Page 160 - The UnCaptive Agent

THREE ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONSOF YOUR AGENCY AND HOW TO STAFF THEM 133

2 percent of the commission they would ordinarily pay
the agent. If the fee for the service center is two percent,
and the average commission rate is fifteen percent, then
the cost to the agency for the service center is thirteen
percent of revenue, or about half the cost of serving the
clients with their own employees. Service centers aren’t
expensive; they’re cheap and highly cost effective!
Being excellent businesspeople and recognizing the
cost-efficiency of service centers, the majority of large
agencies utilize them at a much higher rate than do
small agencies.
One tremendous advantage service centers offer
is that they are usually open twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, and three hundred sixty-five days a
year. Their statistics demonstrate that clients, especially
personal insurance clients, make about twenty-five per-
cent of their calls to service centers after five o’clock or
on weekends and holidays—periods of time in which
you typically are not open.
A disadvantage of service centers is that if you have
business placed with more than one company, it can be
confusing to your client to know who to call. This is
something that you need to educate your clients about
in your service handoff after the sale. Or, increasingly,
you can consider using a multi-company service center,
an offshore virtual assistant service, or one of the U.S.
based companies that utilize fractional, part-time, or
retired customer service people to augment your people
or carrier service centers. A smart, savvy entrepreneur
is always thinking about how to turn fixed costs into
variable expenses. Service centers, virtual assistants,
and fractional service providers are all ways to do this.
Some service centers are not able to cross-sell or
perform account routing activities for you, while some
are. You need to clearly understand the services that are