Putting Technology Into Practice

Take time to create a great list

• Make it easy for prospects and customers to sign up to receive communications from your agency.
• Add a signup form to your website.

Plan your campaigns

• Set a cadence — how often you will be emailing.
• Create a calendar of topics and consider using milestones such as seasons, holidays and more.
• Set objectives for open rates, click through rates and unsubscribes.

Use short, catchy subject lines

• Grab recipients' attention from the beginning.
• Consider highlighting a surprising element (e.g. You might have $200 in insurance savings), asking a question (e.g. Do you have enough flood insurance?), or offering advice (e.g. Small businesses often overlook these three things when buying insurance).
• Keep subject lines short. They shouldn't get cut off by the email's margin.

Make it personal

• Personalize messages with the customer’s or prospect’s name.
• If possible make it specific to the person’s location.

Content should be brief, to the point, and have value

• Make sure you are telling them something new or offering a piece of advice.
• You don’t ever want a recipient to think, “Why did they even send that?”

Include a distinct call-to-action

• Answer the question: what do you want the recipient to do with this information?
• Make your call-to-action clear and prominent within the message.

Your email should look good

• A designed email can grab recipients’ attention.
• The look should be true to your agency’s brand. It can be as simple as using your agency’s logo and brand colors in the template.
• Consider adding visuals.

Use A/B Testing

• This is a powerful tool to help you assess which subject lines will pull higher open rates (and it’s not always the one you think).
• Many solutions will automatically conduct A/B testing for you.

Determine the best times to send

• Emails sent on certain days and times receive better engagement than others.
• Tuesdays and Thursdays, either early in the morning or right before lunch, are considered ideal for most email communications, but that may not be true for your audience.
• Test different timeframes and measure response rates with your audience.

Market performance

• Review the analytics to determine how well your message was received.
• Look to see how many people opened your email and how many clicked on the links.
• Look at how many people unsubscribed from your list. If the number is high, you might not be targeting the right audience, and you may need to revise your list.
• Use performance measurements to refine your next email campaign. Maybe a shorter, catchier subject line could increase open rates or perhaps a more direct call-to-action could entice people to click.

Turn chat solutions into virtual meeting spaces

• Encourage teams to share files through this platform and provide feedback.
• Setup brainstorms.
• Utilize video capabilities, if platform offers them.

Don’t confuse collaboration capabilities with 24/7 access

• Team members will still have their own workloads and client responsibilities, so might not always be available to jump on a video call or respond to a message.
• If you need to discuss a particular topic, have a brainstorm, or review certain items, setup a meeting to ensure availability.
• Have team members share how long and how often they will be available on these channels.

Set deadlines for document review

• When sharing files through a collaboration program, make timelines for feedback clear.
• Turn on track changes so revisions are easily identified.

Consider working side by side virtually

• Set up a video conference with a co-worker to complete workload items together. As you work on your projects, you can easily stop and ask questions or get feedback when stuck.

Take time to train employees on the different platforms

• Ensure they know when to use which tools.
• Confirm that team members are comfortable on each platform.
• Appoint collaboration tool ambassadors that can help others get started and encourage them to use solutions.
• Have documentation that explains how to use each tool.

Make expectations clear

• Ensure employees know when they are expected to be available online.
• Clearly indicate which meetings or conversations are mandatory.
• Provide guidelines on how you will be measuring employees’ online engagement.

Show trust in the team

• Avoid constantly following up with employees to check in on work progress.
• Encourage discussions about working methods and strategies that work best for team members.

Gather data to help with improvement

• Utilize analytics in collaboration software to see how quickly employees move through tasks.
• Elicit feedback from employees on how tools are helping their workload.

Make it as personal as possible

• Have a profile picture of the responding agent.
• Introduce yourself by name.
• If using a chatbot, make sure the name and picture is linked to a real person at the agency.

Develop responses to routine questions

• Have standard responses ready to frequently asked questions (e.g. what is a deductible?).
• Answers can be programed into the chatbot or easily copied and pasted into live chat by agents.

Greet website visitors when they enter

• Have live chat/chatbot boxes pop up once a visitor comes to your site asking if they need assistance.

Emojis can be your friends

• Think of live chats as a text conversation – not formal business communication. Emojis are great to convey emotion and keep the dialogue friendly.

Incorporate file transfer features

• Enable users to share information directly through the live chat without switching channels.

Use live web analytics along with live chat

• Monitor what the user is viewing while they’re on the site and send them relevant and timely information through the chat.

Take advantage of chat history

• Avoid sending the same messages and information to repeat visitors.
• Utilize information from chat to send targeted follow up emails.

Create a schedule so chat is always monitored during office hours

• Assign agents different times to monitor the chat, so no prospect is left waiting.
• For out of office hours, either remove chat options, or enable a chatbot.

Add a chat button to marketing emails

• Give customers and prospects the opportunity to reach out immediately if interested in new products/services.

Know when to take the conversation offline

• For complex issues, move the conversation from live chat to a phone call or video conference.
• Have a system in place for chatbots to escalate non-routine questions to live agents.

Ask a follow up question

• Helps understand consumer sentiment so you can develop specific tactics to improve NPS.
• The follow-up can be as simple as, “What was the reason for the score you gave?”

Have a balanced approach to NPS action plans

• Don’t just focus on fixing the Detractors.
• Equal time should be spent on how to turn Passives into Promoters as well as learning from existing Promoters what your agency is doing well so that can be amplified.

Utilize all three types of NPS measurement

Work to implement a NPS plan across all three dimensions:

• Relationship measures: survey sent to customers regardless if they had a recent interaction.
• Transactional measures: survey sent immediately following an interaction (in-person or digital).
• Relative measures: Blind survey collecting NPS measurements from your own customers as well as those from competitors.

Get employees engaged

• Have your employees take the NPS survey.
• Allow them to provide insight on what they think is working and what’s not working.
• Listen to customer facing employees who are on the frontlines. They may be aware of issues even before survey results come in.

Brand your NPS program

• Give it a logo and tagline so it is recognized internally.

Close the loop with respondents

• Let unhappy customers know what changes you are implementing to rectify their bad experience.
• Reach out to high scoring customers to thank them for their support.

Optimize your Promoters

• Ask them to write reviews on key platforms.
• Invite them to participate in customer panels.
• If you are rolling out a new service, test it on them first and get feedback.
• Encourage them to refer others by offering referral discounts.
• Share agency’s social posts.

Keep it human—engage with your assistants in real time, personally

• Avoid only communicating through text channels.
• Schedule a call once a week to review objectives.
• Setup video calls to speak with them face-to-face.

Define expectations

• Set reasonable deadlines.
• Clearly communicate how you would like to receive updates.
• Identify any specifics, like how and when you like to take calls.

Make time to train

• Provide agency overview.
• Offer tutorials on unfamiliar solutions.

Set the stage for open communications

• Encourage VAs to ask questions at any time.
• Set expectations for sharing progress.
• Be open to input or suggestions.

Don’t be afraid of too much detail

• Better to over-explain than under-explain new assignments.
• Provide very specific instructions.
• Share examples or templates.

Document your processes

• Create short videos, manuals or guides explaining routine tasks.
• Enables quicker training for new assistants.

Get assistants setup on collaboration tools

• Provide access to the collaboration tools the other agency team members have.

Give regular feedback

• Give real-time feedback, as tasks are completed.
• Include the positives as well as constructive feedback.