What Happened to Hard Sell Insurance?
March 24, 2009
An insurance agent does what’s right for the customer and builds respect and loyalty over the long term.
It becomes very frustrating when people make it difficult for you to spend your money. Too often we have to deal with people who know very little about the products and services they’re selling. Fortunately, there are times when just the opposite is true.
As in most companies, our health insurance expenses have risen dramatically over the last few years. Recently, it became evident that we needed to review all of our options in this area. As we were displeased with the level of service from our current insurance agent, we decided to ask the agent who handles our life and business insurance, Ron Frederick, of Frederick Insurance, to generate some quotes for several plans he underwrites. At the same time, we also investigated plans offered by several professional associations.
Within a few weeks, we had a file folder packed full of plan descriptions, quotes, tables, charts, and provider lists. Needless to say, making sense out of this collection of paper was difficult. So we made an appointment to meet with Ron Frederick to review all of the options.
As we sat down, he began leafing through each of the plans, commenting briefly on each one: “You don’t want this company; they’re in financial trouble.” “This company takes too long to process claims.” On a couple of plans, he stopped to look at some of the details, and said, “Ah, here are a couple of options.”
After having reviewed all of the plans, he had narrowed the list down to two options: one of the plans that he offered, and one of the “association” plans. He compared each plan point by point, explaining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each one in terms of coverage, convenience, and cost.
Finally, he pushed one of the plans towards us and said, “Unfortunately, this plan should be your first choice. It has better coverage and costs less.” “So what’s unfortunate about that?” I asked. He sighed and replied, “It’s not my plan. But it’s the one you should get.”
His broad knowledge of the various insurance products and of the insurance industry as a whole enabled him to sort through in 45 minutes what would have taken me several hours to do. His willingness to recommend a product that wasn’t his to sell showed me that he was more concerned about what was best for me as an insurance customer, rather than what was best for him as the vendor.
So he lost out on this deal, right? Was the hour of his time he spent a complete waste? Not really. For one thing, we were already his customer on several other policies. But more importantly, we were so impressed with how he handled this situation that we will recommend him to others interested in insurance (maybe even write a story about him) and we will look to him in the future for our other insurance needs.
Doing what’s right for the customer builds respect and loyalty over the long term. Knowing your industry, your products, and your services enables you to provide your customers with the most timely, accurate information that will allow them to make better and more informed purchase decisions. And isn’t that what customer service is all about.
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