Knight-Dik is over 90 years old.  But principal Ross Dik is putting a lot of new age marketing ideas into action at his Worcester (MA) insurance agency. His No Surprises customer service features a business process he calls PLUMP.

PLUMP stands for Personal Lines Ultimate Marketing Program.  Dik has organized his marketing tools into three charts that his CSRs and producers use as a reference to organize direct mail, telephone, and personal contacts with their clients. The agency has identified its customers in four segments: A, B, C and Y.

A’s are account clients who have more than one policy with the agency, are loyal, are more apt to give the agency referrals, pay on time.  B’s are customers who could become A’s;  C’s are apt to be more temporary – price jumpers.  And Y’s?  “Why do we keep doing business with them,” Ross says with a chuckle. At the heart of PLUMP is Knight-Dik’s commitment to treat every personal lines customer as an individual and make sure that each has proper protection to meet his or her needs.   

No-Surprises annual reviews 

A major PLUMP element is Knight-Dik’s No-Surprises customer service process that promotes annual reviews.  The agency has several customer-generated-inquiry (CGI) tactics to encourage these reviews: an agency newsletter that constantly features reminders: “call us for a personal or telephone appointment to review your program”; “Call Me” postcards that CSRs can use; red stamping of dec pages with the message: YOUR POLICY HAS COVERAGE LIMITS LESS THAN WE SUGGEST.   

Rounding out accounts 

If you saw a PLUMP chart, you would see several marketing communications tools that support cross-selling: single policy customers to two-, three-policy accounts.  Knight-Dik, a full financial security agency, also actively communicates its life, health and long-term care services.   

Using the computer to market 

Ross Dik has a vision.  His vision is to support his CSRs and producers with state-of-the-art automation.  “We want to be able to instantly identify who has received what PLUMP communications from us, what the response has been, what the “next sale” is for individual clients, what we need to do to make sure we are touching our A and B customers often enough and with the right messages,” he says. “We do the best we can right now with limited automation support.  However, we just invested in a new agency management system that ultimately will give us the capability we want and customers deserve.”   

It’s about business processes 

Knight-Dik is ahead of the curve when it comes to harnessing the power of the computer for customer service and sales support.  Ross Dik is process-oriented.  The PLUMP marketing process is just one example of this. PLUMP and other business processes that Ross has installed foster new habits---repeatable tasks and activities, standard operating procedures.  Because they are measurable, these tasks and activities are constantly in a state of continuous improvement.  This is the lesson that management guru Edwards Deming espoused. Whether your agency is small or large makes no difference.  Whether you are heavily automated or not, the Ross Dik-Deming lesson is one you should heed.  

Full disclosure note:  You should know that Knight-Dik is a valued client of MullaneyCookson and our associate Frank Herberg, CPCU, AAM, agency management coach.  Agency principal Ross Dik is actively involved with other national agency consultants and agent groups who meet and share problems, opportunities and solutions.  It pays off!