The majority of independent agencies—76% for personal lines and 79% for commercial lines—strongly prefer their clients to receive routine customer service from the agency itself, according to the latest Future One Agency Universe Study.

Although the 2016 numbers reflect a significant increase from previous studies, only three in 10 small agencies currently use resources like carrier service centers to provide customer service to clients. Larger agencies seem to be more comfortable with outsourcing customer service—six in 10 jumbo agencies take this approach, according to the research—but for most smaller shops, in-house customer service continues to be a hallmark of the independent agency.

At Donnelly & Sproul, Inc. in Glen Rock, New Jersey, “everyone does a little bit of everything,” says account manager Anthony Parisi. Although the agency assigns specific clients to specific employees based on an alphabetical split, “if someone calls, any of us will take it to get it done,” Parisi says. “I do both the prospecting work and the service work for my commercial and personal lines clients.”

How does the agency manage to keep track of everything? Parisi attributes success to an efficient management system and explicit processes, where “everyone notes every call that comes in, so everyone knows what everyone else is working on at all times,” he explains.

Judy Holder Insurance in Apache Junction, Arizona takes a similar approach to staffing: The agency employs four full-time licensed agents and one part-time administrative assistant. “Those of us who are licensed agents each have our own book that we’ve produced or a designated area that we’re responsible for,” explains agent Kelley Kimble. “Because our customers are pretty familiar with dealing with the agent who sold them the policy, the selling agent continues to service the account.”

That setup means “there are some days when it’s very, very busy in here,” Kimble admits. “Particularly in the winter when our population swells, there are days when we have customers in here all day long and the phone ringing constantly. But then there are other days when it slows down a little bit and everybody says, ‘OK, I can get caught up on some of yesterday’s things that didn’t get done.’”

Wouldn’t it be nice if staff had more time to focus more of their energy on meaningful customer interactions? Some agencies find that outsourcing lower-level service interactions like auto ID card requests, billing questions, binders, and adding or removing vehicles helps in-house employees improve the quality of the customer service interactions they handle personally.

But Kimble says, “I don’t mind doing stuff like that. Those little things don’t take up a whole lot of time, and sometimes they actually lead to other conversations—‘By the way, I’ve been thinking that I’ve got 10 trucks insured, some of them are getting old so maybe I should take collision off some of them.’”

It’s those coverage conversations where Parisi and Kimble feel they truly prove their value as independent agents. Donnelly & Sproul, for example, sends out a review letter with every commercial renewal policy, no matter how small—then follows up with a phone call or email to make sure one the client received it and discuss any questions they may have.

“‘Have you changed operations or ownership? Has anything else changed?’ Those questions lead to so many discussions that really do need to be had,” explains Parisi, who is currently pursuing his CPCU designation. “And you really need a good, knowledgeable agent to have those conversations.”

“We make more of an effort to help clients understand their policy coverage,” Kimble agrees. “We give them options. We like our customers to feel comfortable with the idea that their agent is knowledgeable and helpful. In fact, if people call us a little bit upset, a lot of the times it’s because they’ve called the insurance company direct and did not feel like they were getting careful attention.”

For Parisi, establishing those relationships is what it’s all about—and he doesn’t believe you can achieve the same level of trust through outsourcing customer service. “With some of the smallest policies—a renters, a condo, whatever—we’ll go out, we’ll take the time on it, we’ll sit down with the client and go over coverage,” he says. “Commission on a renters policy is nothing, but there are times when that process has resulted in 10-15 referrals, some of which are commercial customers. Right then and there, the time spent with that one person creates this domino effect.”

Both Parisi and Kimble say their agencies have such incredible referral systems that they don’t even have to invest in additional marketing efforts to find prospects.

“The amount of referral business we get makes it totally unnecessary for us to beat the streets,” says Kimble, who has lived in her community for almost 50 years. “Almost everyone who calls us got our name from at least two or three other people. We always want to keep that personal atmosphere alive in here in the office.”

Parisi recently decided to reach out to many of his current clients with either a phone call or email to ask them to write a Google review for Donnelly & Sproul. The agency now has almost 50 reviews—and every single one rates the agency five stars out of five, with comments to back them up.

“Now we’re getting a lot of calls from people who are just searching or Googling ‘insurance,’ and we come up because Google ranks us at the top thanks to those reviews,” Parisi explains. “If I was outsourcing customer service, I wouldn’t have been able to contact those people and ask them for a review. They would either say, ‘I have no idea who you are,’ or they’d say, ‘I know who you are, you’re my agent, but I don’t deal with you so I don’t feel comfortable leaving you that review.’”

Parisi, who used to work for a captive carrier, says he’s never had a negative experience with keeping all customer service activities in-house at his agency. “Maybe some of that time could be spent on more prospecting, but I feel like at some of the big-box companies, they’re all about numbers—you just have to pump out policies,” he says. “I don’t like that attitude because it shouldn’t be all about selling. It should be about your customers.”

“We like our customers. We run into them at the grocery store. We want them to call us—we want to hear when they have another grandchild or a kid going to college,” Kimble agrees. “That stuff is incredibly valuable. You can’t really put a number on that.”