Insurance clients are looking for agencies and brokerages that can meet their needs quickly and accurately. Rather than bog down staff with manual tasks, agencies should be providing them with the tools they need to free up their time. This enables staff to build stronger client relationships and build the business.
We spoke with Jena Lautenschlager-Stroud, agency operations manager for Adams Insurance Advisors, to learn more.
Among agencies/brokerages, how can inefficiencies and bottlenecks in service workflows impede growth and success?
Inefficiencies can lead to team members spending time on monotonous tasks that really don’t impact the client experience.
In a world where AI can handle these simplistic tasks for us, we need to find ways to differentiate ourselves from a client experience standpoint. Some simple asks that AI can handle include generating a report showing changes in property coverage, deductibles and premium changes to provide renewal insights. Another example would be automating reconciliations or summarizing emails into notes in Epic.
The reason people are going to want to work with you is because of the relationships and when your processes have you tied up clicking and typing, it doesn’t allow the team time to handle what truly matters.
How can agencies/brokerages identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies?
Talk to your team. Ask them what takes the most time in their day.
Re-labeling an activity or attachment descriptions can help pull in a description that fits your workflow. Manual entry of policies is another time consuming task that can be reduced or eliminated. Make sure you’re utilizing the download to bring in as much policy information as possible. Attaching declarations pages and setting up EDOCs for as many carriers that offer this can also reduce manual tasks.
Sometimes taking a simple step to update the way an activity or attachment is labeled can save hours in a week. For instance, have an activity populate the service summary row description rather than your team manual re-entering the information.
We have taken a lot of steps to change if activities default to open or closed, updating tasks within activities, turning on more items for download, adding EDOCS and adjusting how those are labeled when they come into the system, etc.
We received renewal declarations from many of our carriers, but we don’t want those activities clogging up our homebase in Epic. So, we have defaulted those activities to close and have given them a specific activity code of EREN. We also have set these up so the description of the attachment defaults to our agencies’ appropriate naming convention for attachments. This allows the renewal declarations to be accessible from “accessing attachments” at the policy line level without our team having to take any manual steps to get there.
What steps can be taken to turn those inefficiencies and bottlenecks into opportunities for success?
By freeing up some of the time the team spends clicking and re-labeling, you allow them more time to review coverage, reach out to clients, build relationships and focus on client retention.
It’s much more cost efficient to retain clients than to keep writing new business while the existing business is walking out the door.
What are some practical steps/techniques for analyzing workflows?
Adjusting the way activities and attachments are labeled, utilizing the download and building dashboards. Dashboards allow teams to quickly see data at a glance, drill down into the data for a specific account or policy line and adjust filters to change date ranges and update data instantly.
We’ve set up a leaderboard so our team can quickly see at a glance which producers are writing the most business, which department it is being written in, which carriers are leading the charge and more. We also have filters setup so producers can adjust the date range and quickly see the updated data.
Setting up descriptions to automatically pull in your agencies’ labeling convention is one easy way to streamline operations and boost productivity. For example, you could setup a renewal activity to populate with the renewal date, the policy line type and the word “renewal,” or even include the carrier it is with, if that is important to your agency. With as many renewals as we see in a day, taking the manual entry out of these steps can create a big time savings.
Any final tips or advice to share with agencies/brokerages?
Create a team, including team members from every department, to meet monthly or quarterly and discuss challenges they experience in workflows. Discuss how they can become more efficient. Align workflows between different departments so it is easier for cross-training to occur or even growth by shifting from one department to another.
Encourage individual goals to dig into new technology that Applied offers, and have team members bring that back to the team or their leader for change management. Provide examples that your team can benefit from in terms of using the new technology.
For example, Epic Bridge, Indio, SMS messaging, and new download offerings are all offerings from Applied that may improve operations. It’s always helpful when you have more than one person researching and providing feedback when it comes to workflows and driving change management.
Jena Lautenschlager‑Stroud serves as the agency operations manager for Adams Insurance Advisors, where she brings strong leadership, effective communication and a dedicated work ethic to every aspect of her role. Known for her ability to streamline operations and support both team members and clients, Jena plays a key part in ensuring the agency runs efficiently and with the highest level of service.
Beyond her professional accomplishments, Jena is deeply family‑oriented and enjoys spending her time supporting her children in their activities. She loves playing volleyball, cheering on Husker Volleyball, and creating lasting memories with family, friends, and her beloved British Lab, Maverick.
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