TIME MANAGEMENT FOR AGENCY TEAMS
WHY AI ALONE DOESN ' T INCREASE EFFICIENCY by Jessica Yarbrough, Agency Ops Advantage
AI and automation vendors regularly make the same promise to insurance agencies:“ Buy my solution and get more time back!” They promise faster quoting, speedier servicing, and fewer hours lost to manual tasks. But gains in time management for your agency will never actually come from a tech vendor. They are the result of how well you manage change and how you protect time on the other side of tech implementation to keep improving. If you just buy new tools and call it a day, you ' ll find your team no more efficient than before. The only thing that will have changed is how much more you’ re spending on tech expenses.
There’ s one glaring problem with the promise of more time from new tech. In the early stages of adoption, it often slows people down more than it speeds them up. There ' s a learning curve, a configuration period, and for a time, the old way legitimately is faster simply because people already know it. Leaders who don ' t plan for that curve end up with a predictable outcome: frustrated staff who end up abandoning the tool, a team that ' s no more productive than before, and a new software expense as the cherry on top. That ' s not a winning strategy for profitability or growth.
True efficiency gains from new technology start with solid implementation.
APPOINT A QUALIFIED POINT PERSON
Someone needs to own the rollout: championing the tool, running training, and working out the inevitable configuration kinks that come with embedding new tech into a live workflow. If you really want your new tech investment to work for you, you’ ve got to have someone actively managing it.
UPDATE YOUR PROCEDURES
If your procedures manual still describes the old process, your team gets mixed signals about what " right " looks like. Update it to the new workflow, including steps in the process where automation has replaced a step or handoffs occur between people and tech.
12 KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER