Sandbox Détente
By: Susan L. Hodges
“My producer tells a client I’ll do something, and then doesn’t tell me, mutters a CSR. “I gave her the info, but she did the quote wrong,” gripes a producer. No doubt you’ve heard these complaints.
At some agencies, strife between customer service representatives (CSRs) and producers is all in a day’s work. But angst among those who interact with customers most often can cause serious mistakes and widespread discontent—and that’s just the beginning. When conflict occurs between workers in these roles, efficiency slumps, service suffers and sales can take a hit. Respect and trust between producers and CSRs are essential for taking care of customer and agency needs.
Yet, principals agree these relationships constitute one of the toughest personnel challenges at their firms. “I think the personalities that fit the producer role and the CSR role are so different that they contradict each other,” says Spencer Houldin, president of Ericson Insurance Services, LLC, in Washington Depot, Conn. “CSRs are typically very organized, detailed and deadline-based, while producers are action-oriented, people-oriented and less organized. It’s a constant problem trying to get these two types of personalities to work well together.”
A Little Respect Goes a Long Way
Houldin has watched producers scribble something on a scrap of paper and throw it to a CSR, saying as they go out the door that they need a quote tomorrow. “Then the quote is done wrong because the information was illegible,” he says.
He’s also seen producers who, when they have an opportunity to service a customer, do so without consulting the CSR. “Yes, they overstep their bounds,” he says, “[but] they have a vested interest in maintaining the client. They have to be reminded that their main role is to drum up new business.”
Despite these clashes, or perhaps because of them, Houldin has found ways to improve CSR-producer relationships. He holds forums where CSRs and producers come together and talk about their jobs to promote mutual understanding. “When they don’t understand each other, there can be animosity,” he says.
He says when CSRs learn about all aspects of a producer’s job—evening appointments, weekend hours, the agency’s cut of commission checks—that they’re less envious of producers than they may have been before. “But really, the key to good relationships between the two is for producers to show appreciation,” he says. “We have one producer who’s constantly saying thank you, and everyone is happy to help him, because he’s such a nice person.”
Redefining Roles via Personality
At Rosenfeld-Einstein & Associates, Bob Keiger says the daily struggle is not between coworkers, but against the status quo. Managers and employees at this Greenville, S.C., Best Practices agency think regularly about how they can do things better. That’s why the firm recently overhauled the way its CSRs and producers interact.
“Originally, we loosely separated small-commercial accounts from medium or large accounts, and we randomly assigned producers to certain small-account managers,” says Keiger, executive vice president of property and casualty. The agency also employed a person to market risks to carriers. “But it was a somewhat fractured division of labor,” Keiger admits.
To heighten efficiency, Keiger did away with the marketing position and began pairing account managers, or CSRs, with producers. But he used staff personality profiles to make the pairings, and they didn’t always work out. What he found instead was that CSRs whose personalities fell slightly outside the profile for their jobs matched up well with producers who also fell somewhat outside the profile for their positions. Says Keiger with a laugh: “There were no perfect producers, so why should we have perfect account managers? Getting the personalities together was more important than anything else.”
Each new team was then given responsibility for all aspects of the book of business they managed, including marketing. “This made it much easier for account managers to prioritize their work, because they didn’t have producers lining up at their desks,” says Keiger. “It also made for a better balance responding to service.”
Another innovation: Each team was allowed to decide who does what. “We started with pretty well defined responsibilities for each individual,” says Keiger. “But some producers prefer to stay involved in some aspects of service, so we let them
decide. It seems to work better.”
Balancing Workload
To balance sales and service at his Colorado Springs, Colo., agency, Wayne Six employs an equal number of producers and support staff, including bookkeepers and a receptionist. He also hires only those he identifies as “willing and able”: willing to do the work, and able to do it well. “Whenever you have a professional structure of complicated products, the relationship between the professional and the support staff is a team effort that has to be based on respect, communication and shared purposes,” says Six. “If you don’t have those things, people aren’t going to get along.”
Six founded the agency 21 years ago and says he has invested considerable time matching CSRs, producers and clients. “If a client starts with one team, we intend for them to keep working with that team until we’re dead,” he emphasizes. “If you have the same CSR and producer on an account every year, the odds of keeping that account go up every year and the work of processing it goes down.”
Colorado has been particularly hard-hit during the recession, and Six says his staff has gone from 48 people three years ago down to 32 workers today. His CSR-producer teams are responsible for all aspects of the business they handle, and backlog is not allowed. But Six appears to respect his employees in the same way he asks them to respect each other. “If we can’t get the work done by 4:30 when we close the doors, we hire more people,” he says. “Our concept is to service clients with a happy group of people.”
Six says that since the agency opened, he can remember only two or three personality conflicts. “We just don’t allow them,” he says. “Kindness is not a skill, and we’re going to be kind to one another, period. If someone has trouble with that, we don’t keep them.”
Start with a System
Tom Wilson, president of The Wilson Agency, Inc. in Sheldon, Conn., tries to keep things simple. Producers pitch in and do service work at this small, family-owned firm, and Wilson says the key to keepings things straight is communication—and the agency management system. Houldin also requires both groups to learn the agency management system—and use it. “Whenever there’s an issue, it’s usually because someone didn’t note an activity describing a conversation that occurred between a
client and the agency,” he says. But all three producers are required to learn and use the system, and everyone is supposed to work with this thought in mind: “If for some reason you’re not in the next day, someone else needs to be able to pick up where you left off,” says Wilson.
Does someone know where your agency’s CSRs left off today?
Hodges (hodgeswrites@gmail.com) is an IA senior contributing writer.
Should Producers Service?
Agency consultant Emily Huling has spent a lot of time observing and working with CSRs, and she has written a book a book about them: “Great Service Sells: How Great CSRs Turn Service into Sales.” She has also worked with producers, and knows what can happen when the lines get blurred. “If you have CSRs without authority, and producers who do CSR work, there’s a dollar cost associated with these issues. Producers can make extra work for CSRs by doing jobs they weren’t trained to do and therefore do incorrectly,” she explains. “Everyone suffers when someone oversteps their bounds or doesn’t do their assigned job.”
Producers may sometimes do CSR work, Huling says, because their jobs are poorly defined or they’re not being held accountable for their actions. “Management needs to tell producers and CSRs what their jobs are and then give them procedures to follow,” she says. Especially when things aren’t going well, “There needs to be management, monitoring and
intervention.”
Producers who do CSR work frequently may be sending a message. “True sales people are economically driven and ego-driven,” says Huling. “They’re self-motivated and self-confident. If your producers are doing CSR work, they’re probably not meant to be in sales.”
To fix broken producer-CSR relationships, Huling suggests starting by hiring competent sales people and CSRs, and then clearly defining roles and expectations for each job. Next, appoint managers for both groups who will hold employees accountable—not just for production, but for adherence to procedures and processes. “If you have clearly defined roles and accountability, everyone falls into line, including customers and carrier representatives,” says Huling.
Correcting entrenched CSR-producer conflict takes planning, execution and a backbone, Huling says. It also takes patience to transition into an effective account-management team that serves clients. But the benefits are numerous. Clients receive better service and learn who to talk to about various issues. Carrier representatives usually learn this as well. Agency morale often improves, as does errors-and-omissions prevention.
If you’re unsure of the tenor of your agency’s CSR-producer relationships, Huling says to ask customers. “You can’t fool them,” she says. “If things aren’t working right between CSRs and producers, customers are affected. They know, and they’re frustrated.”
—S.H.
The Money Factor
Jay Byrnes tries not to use the one-size-fits-all approach, in job descriptions or in producer-CSR relationships. Instead, the president of Byrnes Agency Insurance in Dayville, Conn., strives to place employees in positions at which they will excel, and he allows substantial flexibility among producer and CSR roles. “Communication is really the key in who takes ownership of a certain task,” he says. But when it comes to results, Byrnes pays team rewards. “If a profit center exceeds certain parameters, we reward by team,” he says.
Bob Keiger at Rosenfeld-Einstein & Associates, Inc. in Greenville, S.C., is working on a similar arrangement. After teaming producers and CSRs in the agency’s large-commercial sector, Keiger says it became clear that these employees were producing results as teams. He has since set up similar teams in small commercial sectors and is now looking at compensation. “Once you give people ownership, things become different,” he says. “They’re servicing something they have a stake in and they’re working hand-in-hand. There has to be some overlap in their compensation, and we’re not finished with this.”
—S.H.
At some agencies, strife between customer service representatives (CSRs) and producers is all in a day’s work. But angst among those who interact with customers most often can cause serious mistakes and widespread discontent—and that’s just the beginning. When conflict occurs between workers in these roles, efficiency slumps, service suffers and sales can take a hit. Respect and trust between producers and CSRs are essential for taking care of customer and agency needs.
Yet, principals agree these relationships constitute one of the toughest personnel challenges at their firms. “I think the personalities that fit the producer role and the CSR role are so different that they contradict each other,” says Spencer Houldin, president of Ericson Insurance Services, LLC, in Washington Depot, Conn. “CSRs are typically very organized, detailed and deadline-based, while producers are action-oriented, people-oriented and less organized. It’s a constant problem trying to get these two types of personalities to work well together.”
A Little Respect Goes a Long Way
Houldin has watched producers scribble something on a scrap of paper and throw it to a CSR, saying as they go out the door that they need a quote tomorrow. “Then the quote is done wrong because the information was illegible,” he says.
He’s also seen producers who, when they have an opportunity to service a customer, do so without consulting the CSR. “Yes, they overstep their bounds,” he says, “[but] they have a vested interest in maintaining the client. They have to be reminded that their main role is to drum up new business.”
Despite these clashes, or perhaps because of them, Houldin has found ways to improve CSR-producer relationships. He holds forums where CSRs and producers come together and talk about their jobs to promote mutual understanding. “When they don’t understand each other, there can be animosity,” he says.
He says when CSRs learn about all aspects of a producer’s job—evening appointments, weekend hours, the agency’s cut of commission checks—that they’re less envious of producers than they may have been before. “But really, the key to good relationships between the two is for producers to show appreciation,” he says. “We have one producer who’s constantly saying thank you, and everyone is happy to help him, because he’s such a nice person.”
Redefining Roles via Personality
At Rosenfeld-Einstein & Associates, Bob Keiger says the daily struggle is not between coworkers, but against the status quo. Managers and employees at this Greenville, S.C., Best Practices agency think regularly about how they can do things better. That’s why the firm recently overhauled the way its CSRs and producers interact.
“Originally, we loosely separated small-commercial accounts from medium or large accounts, and we randomly assigned producers to certain small-account managers,” says Keiger, executive vice president of property and casualty. The agency also employed a person to market risks to carriers. “But it was a somewhat fractured division of labor,” Keiger admits.
To heighten efficiency, Keiger did away with the marketing position and began pairing account managers, or CSRs, with producers. But he used staff personality profiles to make the pairings, and they didn’t always work out. What he found instead was that CSRs whose personalities fell slightly outside the profile for their jobs matched up well with producers who also fell somewhat outside the profile for their positions. Says Keiger with a laugh: “There were no perfect producers, so why should we have perfect account managers? Getting the personalities together was more important than anything else.”
Each new team was then given responsibility for all aspects of the book of business they managed, including marketing. “This made it much easier for account managers to prioritize their work, because they didn’t have producers lining up at their desks,” says Keiger. “It also made for a better balance responding to service.”
Another innovation: Each team was allowed to decide who does what. “We started with pretty well defined responsibilities for each individual,” says Keiger. “But some producers prefer to stay involved in some aspects of service, so we let them
decide. It seems to work better.”
Balancing Workload
To balance sales and service at his Colorado Springs, Colo., agency, Wayne Six employs an equal number of producers and support staff, including bookkeepers and a receptionist. He also hires only those he identifies as “willing and able”: willing to do the work, and able to do it well. “Whenever you have a professional structure of complicated products, the relationship between the professional and the support staff is a team effort that has to be based on respect, communication and shared purposes,” says Six. “If you don’t have those things, people aren’t going to get along.”
Six founded the agency 21 years ago and says he has invested considerable time matching CSRs, producers and clients. “If a client starts with one team, we intend for them to keep working with that team until we’re dead,” he emphasizes. “If you have the same CSR and producer on an account every year, the odds of keeping that account go up every year and the work of processing it goes down.”
Colorado has been particularly hard-hit during the recession, and Six says his staff has gone from 48 people three years ago down to 32 workers today. His CSR-producer teams are responsible for all aspects of the business they handle, and backlog is not allowed. But Six appears to respect his employees in the same way he asks them to respect each other. “If we can’t get the work done by 4:30 when we close the doors, we hire more people,” he says. “Our concept is to service clients with a happy group of people.”
Six says that since the agency opened, he can remember only two or three personality conflicts. “We just don’t allow them,” he says. “Kindness is not a skill, and we’re going to be kind to one another, period. If someone has trouble with that, we don’t keep them.”
Start with a System
Tom Wilson, president of The Wilson Agency, Inc. in Sheldon, Conn., tries to keep things simple. Producers pitch in and do service work at this small, family-owned firm, and Wilson says the key to keepings things straight is communication—and the agency management system. Houldin also requires both groups to learn the agency management system—and use it. “Whenever there’s an issue, it’s usually because someone didn’t note an activity describing a conversation that occurred between a
client and the agency,” he says. But all three producers are required to learn and use the system, and everyone is supposed to work with this thought in mind: “If for some reason you’re not in the next day, someone else needs to be able to pick up where you left off,” says Wilson.
Does someone know where your agency’s CSRs left off today?
Hodges (hodgeswrites@gmail.com) is an IA senior contributing writer.
Should Producers Service?
Agency consultant Emily Huling has spent a lot of time observing and working with CSRs, and she has written a book a book about them: “Great Service Sells: How Great CSRs Turn Service into Sales.” She has also worked with producers, and knows what can happen when the lines get blurred. “If you have CSRs without authority, and producers who do CSR work, there’s a dollar cost associated with these issues. Producers can make extra work for CSRs by doing jobs they weren’t trained to do and therefore do incorrectly,” she explains. “Everyone suffers when someone oversteps their bounds or doesn’t do their assigned job.”
Producers may sometimes do CSR work, Huling says, because their jobs are poorly defined or they’re not being held accountable for their actions. “Management needs to tell producers and CSRs what their jobs are and then give them procedures to follow,” she says. Especially when things aren’t going well, “There needs to be management, monitoring and
intervention.”
Producers who do CSR work frequently may be sending a message. “True sales people are economically driven and ego-driven,” says Huling. “They’re self-motivated and self-confident. If your producers are doing CSR work, they’re probably not meant to be in sales.”
To fix broken producer-CSR relationships, Huling suggests starting by hiring competent sales people and CSRs, and then clearly defining roles and expectations for each job. Next, appoint managers for both groups who will hold employees accountable—not just for production, but for adherence to procedures and processes. “If you have clearly defined roles and accountability, everyone falls into line, including customers and carrier representatives,” says Huling.
Correcting entrenched CSR-producer conflict takes planning, execution and a backbone, Huling says. It also takes patience to transition into an effective account-management team that serves clients. But the benefits are numerous. Clients receive better service and learn who to talk to about various issues. Carrier representatives usually learn this as well. Agency morale often improves, as does errors-and-omissions prevention.
If you’re unsure of the tenor of your agency’s CSR-producer relationships, Huling says to ask customers. “You can’t fool them,” she says. “If things aren’t working right between CSRs and producers, customers are affected. They know, and they’re frustrated.”
—S.H.
The Money Factor
Jay Byrnes tries not to use the one-size-fits-all approach, in job descriptions or in producer-CSR relationships. Instead, the president of Byrnes Agency Insurance in Dayville, Conn., strives to place employees in positions at which they will excel, and he allows substantial flexibility among producer and CSR roles. “Communication is really the key in who takes ownership of a certain task,” he says. But when it comes to results, Byrnes pays team rewards. “If a profit center exceeds certain parameters, we reward by team,” he says.
Bob Keiger at Rosenfeld-Einstein & Associates, Inc. in Greenville, S.C., is working on a similar arrangement. After teaming producers and CSRs in the agency’s large-commercial sector, Keiger says it became clear that these employees were producing results as teams. He has since set up similar teams in small commercial sectors and is now looking at compensation. “Once you give people ownership, things become different,” he says. “They’re servicing something they have a stake in and they’re working hand-in-hand. There has to be some overlap in their compensation, and we’re not finished with this.”
—S.H.
This month’s issue
The March issue is out now!
