Is your insurance business getting an A+ this year? While in school, your grades were contingent on how you did on assignments. In business, your success depends on your interactions with your clients and on your accuracy in your business dealings. If you're not practicing quality control, you may end up with a failing business, not just a failing grade.
Who's Grading Your Insurance Business?
While you don't need to give your insurance business an actual grade, you need to have quality control processes to ensure that you're working in a way that's both consistent and correct.
Even if you're not grading your insurance business, your clients are. According to the Houston Chronicle, "Quality helps you to win business from competitors who are not able to match your standards." Quality control doesn't just mean that you're accurate. It means that you follow through on phone calls or client connections to ensure that your customers feel like you care for them as individuals.
In today's world of fast-moving social media, the rest of the world is also judging your quality control. Quality service yields good reviews online, and people recommend your business through word of mouth. Poor quality service or errors lead to poor reviews, making people judge your business before they even consider stepping through your doors.
Why is quality control important? It ensures that you comply with regulations, keeps your costs down, and maintain a strong reputation, both within your customer base and within the community at large. With strong quality standards, your customers will be more loyal and your business will be more competitive.
Improving Your Quality Control Processes
If you discover that your quality control processes don't get a passing grade, what can you do to improve them and ensure that your clients are getting the most accurate, high-quality insurance support?
According to Program Success, "The successful outcome of virtual anything requires good, up-front planning." Ask yourself and your employees: what plans will ensure that you're going to be accurate and deliver quality work to your clients?
Examine processes that you can create or change to make sure that you have quality control. For example, you could make a note of every new client in a certain part of your computer system, with a note that reminds you to follow up with that person after a specific amount of time.
Add automatic programs that ensure that you achieve quality control. For instance, using a computer program to send out renewal reminders will help you ensure that you don't miss a reminder again.
In your plans, make sure that you schedule the time to reflect on how things are going and time to make any necessary changes.
E&O Insurance Can Give You a Second Chance
Do you need to rewrite that exam? If you or your employees have made an error in judgment or you've omitted a key piece of information, you could be in much more trouble than you were in school and did poorly on a test. In the insurance business, your test is your everyday customer contact and quality control procedures. Sometimes, these can fail. When they do, the results are potentially disastrous for your business. For example, if one of your employees fails to write down a client's address accurately, that person could fail to renew their insurance. This could have catastrophic consequences for the client if they then need to make an insurance claim. Avoid this serious problem by adding E&O insurance to the list of insurance products that your company carries. With E&O insurance, even if a client needs to seek financial compensation for an error or an omission, your company is covered in case of a lawsuit.
At American Agents Alliance, we're here to help you build a better insurance business. We focus on the education, networking, and resources that you need to create an insurance business that works: contact us today.
