When most insurance agencies talk about wanting to be on the “cutting edge of technology,” it’s hard to figure out where to start. That’s because innovating with new technologies is tough to do without a clear goal of what the agency wants to bring to the table. So, how did InsuranceHub establish a clear goal to live, breathe, and truly operate as a technology-driven agency?
The answer is CORA.
Let’s start at the beginning.
When Jim Lloyd first started InsuranceHub, he wanted to make sure that insurance was accessible. He knew that much of what insurance agents miss about reaching customers is the importance of communication and how technology can play a role in continually improving external and internal communication.
We knew that we had some catch-up to do with how tech-savvy we were. Three years ago, we launched our new website. Soon after, we added Live Chat. We brought the website up-to-speed with the world – we redesigned our forms, added new content, and strived to improve user experience as much as possible.
And once we caught up to where we wanted to be, we started to plan for the future. We know Live Chat has made a big difference for us as far as communication goes, but that was just a small step forward – we wanted to take a leap. So, we hired a team of developers to build what we now call CORA, which stands for Connecting Opportunities with Real-time Access.
What is CORA?
We wanted to create a communication system like no other – one that could cut out middlemen and create even more direct lines of communication so that we can provide great service even more quickly. CORA is a proprietary software that is built specifically to cut down on our already fast response time.
The goal of CORA was to unify the agency and the various aspects of communication and data that go into keeping it running smoothly.
On an external level, we wanted to improve the speed to contact people who reach out to us, whether that was a potential customer looking for an insurance quote or a current customer needing to update their information, ask a question, or address an insurance need. On an internal level, CORA allows data to flow back and forth from our CRM to AMS. (She acts like the glue that creates opportunities by opening the lines of communication between all of our departments.)
CORA removes a lot of the manual elements and “paper traffic” that exist to allow the agency to function, improving our response time and making life easier for both our agents and our clients. She’s the “brain” of our agency as she connects people who need to speak with our agents to our agents and helps our agents do their jobs more efficiently.
CORA also makes communication between clients and their advisors more transparent. It gives the client the power to make the insurance as hands-on as they wish, and it gives them a direct line of contact to the heart of the agency – therefore helping to fulfill the InsuranceHub goal of making insurance easy.
CORA is more than a typical communication strategy or an organizational software add-on. It’s a way to eliminate the game of telephone that can sometimes happen when hopping from system to system. It’s a way to integrate the insurance process into daily programs and operations so that we can connect to our customers as an agency. It’s everything.
Looking forward.
To grow as a company, we have to understand that the team who assists a client isn’t just confined to one division of our agency. For us to truly live our mission of making insurance easy, effective and fast communication must start from within our agency to help our teams work together seamlessly. And we look forward to seeing how CORA will help us do just that.