Falling Down on Efficiency.

Agents and brokers often aren't well-versed in technological advancements that can improve business processes, saving time and money.

In recent years, there have been significant advancements in agency automation, which can increase employee productivity. For example, most of the major agency computer systems have desktop faxing capability, integrated rating, transactional filing, integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook products and carrier policy download.

Also, carriers have taken on some traditional agency service work, which can add to agency productivity. Some carriers provide full client servicing through their customer service centers. They also will take over claims reporting with their direct reporting capabilities, as well as client billing through direct-billing capabilities.

Unfortunately, many agencies fail to benefit from these advancements. For one thing, agency managers are not always aware of the capabilities of their computer systems and, if they are, they are not skilled in implementing them. Second, producers and service staff don't easily embrace automated methods and are reluctant to rely on the electronic file. Third, service staff will use the procedures they are comfortable with, until management directs them to change. And fourth, agency management itself can be a barrier. Making changes to traditional service practices can seem risky and there is always concern about the customer's reaction to change.

Brokers and agencies often miss the following opportunities for greater efficiency:

* Faxing from desktops. Although this is provided as an agency system capability, it is not always set up or used by service staff. This feature can save significant time, especially with certificates.

* Integrated rating. This can eliminate the double entry associated with submitting a piece of new business, but in some cases, the rating bridge either has not been purchased or has not been installed. Although letters, spreadsheets and e-mails can be attached to the customer file on most agency computer systems, it has to be set up, or customer service representatives will spend extra time printing, filing or duplicating transactions in the system. Because the unattached documents are not easily retrieved, service staff members waste time looking through files to find what they need or re-creating documents they cannot find.

* Transactional filing. This can increase productivity by 20%, but it is still not used in many agencies in commercial lines. The typical reason is that producers, who have not been trained to find client information in the computer, are concerned about not having the information readily available. Another time-waster is producing reports. Today's systems have excellent customized-reporting capabilities, but the reports are not easily produced without specialized training. If no one in the agency has had this training, report generation can be a complicated and time-consuming process. Sometimes, computer-generated reports are forsaken, and the staff keeps manual records instead.

* Policy download. For most agency computer systems, this is available from the carrier to the agency for personal lines and, increasingly, commercial lines. This feature can significantly increase productivity by eliminating the renewal and endorsement input that customer service representatives do daily. Some agencies have not set up the download capability. Others have actually turned it off, because in the transmission of data, some fields are altered. In other agencies, customer service representatives continue to check policies against the electronic file, although the information in both cases came from the same carrier database. Elsewhere, they invoice the premium on downloaded policies, although programs are available to do this.

* Direct-bill capability. This is widely used and should eliminate collections activity, but customer service representatives add to their workloads by following up on direct-bill late notices. They input notice information into the system, send follow-up letters, make phone calls and repeatedly reinstate customers who are often chronic late payers.

* Carrier customer centers. These should allow an agency to move the servicing of business and its resulting cost to the carrier. But because customer service representatives are not trained to transfer calls to the carrier center, they continue to serve these customers and even keep data for them in the computer system. Having customers report claims to the carrier directly can eliminate the work handled by one or more people in a typical agency office.

Both technology and the carriers are driving changes in the way agency customer service is handled. For efficiency benefits to be gained from these changes, agency managers must focus resources on implementing automation enhancements, using carrier service capabilities and developing more streamlined workflows.

Sharon Cunningham, a Best's Review columnist, is president of Business Management Group, a management consulting firm in Hartford, Conn.