serves on the ACSR Advisory Council and The National Alliance Education Committee, and she is also active in Toastmasters.

In her essay, Brown-Taylor observes that the “Gal Friday” style of CSR is a thing of the past. Today, she writes, “CSRs are licensed professionals who cultivate lasting relationships with their clients.”

Technology, Brown-Taylor comments, has come a long way over the 25 years of her insurance career. “When I first entered the insurance business in 1982, I had to type our policies and endorsements on a typewriter,” she recalls. Thanks to technology, she says, agency staffers now can work faster, more accurately, and more productively and can enjoy ease of communicating with both clients and carriers.

With respect to competition, Brown-Taylor firmly believes it has worked to the benefit of both CSRs and their agencies. “Increased competition has made our agencies stand up and take notice of the CSR as it relates to servicing their clients,” she writes. “In a hard market, sometimes the only thing that separates one agency from another is its level of service. A well-trained CSR can be a vital asset to an agency by providing exceptional service …”

Finally, Brown-Taylor addresses what she calls “relationship marketing.” “I worked with a client who insisted that we have lunch together once a month,” she writes. “We were not allowed to discuss business at lunch; it was time spent getting to know each other. After lunch we returned to the office and talked about the account.” Thanks to the effort invested in cultivating this relationship, Brown-Taylor says, when the market hardened, the client stayed with the agency even though his premium tripled. “Business is business,” she says, “but relationships last a lifetime.”

Genell Cradic

With a dual degree in English and theatre, Genell Cradic saw a bright future for herself as an educator, and for two years she pursued that career as a high school teacher. In 1972, however, she put down her chalk and joined Price & Ramey, Inc., as a customer service representative; and 35 years later she is still with the agency, serving today as a personal account manager.

She is a member of the National Association of Insurance Women (NAIW) and its local affiliate, Insurance Professionals of Kingsport (IPK). This year, in addition to being selected as a finalist in The National Alliance CSR competition, Cradic was named IPK’s 2007 Insurance Professional of the Year. She is serving a third term as secretary of the Insurors of Tri-Cities, a local chapter of Insurors of Tennessee. In addition, Cradic is an active member of her church.

With an insurance career that spans 35 years, Cradic was by default a “Gal Friday” in her early days with Price & Ramey. For that reason, the first factor she cites in her essay as enhancing the professional status of CSRs is technology.

“Twenty-five years ago when I was a CSR attending ‘Gal Friday’ seminars,” Cradic writes, “I never imagined the possibilities awaiting me. My employer tells the story of visiting an agency in another town whose ladies were using this new equipment called computers. They told him his ‘girls’ would throw away their typewriters! When he returned to the office and told me this, he states I hugged my typewriter and told him I’d NEVER give it up!”

Of course she did part with her beloved typewriter and ever since then has been a happy user of all available technology. “I’ve never regretted the loss,” Cradic writes.

Today, the transformation of Gal Fridays, Cradic writes, includes the availability of multi-tasking tools. “Headsets and dual monitors permit one to talk on the telephone, review a policy, pull up a company’s manual on the Internet, and keyboard information to rate and issue almost simultaneously,” she observes.

Cradic notes that we live in an “instant” society, which, she says, “business is required to mirror.” Cell phones, voice mail, and e-mail all increase the pressure to respond instantly to clients’ needs, Cradic comments. “The agency must be more accessible, and the CSR must train to meet the demand … Also, in an instant, she/he must be able to assess what to up-sell and what can be done to round an account, while the client is available!”

Cradic points to education as a critical factor in enhancing the professional status of CSRs. “The job of a CSR 25 years ago did not require much more than the ability to file alphabetically and multiply,” she writes. “However, clients today rely on their CSR to know the answers to most of their questions.” Thanks to a myriad of educational opportunities, she notes, “a CSR has become an educated professional who is resourceful in giving the ultimate in customer service.”

Jeffrey Michael Crigger

One CSR who’s never been tagged as a “Gal Friday” is Jeffrey Michael Crigger, who is a multiline CSR in the commercial lines department of Finance Insurance Company in Honolulu. An Army veteran whose service took him to Hawaii, he chose the Aloha State as his permanent residence after retiring from the military in 1987.

Like many industry veterans, Crigger never intended to make insurance his permanent career. “My one and only goal in 1987,” he says, “was to find a job that would pay the rent.”

The first several years of Crigger’s career were spent on the insurance company side, where he held positions in subrogation, claims adjusting, and workers compensation underwriting.

Eager for a change, Crigger in 2002 took his knowledge and experience to Finance Insurance, where he is an enthusiastic advocate of teamwork, which he says “is the essential ingredient to being a good CSR and a successful member of the Finance Insurance Company family.”

A member of Toastmasters, Crigger says his community involvement has less to do with formal organizations than with using his insurance knowledge to help his fellow citizens. In one case, he was able to arrange standard market coverage for an historic hotel that was in danger of being closed down because of the high cost of insuring it in the surplus lines market.

In his essay, Crigger says that, despite the fact that the term “Gal Friday” is usually regarded as insulting, no one should consider the CSR position to be menial. “The last 25 years of evolution have changed the insurance industry definition of this position,” he writes. “Additionally, this evolution has added to the position the responsibilities of constant and ongoing education, the ability to use computer technology and assimilate new technologies as they are introduced, an awareness of current events, and knowledge of the current marketplace that was not expected or even imagined 25 years ago.”

Changes in exposures and perils—identity theft, employment practices liability, computer system hacking—also challenge today’s CSR to “research for new markets and means of protecting our customers.”

A third factor in the evolution of the CSR position, Crigger observes, is the increasing involvement of federal and state governments in the insurance industry “through both regulation and a true necessity for assistance with catastrophic exposures.” Today’s CSR, he writes, “not only is charged with constant monitoring for compliance to new rules, regulations, and laws, but also must have a working knowledge of programs offered by the government, such as the National Flood Insurance Program.”

A fourth key factor in the evolution of the CSR position, Crigger comments, is the social change that has swept the country over the past 25 years. A more litigious society and the lowering of moral standards, he writes, require the CSR “to be more detailed and documentation-oriented than ever before.”

As CSRs, Crigger says, “We help civil society maintain its status and bear the burden if something is missed through our lack of education, knowledge, or proper review.”

Michelle S. “Mickey” Parker

An 18-year veteran of the insurance business, Michelle Parker receives high marks from her employer, insurers her agency represents, and her local YMCA.

Parker is an account executive and commercial lines service team manager at Sky Insurance in Wooster, Ohio, where she has steadily advanced to positions of increasing responsibility.

“I’ve led our commercial lines service team from a one-CSR, one-producer team to a six-producer, three-CSR team,” she says. “During my 18 years with the agency, I’ve successfully facilitated change as we acquired three agencies and were acquired by Sky Insurance in 2005. I encourage and support my service team members in pursuit and maintenance of their professional designations.”

Outside the office, Parker finds time to participate in a variety of community activities: The United Way, the Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary, and the Komen Race for the Cure.

In her essay, Parker attributes the evolution of the CSR position to four factors:

Development of the insurance agency sales culture: “[CSRs] assume many marketing, sales, and service tasks previously carried out by the producers,” Parker writes. “In the small commercial and personal lines areas, successful agencies streamline sales and service to teams of experienced and knowledgeable CSRs.… Responsive CSRs gain the client’s trust and support the agency sales culture.”

Increasing consumer sophistication: “Our clients are savvy and sophisticated. They want more information, and they want it instantaneously,” Parker asserts. “CSRs are in the position to respond quickly.… I must continually fine-tune my coverage knowledge.… We must educate ourselves to educate our clients.”

Implementation of insurance agency automation: “In our litigious and information-driven society, it is imperative for CSRs to keep detailed client records,” Parker declares. “Thriving agencies research and embrace technologies that streamline workflows, increase productivity and profitability, and reduce errors and omissions exposures.… CSRs lead the way in facilitating changes in insurance agency automation that enhance the way we work and communicate.”

Introduction of new insurance products: “Insurance carriers invest heavily in product development,” Parker observes. “Recent new product offerings include terrorism, e-commerce, and identity theft.… CSRs proactively recommend new coverages to our clients and prospects. Developing strong underwriting relationships with our carriers and understanding their products and niches is crucial,” she writes. *

For more information:
The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research
Web site: www.scic.com

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