The woods near John Ashenhurst's home in Concord, Massachusetts, provide a scenic backdrop for the industry automation expert to refine his out-facing services message for agents.
Most gurus advise their acolytes to look inward for enlightenment, but agency technology guru John Ashenhurst has a different lesson for independent agents. He suggests that agents and the rest of the insurance industry focus on the broad horizon that is the Internet--because their customers already have.
"Face outward," he says, "because that's where you'll find your customers and new business. Agents and the insurance industry have spent too many years facing inward, focusing on industry services and internal operations.
"Not only is it time for a change, but customers are demanding a change with the way they use the Internet and other technology to manage their finances and shop for products and services. Agents will have to follow their lead in the way they use technology to deliver products and services to these customers or risk losing them forever."
Ashenhurst brings extensive industry experience to support his philosophical position. He has more than 25 years of agency and insurance industry technology experience, developing products and services for agencies and insurers.
Until late last year, he served as executive vice president of strategic planning and business development for AMS Holding Group, developing TowerStreet, an AMS application service provider that hosts Internet services for agents and insurers.
Previous to his TowerStreet efforts, he served as general manager of iiX, developing an Internet strategy for the company's electronic underwriting reports. Ashenhurst also founded and developed SilverPlume, the insurance industry's leading consolidated electronic reference library.
In January, Ashenhurst announced the formation of his own consulting company, Sound Internet Strategy, based in Concord, Massachusetts. The new company, which will provide seminars, publications and consulting services to the insurance industry, reflects Ashenhurst's personal realization that the Internet has become a critical technology in the evolution of the independent agent and a driving force for technological change.
"The world of insurance technology is on the verge of massive transformation--more pervasive, more useful, more varied and more complex than the automation revolution of the last quarter century," he explains. "This tide of change, fueled by the potential of the Internet, a deep need for greater efficiency, increasing competitive pressures, and rising consumer expectations, presents unprecedented challenges and enormous opportunities for independent agencies."
To capitalize on these opportunities, however, agents need to rethink their use of technology, especially the Internet, and develop a new generation of products and services that use this new technology.
Ashenhurst coins the term "in-facing services" to describe classic insurance industry technology that has dominated the strategic development of insurers for the past 20 years, including agency management technology, agent/company interfaces and general automation of the rating, application and policy delivery systems.
The constituency for this technology is the industry itself, and few consumers are even aware of the efficiency in-facing technology has come to provide over the past 20 years, Ashenhurst says.
"We've come to understand and use this technology pretty well. And we've experienced the migration from one technology to another--from in-agency technology to Internet ASPs. But we really haven't seen anything new in the last 20 years," he says.
In-facing services, however, have not generated much consumer marketing enthusiasm for agents, he continues. "In some important ways, your customers absolutely don't care about your system--your in-facing services. That's your problem.
"It doesn't matter whether you have a $5 million computer center. All your customers want is the right coverage, competitive premium, accurate policies, changes handled conveniently, their payments accounted for and claims taken care of. How you do that is up to you."
Ashenhurst visits the cabin in which Henry David Thoreau once lived. He describes Thoreau as someone he admires.
As a result, Ashenhurst recommends that agents develop "out-facing services," insurance products and delivery systems that serve customers directly. Other industries have already developed out-facing services for customers that have been received with outstanding success.
"ATM machines and credit-card pumps are examples of out-facing, non-Internet technologies. Internet stock trading and banking are examples of out-facing Internet-based technologies," Ashenhurst says. These services and others that expedite consumer activity and enhance customer service have created new levels of customer expectations for all aspects of their activities--including insurance sales and services.
"Out-facing insurance services is a new technology category, one that didn't exist until recently. Out-facing insurance services call for new engineering and new thinking--not repackaging. All our assumptions about the use of technology in insurance, the wisdom we've gathered over the last 25 years, need to be questioned as they're applied to out-facing services," he says.
The price for ignoring the overwhelming consumer movement toward out-facing services could be extinction for some agents, Ashenhurst claims. "If you don't play, you'll whither away. In the next few years, insurance customers will become reluctant to do business with agencies that do not provide out-facing services."
Some agents have already paid the price through disintermediation, he notes. Over the past 20 years, in pursuit of efficiency and internal convenience, and in conjunction with in-facing technology, the insurance industry has slowly detached agents from the delivery of the comprehensive insurance services that used to be the hallmark of the independent agency system.
"At one time, agents could directly handle all elements of the insurance transaction. They could rate, underwrite, and issue policies. They could handle billing, receipts, and other customer financial transactions. They could manage the claims process.
"Agents, in a manual world, were once part of a once-and-done system. They were right in the middle of the insurance process and strongly intermediated," he says.
Agency automation and online interface with insurers expedited the insurance process, but also began the removal of the agent from the center of the insurance transaction. With the advent of the Internet, some insurers took the next step and began offering coverage and services directly to consumers.
As a result, consumers have begun to wonder about the value of agents--who had already lost some of their contact and control over their customer base. However, Ashenhurst believes that agents continue to have an important role in the marketing, sales and servicing of insurance, and that role includes offering professional advice and expertise as well as a choice of insurers and competitive pricing.
Ashenhurst advises agents to take back their former territory by developing a commanding Internet presence and out-facing services that directly engage consumers.
"A few years ago, the worry was that the Internet would cause disintermediation. In fact, the process was already well underway. Ironically, it is the once-feared and now confusing Internet that has the potential to re-intermediate agents," Ashenhurst says.
"If independent agents play their cards right, they can use the Internet and their Web sites to become more, rather than less, important. They can provide information and needs analysis on their sites. They can support Web-issued service requests. They can provide self-directed sales and then high-touch follow-up.
"Agency Web sites can provide a wider product offering and more help than agencies have been able to offer in the past. They can provide the customer with more control. Agents and their staff can spend more time providing professional services and less on administration."
However, this new era will require a dedication to new technology and its innovative use, Ashenhurst says. "If you do play, you'll have to pay attention in a different way than you did to you classic agency automation. Out-facing services touch your customer--just as your one-to-one sales calls, customer service representatives' telephone service and telephone receptionist do."
Ashenhurst hopes his new company can provide agents with ideas and resources to build a new out-facing Internet strategy. "Sounding Line," the company's first informational product, is a subscriber-supported newsletter that focuses on Internet strategy development and provides reviews of tools and services that support out-facing services, and case descriptions of new techniques and tools for the development of new services. *
Agency Web sites are useful only if your customers and prospects can find them online. Here are 10 tips from technology guru John Ashenhurst that can improve your Internet presence and make your Web marketing efforts stand out from the crowd.
1) Make sure your domain name is meaningful and easy to remember. Though shorter is better, tortured contractions don't work. Stay away from made-up words that no one can remember, like "inphiselaksmojts."
2) Don't hesitate to have multiple domain names pointing to your site--perhaps even using principals' names as domain names--if you think that might help your customers find you (again and again).
3) Publicize your domain name--on your stationery, business cards, in ads, Yellow Page listings--and wherever your agency name appears.
4) Make certain your Web pages contain Keyword and Description metatag information so indexing spiders that roam the Web can properly categorize your site.
5) Register your site with the top 10 or 15 search engines. They're not likely to find you unless they're told where to look. Re-register if you disappear. Some search engines drop sites after a period of time.
6) Consider paying for a special listing within a portal categorization scheme--so that prospects can find you through a hierarchical menu rather than depending on unpredictable searches. Yahoo! charges a fee for the service ($199). Or consider paying for expanded online Yellow Page listings--that at the least show your Web address. SuperPages (Lycos, Excite, and some others) wants at least $5/month, MSN $10 and Yahoo! $15.
7) Look for your agency through your company agent locator service on their Web site. Are you there? Do they show your Web address?
8) Find your agency through your local community and/or Chamber of Commerce site. Is the listing correct? Useful? Does it show your Web address?
9) Consider reciprocal links with appropriate local (regional or national) businesses and professional services--attorneys, accountants, realtors, auto dealers, and so on.
10) At least monthly, try to find your agency site in all the ways a customer or prospect might. Can you find it? What can you improve?
You can find more tips and tools for improving your Internet strategy at www.soundingline.com.
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www.soundingline.com