Which one is the problem? Are agents just faces of the office with no knowledge? Are staff just random people off the street? I ask because when they call in there’s just no way you can talk to customers with such a lack of knowledge about the products they sell. Did you know that leadership laughs to themselves when they complain? It’s such a a trivial thing most of the time. What are your thoughts?
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Agents could easily complain about the lack of training for Operations employees as well. Don’t even get me started on CCC.
For the love of god train your people. Really over being berated by some person who’s been here a month because things don’t work as they expected, nor did they bother to check how things worked before they set a false expectation with their customer.
@8avd…….literally impossible for an agent to be “in every play”. And that’s how SF wants it. They don’t even hire new agents now. They just give second and third agencies to the rockstar producers. How are you going to be in every play, at an office you might be at for one day/week?
Who's the leader? Take charge and be in every play. Agents don't do that.
It’s very difficult to get team members trained. Your day is nonstop issues coming from every direction and every department.. It can take months just to get through all the mandatory SF stuff to be allowed on the system (but is of little practical use). And as soon as they learn something it changes and becomes obsolete without notice.
All the while, State Farm controls every tiny bit of it, while putting a disclaimer about not employing your team members on all of it.
Most agents will tell you that in spite of everything else….team issues are what would make them quit.
The overwhelming majority of agents I speak to are fine, it’s the team members who get zero training. I spend a surprising amount of time showing agent team members how to do their jobs.
At this point, letting customers complete their own apps is not working. The excess losses greatly exceed what’s being paid to the agency force. News flash….. people lie to save money.
Executives and the Board are the problem, putting themselves above customers and productive employees.
Agents are just doing what they are suppose to do, sell sell sell. Staff is just doing what they are suppose to do, sell and service. Both have one goal which might not align with other SF business goals but thats how its designed by choice.
Online direct to consumer just by sales on a website or mobile app, no humans needed except for maybe some work like underwriting behind the scenes until that gets automated by ML models. Seems to be working fine for other insurance companies, not sure what's so funny. The expense of the agency business model's existence becomes harder to justify every day and at this point we've hit justifying it with "people like salesmen" (they don't)
I just sp-t coffee on my keyboard and sharded from laughing so frigging hard, online direct? Right, who?how? Clowns in CCC ? Come on man!!!!
Online direct has been halted in some states, as has CCC binding. The losses are outrageous on that business. Must be that agents and staff do a much better job of classification and field underwriting than people who never have to answer for it.
Online direct-to-consumer when?
Do you know what kind of product training they get? None. Most folks in Ops don’t really know the procedures for what they do in their own department. And it’s all changing, all the time. How do you suppose that people who get paid for sales are supposed to magically know every procedure in every department…none of which they get training for.
BTW that outrageous 10% that agents get paid? They use it to employ far more customer facing employees than State Farm does. Yes, it’s the most cost effective part of the whole Enterprise. You’re welcome.
They were smart enough to score the sweet agency$$$$$! Who has the better lifestyle? Job security? Working environment? Flexibility? Let me help you with the answer, it’s agents, always has been.
Go back to your cube and daydream about your Pokémon collection snowflake. I will keep collecting my $600k a year for being an agent while spending most of my time on the beach. Don’t worry about us, we are not going away anytime soon.
Some real dogshit replies here already. You guys write business that’s already ineligible and then blame everyone else but yourselves. Why do you think we added that 7 day window for autos huh? Braindead a-s sales people who are too d-mb to get a real job
Close the agency, thanks.
The problem is new agents are not paid enough on the newer contract to invest in great team members. Agent here on the 97 contract, my team members average 60k plus/year, plus 6k each into Roth IRAs and paid lunch everyday. I have given down payments for homes, cars etc. I value my team and they have been with me on average 20 plus years. And they probably know more about your job than you do. So, do you think possibly the problem is you?
Yea, that’s the problem scooter. Agents and their team members are the ONLY thing keeping this train that is SF on the track. Do you think these clients pay higher than average premiums for the privilege of waiting 45 on hold to claims only to be hung up on or given the wrong answer? Or maybe it’s the quick turnaround on policy changes from underwriting? How about our easy to understand real time state of the art billing plans? Yea, like I said, agents are the problem. Get a clue.
I say both.
Agents don’t know the product we pay them to sell and in turn they do a pi-s poor job of training their staff.
In my opinion, SF is better off getting rid of them.