Why should you care about the quality of service your voluntary benefits carrier provides? For two reasons:
1. The quality of service a voluntary benefits carrier delivers to your clients reflects on you. If the carrier provides poor service, you have to make up for it by developing your agency's staff and capabilities. In addition to increasing your overhead expenses, this service set up forces your clients to work with both your agency and the carrier for service, which is inefficient.
You need to become an expert in delivering high-quality voluntary benefits service. Your clients have service expectations, and if your voluntary benefits carrier doesn't meet them, you must step in and become a voluntary benefits service expert. If you don't fill the service gap between what a voluntary benefits carrier delivers and what your clients expect, your lack of expertise in resolving service issues can harm your client relationships.
2. Continued poor voluntary benefits service could damage client relationships enough to make you vulnerable to a competitor, and you might even lose clients. This is the biggest fear that keeps many brokers from getting into the voluntary benefits business. Lack of knowledge and expertise in providing service for voluntary benefits business presents a challenge. Although voluntary benefits present brokers with tremendous growth opportunities, the perceived cost of gearing up to provide service may seem too steep for some.
Brokers who are successful in the voluntary benefits business know how important high-quality service is. They also know the key to adding voluntary benefits to your agency's portfolio: align yourself with voluntary benefits carriers that have the processes, systems, technology, and philosophy in place to deliver best-in-class service, and that have a long-standing reputation for delivering high-quality service.
Voluntary benefits can be complex to administer on the back-end. Although there are many carriers in the market, not all can deliver high-quality service consistently. Teaming up with a carrier that excels in service before, during, and after the enrollment can make a difference in your agency's success.
How can you find a good voluntary benefits carrier that will partner with you in creating a positive service experience for your clients? Here are some service indicators that can help you determine a carrier's potential for superior voluntary benefits service.
Service processes should be more than providing the bill online instead of in paper.
Most voluntary benefits carriers are pretty good at paying benefits to plan participants, yet they can fall short in providing service to brokers, employers, and plan administrators. Although many carriers offer dedicated staff and toll-free numbers for different customer groups, there's more to the service story. A carrier also should offer simple and hassle-free account billing and payment processes.
Look for a voluntary benefits carrier with a billing system and process that manages large volumes of individual policyholder records and still provides hassle-free billing services to clients, such as online billing and reconciliation. Associate your agency with good service by partnering with a voluntary benefits carrier that operates more like you're accustomed to operating. For example, the carrier should have various service methodologies that provide brokers, plan administrators, and policyholders support options beyond a dedicated toll-free number.
Electronic support is important for brokers and clients because it provides access to account information. Therefore, a billing system that enables plan administrators to make online deletions and changes to their plan account saves your clients time and effort and can lead to more accurate bills. Overall, a carrier's online services should meet your clients' different service needs by offering online billing changes and bill payments, online searches for employee policy status, coverage effective dates and policy/coverage type, as well as downloadable claim forms. The goal is to help your clients and you save time, trouble, and paper.
Service should be part of its culture.
A voluntary benefits carrier should make high-quality service a key business initiative and a daily focus. Here are two service questions to ask that can help you uncover the voluntary benefits carrier's service culture:
1. Does it have a track record of delivering high-quality service to employers, plan administrators, and policyholders? A good voluntary benefits carrier will set annual service goals, measure, and report results. Align yourself with carriers that make high-quality service part of their culture and their accountability. Look for a carrier that grades itself and holds itself accountable by its service expectations and performance results. This will tell you if a carrier holds itself accountable to customers for high-quality service.
2. Does its customer service staff provide a positive customer service experience? A voluntary benefits carrier that can promptly and courteously resolve a service issue can reflect well on your business. This applies not only to the carrier's home office, but also to its local team. Your carrier should have an established local sales and service team that can provide critical service in the same cities your clients are in. In the brokerage arena, you're accustomed to doing business with carriers that have both a sales rep and a service rep. The sales rep helps you market and position products, manage blocks of business, and develop target markets. The service rep works with your staff and clients to implement and fulfill account enrollments. It takes two different kinds of personalities and skill sets to do these jobs.
In the voluntary benefits arena, some carriers have one sales rep to do both jobs, which could create problems in delivering best-in-class service to clients. You'll know a voluntary benefits carrier is in tune with your agency when its organization specializes by role, mirroring a typical broker operation.
Although most voluntary benefits marketing approaches talk about how products can help the employer and employees, an integral part of the approach should include delving into the service experiences available. A good voluntary benefits team will give your clients and you a taste of what the service experience will be by walking your clients and you through the various administration and service steps.
When working with a voluntary benefits carrier in work site marketing, it's important to select a carrier that not only has competitive products and a wide variety of enrollment services, but one that also creates a positive service experience for your clients and their employees. It should have the technology and support systems to provide consistent and effective customer service on the large volume of small transactions it handles daily. In other words, it should be easy to do business with.
High-quality service can make or break your business. For that reason, it makes sense to research voluntary benefits carriers. Investigate the service performance for both their local team and the home office. The service your voluntary benefits carrier delivers to accounts and employees reflects on your agency, and it's important to make sure the carrier will uphold your agency's reputation for excellence and strengthen your client relationships.
Joe Fernandez, CLU, RHU, is a district general agent for Colonial Supplemental Insurance products and services. He has been a Colonial sales manager for more than two years and has helped his district become one of the leaders in the company. Fernandez personally opens new accounts in addition to his sales management responsibilities. He has 20 years of experience in the insurance business, from individual sales to brokerage sales and sales management in voluntary benefits and health and welfare benefits.
