If all of your CSRs are licensed insurance agents, is customer satisfaction greater with purchases through your call center agents, local agents, or online?
If big companies like GEICO (#3) didn’t do a good job providing excellent service while offering great rates, they wouldn’t be #3. Not having a local agent everywhere isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They are obviously a great company and can’t be #1 because they still can’t compete with the State Farm and Allstate’s who insure folks that have been with them for 30 or so years.
Most insurance customers don’t even know enough to realize they don’t have a clue about insurance, let alone all the exemptions & policy language varieties from company to company.
So, they buy whatever is cheapest, thinking that what they are buying is the same regardless of which company they buy from…. and then they have a claim and are dissatisfied because they got what they paid for. And suddenly all insurance companies are bad and out to screw them.
I would agree with their award Mr. Joe. Eerie? I went to my local agent, who was very professional and explained the coverages on my auto and home and the advantages that ERIE provides. Guaranteed replacement cost on the dwelling? Phenomenal…so unlike you, I am not “Weary of Erie” and actually I am “Cheery that I am with ERIE”
A vast majority of the call center reps who are licensed are in their 20’s and have never previously done insurance and have a very high turn over. So the real question of licensing becomes just because they can pass a test yet have no applicable experience to use with that text book knowledge really does very little good. I have spoken to many call center reps from other companies and it is very evident that they really don’t have half a clue. I have called Geico to inform them when I know a customer of mine has lied to them and not disclosed a driver in the household that has a bad record because I have seen them reward the customer with a very low premium and are obviously unaware of all the facts . I have been stunned by the lack of common sense exhibited by these call center reps who refuse this information and sound like programmed robots that can only speak in canned terminology by saying “i’m sorry I cannot discuss this customers information with you”?? Duh, I wasn’t asking for information I was trying to give you very helpful information that the customer didn’t when they lied to you. These type of “licensed” reps have extremely high turn over and no clue about how to apply their text book knowledge in the real world of insurance and underwriting policies correctly. Why is Berkshire Hathaway in so much deep doo doo these days. Hmmmmmm .
You are right on target shawn. I remember passing a licencing test for life & health and another for P & C right out of college and not really knowing anything about the business at all. Licensing is no big guarantee of expertise. If you are going to treat buying insurance like buying books on line you are asking not to be covered properly. Insurance is not just another commodity.
Just because an agent chooses to work for GEICO or Progressive or any call center for that matter (I believe Allstate has one too) doesn’t mean that they are not knowledgeable about insurance. I know of several agents with risk management degrees from reputable colleges that they actually attended (not online) that work for GEICO and Progressive. You are using lame excuses. GEICO does provide whatever coverage one needs and the agent makes sure it is adequate coverage. They can only trust what the customer tells them. A customer walking through your door can lie to you just as easily as they can on the phone to an agent. The real problem is that those two companies are stealing business from you.
You ought not make it so obvious that you work for Geico and have a risk management degree (attended not online).
Yes, agents can be lied to, but it is much harder when someone is looking you in the face and you can see the car they just drove into the parking lot (one of the reasons I don’t do phone quotes).
Do you ever talk to the same customer twice (on purpose)? Can they call you at home if they need something? Do you forget about your clients’ NEEDS when you go home at night?
Agents know their clients, worry for and about them and see them at the store.
Actually no I don’t work for GEICO and no I don’t have a risk management degree. But I do know people at GEICO and at Progressive and they are good at what they do.
You may be one of the few, but a lot of agents are not there when you need them (mine was always at the golf course) and instead I was to deal with the “assistant” who didn’t know what was going on.
Customer satisfaction rates are great for agencies and they are great for GEICO too (From what I’ve been told).
Instead of wasting time bad mouthing you should spend time assisting your clients. AFter all, I know my friends at GEICO and Progressive probably don’t read this mess anyway — they’re too busy working.
Thanks for proving the unprofessional and uinformed status of the call center reps of Geico and Progressive. How many of these reps work at each call center? And you say that you know “a couple” who actually know what their talking about and have college degrees!! That’s exactly the point that out of the 50 or 100 call center reps that there may be answering the phone the percentages of getting someone who actually knows anything about insurance is remote. You should also give heed to what the person who wrote about agents knowing best. They were right on in how agents are the “real person” point of contact day and night for their customer base. They live locally and have business cards with their cell phone numbers to be reached on anytime anyday. Say what ever you want but you have to admit that customers are always going to be more satisfied with a real person and local agent to deal with. And deal with this also. Geico’s customer satisfaction ratings don’t come from an outside third party nonbiased source that they are always raving about in their constant barrage of ridiculous cavemen and talking lizard commercials. That stat comes from them . I don’t think that counts for much. Their commercials reflect the IQ of their employees and most time their customers. That fact came directly to me from someone who works for Geico. Get real and get real people involved and dont’ defend a bad system of doing business. You can’t fix it.
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If all of your CSRs are licensed insurance agents, is customer satisfaction greater with purchases through your call center agents, local agents, or online?
If big companies like GEICO (#3) didn’t do a good job providing excellent service while offering great rates, they wouldn’t be #3. Not having a local agent everywhere isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They are obviously a great company and can’t be #1 because they still can’t compete with the State Farm and Allstate’s who insure folks that have been with them for 30 or so years.
Most insurance customers don’t even know enough to realize they don’t have a clue about insurance, let alone all the exemptions & policy language varieties from company to company.
So, they buy whatever is cheapest, thinking that what they are buying is the same regardless of which company they buy from…. and then they have a claim and are dissatisfied because they got what they paid for. And suddenly all insurance companies are bad and out to screw them.
I would agree with their award Mr. Joe. Eerie? I went to my local agent, who was very professional and explained the coverages on my auto and home and the advantages that ERIE provides. Guaranteed replacement cost on the dwelling? Phenomenal…so unlike you, I am not “Weary of Erie” and actually I am “Cheery that I am with ERIE”
A vast majority of the call center reps who are licensed are in their 20’s and have never previously done insurance and have a very high turn over. So the real question of licensing becomes just because they can pass a test yet have no applicable experience to use with that text book knowledge really does very little good. I have spoken to many call center reps from other companies and it is very evident that they really don’t have half a clue. I have called Geico to inform them when I know a customer of mine has lied to them and not disclosed a driver in the household that has a bad record because I have seen them reward the customer with a very low premium and are obviously unaware of all the facts . I have been stunned by the lack of common sense exhibited by these call center reps who refuse this information and sound like programmed robots that can only speak in canned terminology by saying “i’m sorry I cannot discuss this customers information with you”?? Duh, I wasn’t asking for information I was trying to give you very helpful information that the customer didn’t when they lied to you. These type of “licensed” reps have extremely high turn over and no clue about how to apply their text book knowledge in the real world of insurance and underwriting policies correctly. Why is Berkshire Hathaway in so much deep doo doo these days. Hmmmmmm .
You are right on target shawn. I remember passing a licencing test for life & health and another for P & C right out of college and not really knowing anything about the business at all. Licensing is no big guarantee of expertise. If you are going to treat buying insurance like buying books on line you are asking not to be covered properly. Insurance is not just another commodity.
Just because an agent chooses to work for GEICO or Progressive or any call center for that matter (I believe Allstate has one too) doesn’t mean that they are not knowledgeable about insurance. I know of several agents with risk management degrees from reputable colleges that they actually attended (not online) that work for GEICO and Progressive. You are using lame excuses. GEICO does provide whatever coverage one needs and the agent makes sure it is adequate coverage. They can only trust what the customer tells them. A customer walking through your door can lie to you just as easily as they can on the phone to an agent. The real problem is that those two companies are stealing business from you.
Hey, “What,”
You ought not make it so obvious that you work for Geico and have a risk management degree (attended not online).
Yes, agents can be lied to, but it is much harder when someone is looking you in the face and you can see the car they just drove into the parking lot (one of the reasons I don’t do phone quotes).
Do you ever talk to the same customer twice (on purpose)? Can they call you at home if they need something? Do you forget about your clients’ NEEDS when you go home at night?
Agents know their clients, worry for and about them and see them at the store.
Actually no I don’t work for GEICO and no I don’t have a risk management degree. But I do know people at GEICO and at Progressive and they are good at what they do.
You may be one of the few, but a lot of agents are not there when you need them (mine was always at the golf course) and instead I was to deal with the “assistant” who didn’t know what was going on.
Customer satisfaction rates are great for agencies and they are great for GEICO too (From what I’ve been told).
Instead of wasting time bad mouthing you should spend time assisting your clients. AFter all, I know my friends at GEICO and Progressive probably don’t read this mess anyway — they’re too busy working.
Thanks for proving the unprofessional and uinformed status of the call center reps of Geico and Progressive. How many of these reps work at each call center? And you say that you know “a couple” who actually know what their talking about and have college degrees!! That’s exactly the point that out of the 50 or 100 call center reps that there may be answering the phone the percentages of getting someone who actually knows anything about insurance is remote. You should also give heed to what the person who wrote about agents knowing best. They were right on in how agents are the “real person” point of contact day and night for their customer base. They live locally and have business cards with their cell phone numbers to be reached on anytime anyday. Say what ever you want but you have to admit that customers are always going to be more satisfied with a real person and local agent to deal with. And deal with this also. Geico’s customer satisfaction ratings don’t come from an outside third party nonbiased source that they are always raving about in their constant barrage of ridiculous cavemen and talking lizard commercials. That stat comes from them . I don’t think that counts for much. Their commercials reflect the IQ of their employees and most time their customers. That fact came directly to me from someone who works for Geico. Get real and get real people involved and dont’ defend a bad system of doing business. You can’t fix it.