When you think of people who work in the insurance industry, you might think of the many movie characters over the years that have worked for insurance companies: there’s Mr. Incredible of The Incredibles, who spent his days daydreaming about doing something more and re-living his superhero past; or perhaps Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club, whose job causes him to have a mental breakdown.
While intricate plots to tear down society and save the world from evil super-villains seems far more interesting than insurance, insurance brokers play a large role in the lives of many people. They’re the ones who help protect you and all the things you’ve worked so hard to attain.
For Diane Jones, vice-president of marketing and sales and partial owner at Silvercrest Insurance Group, insurance is a lot more than just “pumping out insurance policies.” She says that being an insurance broker is about “providing clients with education on insurance, being there for them, and giving them customer service that they require.” She says it’s also important to treat her clients with respect and understanding during clients’ most tragic times.
Caleb Maksymchuk, vice-president of operations at Ravenhill Agencies says that, on one hand, “sales are a large portion of the position. Without sales, there is no income.” On the other, he says “there is a lot more to being a broker than strictly sales.” At times, insurance brokers have had to “console family members when there has been a death in the family.” With such an emphasis on customer service and client relations, social media and advances in the way we communicate have changed what being an insurance broker means.
“The foundation of the insurance industry is built upon creating and developing relationships,” says Dustin Nakonechny, branch manager and area vice-president for commercial lines at Alpine Insurance & Financial Inc. “From the outside looking in, it doesn’t really seem this way. However, once you get into the industry, you realize it very quickly. As a broker, we develop important relationships with our clients, suppliers (insurance companies), and of course coworkers. The relationship development in these areas is the aspect of my job that I love most.”
Now, more than ever, it seems businesses need to have every avenue of communication open, particularly in industries that rely heavily on customer service. “Technology is a huge game-changer in all industries,” says Maksymchuk. This means maintaining the use of traditional or old-school methods of communication like face-to-face meetings and conference calls, as well as newer methods like emails and instant messaging via sites like Facebook.
“The world’s changed now,” says Jones. “[Brokers] will do their insurance at midnight, and they will send you a message whenever they feel like it. In my office, we have emails and clients can send us a Facebook message; they can reach us pretty much any way they want, any time they want. We also have online forms if they’d like to fill out a change request at 11 o’clock at night, they can do that on our website.”
She says that many of their clients who fall in a younger demographic (early to late twenties) are particularly keen on keeping in touch because they often have many questions for Jones, “because they want to understand the policy [they’re buying] inside and out.”
Maksymchuk says that within their brokerage, they are completely paperless, which is “huge, as our world revolves around documentation.” He says that this shift in the way they do business has created greater efficiency and has allowed them to better help service their clients.
Despite all of these great advancements in technology, and the efficiency it’s creating for businesses, Jones feels “we can’t go completely online because you need to have phones when people aren’t comfortable communicating online.”
However, at the speed that technology is going, Maksymchuk says that “social media is not a craze or a phenomenon that is going away any time soon. I do feel that it is important to have an online presence and to tie in all forms.” The key to social media, in his opinion, is to “inform clients or potential clients.”
He says that if a client asks you a question via your Twitter, you need to respond in a timely manner because clients expect it. “Social media and technology have made instantaneous satisfaction—question answered, purchase made, whatever you are attempting to accomplish—a mandatory requirement. Although much of our business is done by email, and upload or download media, there is still a need for personal contact,” he says. “It provides assurance and trust. We are pushing for greater call-backs, broker meetings in office, and client visits out of office, to maintain the personal touch.”
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