Before the COVID 19 outbreak, more than two-thirds of US enterprises adopted remote working. This provision accommodated employees’ need for flexible working when they had valid reasons.  

Today, with the entire workforce in a remote working arrangement, the challenges are not the same.   

Employees may no longer struggle to reach their offices on time. Instead, they’ve to work in isolation, spend time planning tasks, manage communications with teams, and stay updated with organizational changes. And that’s not all.  

Challenges insurance agencies face 

Following traditional practices, insurance agencies have had to reflect on their operations and evaluate how they can get on with business using their current systems. Today, most companies are on level 1 with necessary or minimal experience using smartphones, emails, and calls to manage their tasks. Some are on level 2, with some processes being shifted online, with video conferencing and regular working hours.  

Very few agencies are on level 3, having optimized business processes, managing processes in virtual settings, investing in equipment that facilitates real-time collaboration, policy wallets, OCR solutions, and more.  

Still fewer are on levels 4 and 5. Level 4 involves flexible working hours and higher transparency in expectations facilitated by chatbots, automation, and more. And level 5 are competent remote workers in an entirely digitized platform with end-to-end AI and automation capabilities, with a 360-degree view of the customer and secure information sharing in a controlled manner.  

What can agencies do to step up their operations from Level 0 to Level 1 up to Level 5? How can insurance agencies build remote working capabilities and build efficient remote working capabilities transitioning to a competent digital insurance agency in the process? 

What are the tools insurance agents can use to boost productivity? 

1. Team chat applications 

When working remotely, members of your team will need a way to chat with each other without setting up a call each time one of them has a doubt. Though email is a good option, it does not let one have a regular conversation. MS Teams, Slack, and Google chat are some of the most popular options we have.  

MS Teams is excellent for big organizations because it allows teams not just to have conversations but to collaborate on the platform efficiently. Slack is for a chat-powered workplace, which also extends as a remote collaboration tool. Google chat is available to G-Suite users.  

2. Screen sharing tools 

Screen sharing tools allow your team members to show others their desktop and files. Showing teammates your work is essential in collaboration because seeing helps to understand a specific concept better.  

It allows quick collaboration and meetings between co-workers. Helps in communication with customers or sharing policy information with customers. And internally, it also will enable agents to get their technical hurdles sorted out with IT support teams.  

3. Video conferencing applications 

When your teammates want to have a quick chat with their co-workers or have meetings to discuss specific project strategies, a good video conferencing solution makes it simple and straightforward. It makes the process as simple as clicking on a link.  

Most standard features in a video conferencing application for team collaboration include screen sharing, annotation, and live chats. These features are essential to ensure virtual meetings are as productive as in-person meetings.  

The app should also be reliable. Some of our best picks are MS Teams, Slack, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, and Zoom.  

4. Office suites 

Office suites are a set of programs to help collaborate and improve the productivity of teams.  

Today, they’ve pivoted from installed software packages to connected applications hosted on the cloud giving your teams anywhere anytime access. Office suites generally comprise a text processor, spreadsheets, presentation program, notetaking, and diagramming tools.  

Microsoft Office Online and Google’s G-Suite are the top platforms used in enterprises that allows the team to collaborate in real-time.  

5. Cloud storage applications 

Cloud storage is one of the phenomenal disrupters in the digital world that has changed forever the way work gets done. It is one of the main reasons why enterprises can move to a remote arrangement. 

With the cloud, you can work on your files on your desktop, mobile phone, or laptop, and even share a 15GB folder with videos or photos with clients or colleagues anywhere and ensure that they see it immediately. One Drive and Google Drive are the best cloud storage applications for insurance enterprises.  

These applications have a high-security level with access controls, allowing users to decide how clients or collaborators must see their content.  

6. Project management applications 

When there are numerous tasks to handle, project management applications save the day. Project management applications let your teams assign tasks to team members, set priority for projects, and help to manage projects with complicated time management requirements with ease.  

Jira and Trello are a couple of the primary project management applications that insurance agents can use. 

Digital tools for insurance agencies to digitally enhance their operations  

 1. Chatbots 

Nuvento’s enterprise chatbot solutions can have your insurance agency use solutions like customer chatbots, employee chatbots, and more.  

Chatbots are a popular option to improve customer service. AI-based chatbot solutions can help your customers connect with you faster and conveniently.  

Agencies can also deploy an employee-facing chatbot to improve agents’ performance in their jobs and productivity as a whole while they work remotely. 

 2. Policy Wallets 

Policy Wallet is a go-to application for insurance customers to manage their insurance policies independently.  

The customer gets access to all their policy-related details on the policy wallet, and they’re also enabled to file a claim, know when their premiums are due, and more.  

3. Agent Portal 

Agent Portal is a powerful system that consolidates the agency’s policy-related knowledge to generates real-time insights to improve agents’ performance. Agents can also manage their customers, leads, targets, and much more on the platform.  

The Agent Portals helps agents know where they’re falling short in performance and what they need to do to improve pace.  

4. OCR solutions 

Nuvento’s NuOCR is a paper-to-digital optical character recognition solution that eliminates the need for paper in the insurance organization.  

It instantly transfers data on any document format to your software systems. It makes initiating digital documentation systems a breeze within the agency.  

To know more about how our solutions can help your agency go digital in a matter of weeks, contact us today.