Insurance applications and renewals without barriers.

Kicker Insures Me makes applications and renewals easy.

When Kicker Cardenas launched her independent agency in Pasadena, Texas, in 2012, she simply wanted to help her customers secure the right policy for their needs. She was also desperate to remove the typical roadblocks in the process.

“The insurance industry isn’t exactly at the leading edge when it comes to creating great customer experiences,” noted Cardenas. “Technology that streamlines the process is something I knew would improve that.”

All the information. None of the duplication.     

At her agency, Kicker Insures Me, Cardenas relies on a small but dedicated staff. The last thing she wants to do is force her team to spend time requesting information from clients which the client has already provided.  But because the insurance industry uses PDFs as a way of storing data, and because text annotations on PDFs aren’t easily searchable, agents frequently can’t find the information they need, even when the client has already provided it.  

Kicker new she had to eliminate PDFs wherever she could.  In addition to being unsearchable, it’s clunky and time consuming to add data to them and extract data from them.  On top of all that, using email to share PDFs creates an unnecessary and unorganized back-and-forth exchange with every client.  When a customer is simply trying to renew their insurance policy, using PDF and email is a terrible customer experience.

“My thought has always been that we should pre-fill as much information as possible,” remarked Cardenas. “I’m all about removing barriers for the customer — whenever we can find ways to help them spend less time completing forms, we’re going to incorporate them. Broker Buddha is a platform that has streamlined the intake of information for us.”

A significant percentage of the commercial policies at her agency come from small business owners. Since these clients typically wear many hats — sales, accounting, estimating, whatever it takes to make a fledgling company work — completing policy application or renewal forms is a task that is often pushed aside. Running a business is challenging and filling out clunky, PDF based applications — especially with information they’ve already provided — is the kind of time sink that most small business owners will avoid until the last possible moment. With Broker Buddha, these busy customers can complete applications and renewals on their own time, in minutes instead of hours, and get the information sent to the appropriate person immediately.

A direct link to more new policies and renewals.

The Web Links that Broker Buddha provides have been a welcome change from previous practices. Now, prospects can turn into customers instantly. What’s more, when clients or potential clients start an application or a renewal on the platform but wind up not completing it, the agents at Kicker Insures Me receive a notification. They can connect with the prospect through email or a phone call and help them finish the process, much like an ecommerce store that reaches out when an online shopper has abandoned items in a virtual Shopping Cart. The notification feature means potential customers don’t become lost opportunities.  By reaching out with assistance, agents often take a first step towards cementing a lasting personal relationship.

Viewing her business through the dashboard.

As an agency owner, Cardenas appreciates the ability to quickly check the status of the accounts her team is handling. The Broker Buddha dashboard provides a quick snapshot of the business so she can spot issues and work to resolve them.

“The team at Broker Buddha listens to feedback and adds features based on it,” noted Cardenas. “The upgrades they have made since we started using the platform have made it even more useful. I love the dashboard — it lets me quickly see the status of all applications and renewals within the agency.”

Applications, renewals — saving time on every one.

Without the need to duplicate information across an account, Cardenas and her agents are saving all kinds of time. How much time? By her estimates, the team is saving three to four hours per application, and each account manager now spends roughly 20 fewer hours per week on high-touch, manual entry tasks. Errors have also been dramatically reduced.

“As a young, agile agency, I’m always looking for ways to maximize business without bringing on lots of new staff,” Cardenas said. “Using Broker Buddha has freed up valuable time to focus on expanding our client roster instead of basic administrative work.”

More productivity, less paper.

At Kicker Insures Me, they’ve noticed another benefit since they started using the Broker Buddha platform — the printer is no longer the hardest-working piece of equipment in the office. The agency now buys a single ream of paper each quarter — not to mention a lot less ink toner cartridges.

“I have to say that Broker Buddha has exceeded my expectations,” Cardenas added. “Not only has it made our operations far more efficient, it has dramatically improved the entire experience for our customers and made them far more likely to continue working with us.”