An Interview with Mike Miller
Mike Miller
Mike Miller
Mike Miller runs Sheward Insurance Agency, Inc., serving the insurance needs of about 2,100 individuals and families, and the insurance needs of 200 business concerns in Jackson County, Ohio. In 1995, Miller realized the need to be automated. As he says, “I decided at that point that we needed to implement an agency management system. I started out with SEMCI Partner when SIS first came on the scene. Then, as we started rating different companies, we upgraded our system to Partner XE…. [Since that time] I have never had any down time. None…. Simply put, we are a better agency because of the efficiency that we gain utilizing this system.”
SIS: How has Partner XE helped you save money?
Miller: Well, in one word I’d say efficiency. With Partner XE, we are able to provide much more service to our customers, much faster and at a much-reduced cost. While automation costs money, the reality is that an agency management system like Partner XE saves us money.
Take, for example, issuing a simple ID card. If we didn’t have automation, we’d have to manually type the information, which doesn’t seem like much until you multiply it by the number of changes that we process through all of our agents. With Partner XE, we can hit a screen, print it out, and drop it in the mail. The client doesn’t have to do anything. The card arrives at their house within a day or two, sometimes before the endorsement even gets processed. The automation of the process saves us time and money, and helps us deliver the kind of customer service that builds loyalty. Simply put, we are a better agency because of the efficiency that we gain utilizing this system, not to mention another big reason: E&O protection.
SIS: What would it be like to work without Partner XE?
Miller: I don’t know that we could do without it because, frankly, we use it at some point with every conversation with every customer. It might be as simple as looking up coverage on a vehicle or placing a note on an account to document a policy change. That way, no matter who answers the phone, they can find up-to-date, accurate information.
SIS: What are some of the features that you find most useful with Partner XE?
Miller: The first thing I think of is what I call the information or scheduling screen. There, everyone in the agency is able to look at each other’s schedules on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. That screen is a terrific feature about this program. We function better as a team knowing each other’s schedules.
Another detail that we really like about Partner XE is the signature feature. Anytime we need to generate a certificate of insurance or an evidence of property, we do it right in XE because we can add the signature and send it by email. It’s a real time-saver.
An additional feature that is helpful is the Reminder. For example, if a client calls looking to reduce their spending on their policy, we can flag the account with a reminder that will pop up when their homeowner’s policy is up for renewal. We can include a note that will remind us to review their options. Another example would be if a policy has been canceled, we can attach a reminder to make sure it gets re-instated. Another great benefit of this feature is that when we clear the flag, the note remains in the record – this is very important from an E&O standpoint.
The summary report saves us countless hours. With this system, we are able to print a summary that gives us all the information on the vehicle, the coverage, the drivers in the household, their date of birth, social security number, driver’s license number, vehicle identification numbers, the renewal dates on the policy, etc. This feature saves us hours of time if we need to get a comparable quote from a different carrier. To do this manually would be, well, very labor intensive, looking at each piece of information, physically writing it down and then manually submitting the information to a new carrier for a quote.
The query feature is also very important to us. We can print a list of everyone in our system that fits a certain profile, allowing us to market specific products to them. For example, long-term care insurance is important for people over 55. We can find those folks in our system and send them relevant information. We don’t have to waste our time or money marketing that kind of insurance to 20 year olds. There are many lists that are already in there, and, in addition to those lists, we can also pick up any list we want to put together, based on ages or towns or whatever we want to query it to. And an extra feature is you can print the labels.
SIS: What about system back-ups?
Miller: That’s something we don’t ever have to worry about. SIS automatically backs up our Partner XE system. If, for some reason, I would lose all my data, SIS has my system backed up. That’s pretty invaluable in itself, but it also means that I have never had any down time. None.
