i consistently hear terrible things about working for allstate. i was also under the impression that they are looking for more virtual offices rather than physical offices..like stated earlier in this post, why go to a storefront when you can go to a website at your leisure?
Why Are There So Many Allstate Agencies for Sale Now?
- Thread starter FinanceGuy
- Start date
If you really want to focus on P&C writing, do they still force you to write financial products minimums?
- 111
If by 'neighborhood/storefront P&C shop model', you mean a direct agency force, this is probably not true. I'd like to see ANY numbers that support this. In fact, just the opposite has happened. Geico and Progressive have storefronts. They burn more money in advertising to get the traffic to the site.
The storefront itself is more for the agent to be seen as a credible insurance professional business person. Bankers don't cash your check in their home office, the grocery clerk doesn't sell the groceries from their own pantry, and the gas guy doesn't sell cans of gas out of his garage.
While I don't ever go into the bank, I know that there is a professional banker inside, supported by tellers, loan officers, etc, that can take care of my needs should something come up. Same is true with insurance. It's not about buying the coverage, it's about what happens when something 'comes up', and being seen as the professional that can take care of the 'something'.
This does not require a storefront. I know several agents who do well working out of various places. The successful P&C agents that do extremely well for themselves that I know all have storefronts. Not a requirement, but, there is a noticable trend.
To this day, business, workers comp, and several other types of P&C coverage require the intervention of an agent. Yeah, some online, but very, very little.
In fact, it's somewhat misleading. The fact that an agent has an office with a shingle hanging outfront, doesn't really mean he wants to deal with the person who needs to get liability coverage so they can go down and register the car and not make another payment till next year. In fact, agents prefer these individuals go to Geico, e-surance, The General, etc.
The issue with Allstate selling offices is several things hitting at once, some good, some not.
- Have you looked at the average age of captive P&C agents? Allstate has a retiring 'fleet' of agents. This is true with most carriers, they had a harder time recruiting agents during the '90s and early this decade. Many agents are well over 60, some over 70. They are looking to leave. (This is true with State Farm, Allstate, Farmers, and others).
- Allstate allows their agents to sell the business. Most captives don't. A lot of new people in the market, meaning its a reasonable time to sell.
- Ooops, Katrina hit. Southern California wildfires hit. Allstate insured a large part of these losses. Ed Liddy didn't believe in reinsurance. Ooops.... Reserves are depleted, causing Allstate to stop new sales in some areas (especially homeowners). This had many ripple effects.
Near as I can tell, Allstate is still a solid company, believes strongly in the agency force model, but has to deal with some setbacks. If I was looking at buying an agency, I would be a bit careful about the multiple on the business, looking closely at retention ratios. At least in California, they had some rate increases a while back that are working their way through the system. Once that has stabilized, they should be running pretty smooth again.
In the meantime, I've enjoyed adding a few Allstate clients to my book
Dan
It is old but an AWESOME comment!!
I work for Allstate and I'll tell you that agency model is currently hurting us more than helping.. The 24/7 Customer service line was positioned to back up the agencies.. What is happening now is that the call centers are ONCE AGAIN becoming "front line" for writing new business even though the assign it to an agency. The complaints from lack of communication and service from local agencies has led to the call centers getting inundated with service calls.. It has gotten to the point where hiring is going on to have staffing levels at a pre 2010 level and where everyone single employee must be licensed.
jeffbennett13
New Member
- 3
This is, of course, a myopic post from somebody who has never worked in the "agency model" and who can't see past their cubicle wall.
I have been an agency owner for over 20 years. I founded that team that went down to the Charlotte call center years ago to fix it when the stockholders forced Allstate to go to a 1.800 and internet format before it was ready. After 10 years of competing with the agency model that built the company, they reversed themselves and went back to what works. The call center format was a failure. Long hold times, inexperienced reps, poor management, but mostly a general lack of accountability for really bad customer service in an inbound call format caused the failure and reversion to a sales and service element for the local agents.
Your comment that the call center is handling "service calls" illustrates your lack of understanding of the sales process in the industry. We sell service. An insurance contract is the beginning of a relationship that requires ongoing service from the agency, whether it is a call center or a local agency. Otherwise the contract is just a piece of paper.
Most of the new policies that come into my agency from one of the call centers are written wrong, or the client has been given bad advice. We're used to fixing them, we've been doing if for years.
Since the original post in this thread was about owning an agency, and you have no experience with this, you are not qualified to offer advice. Since you work in a call center though, I understand your willingness to offer advice without knowledge or insight. As usual, your work has to be fixed by an agent.
BTW, out here in the professional agency owner world we stress accountability, so we sign our name to our work.
Jeff Bennett
I have been an agency owner for over 20 years. I founded that team that went down to the Charlotte call center years ago to fix it when the stockholders forced Allstate to go to a 1.800 and internet format before it was ready. After 10 years of competing with the agency model that built the company, they reversed themselves and went back to what works. The call center format was a failure. Long hold times, inexperienced reps, poor management, but mostly a general lack of accountability for really bad customer service in an inbound call format caused the failure and reversion to a sales and service element for the local agents.
Your comment that the call center is handling "service calls" illustrates your lack of understanding of the sales process in the industry. We sell service. An insurance contract is the beginning of a relationship that requires ongoing service from the agency, whether it is a call center or a local agency. Otherwise the contract is just a piece of paper.
Most of the new policies that come into my agency from one of the call centers are written wrong, or the client has been given bad advice. We're used to fixing them, we've been doing if for years.
Since the original post in this thread was about owning an agency, and you have no experience with this, you are not qualified to offer advice. Since you work in a call center though, I understand your willingness to offer advice without knowledge or insight. As usual, your work has to be fixed by an agent.
BTW, out here in the professional agency owner world we stress accountability, so we sign our name to our work.
Jeff Bennett
Jeff,
Your little barbs at me really don't mean much as I'm not trying to belittle the agencies, considering your somewhat long drawn out post.. I'll safely consider I hit a soft spot. I'm only stating what is being communicated within the CCC hierarchy and Home Office circles. There are professional agencies that handle the clients well, however, considering the amount of escalated complaints that is received at ASAP in VA and Corporate in regards to agencies there are a lot of concerns on what direction to take with the ones that are leaving clients high and dry.. You should come take another visit to Charlotte or even Idaho and listen to the calls regarding some of the agencies.. You've done nothing but reaffirm my point in what really the problem comes down to.. A very serious disconnect between the agencies and Call Centers. I'm sorry if I offended you again, I'm not indicting all agencies but eventually Allstate is going to shift again and it looks like it will be on a path that places the agencies at a disadvantage again.
Your little barbs at me really don't mean much as I'm not trying to belittle the agencies, considering your somewhat long drawn out post.. I'll safely consider I hit a soft spot. I'm only stating what is being communicated within the CCC hierarchy and Home Office circles. There are professional agencies that handle the clients well, however, considering the amount of escalated complaints that is received at ASAP in VA and Corporate in regards to agencies there are a lot of concerns on what direction to take with the ones that are leaving clients high and dry.. You should come take another visit to Charlotte or even Idaho and listen to the calls regarding some of the agencies.. You've done nothing but reaffirm my point in what really the problem comes down to.. A very serious disconnect between the agencies and Call Centers. I'm sorry if I offended you again, I'm not indicting all agencies but eventually Allstate is going to shift again and it looks like it will be on a path that places the agencies at a disadvantage again.
The call center is a nightmare. I am new to the business, so I do not know if it is normal to spend at least a quarter of everyday fixing their mistakes. But I can sure tell you it is aggravating and a complete waste of time, just like many of our corporate systems that don't work efficiently. Try calling the billing line and you'll easily notice that 8 out of 10 people answering the phone can only read from the script and sound like robots, no thinking outside the box allowed.
- 1,581
I can not express enough how incompetent the Allstate call centers are. I wouldn't be surprised if they're recruiting those people from 3rd world prisons or something...
They butcher everything they touch.
Funny...in our local market they seeded all the CCC accounts to local agents because they retained so pathetically in the goof centers
They butcher everything they touch.
Funny...in our local market they seeded all the CCC accounts to local agents because they retained so pathetically in the goof centers
- 9,744
Allstate is no different than any other behemoth corporate enterprise. Top management is usually occupied by nitwits, assclowns and incompetents - but with good educations!
I remember hearing Tom Wilson on a business TV program in the late 90s. He came from SEARS and didn't know the first thing about insurance. They didn't teach it at Northwestern business school, or Michigan. They were attempting to groom him. Anyway, he was opining how the call centers and internet would never provide a very large share of the business...
A true visionary on the internet part! I guess that's why he bought esurance...
They rewarded him by making him chairman and CEO.
I spend most of my day handling escalations here in Reston and I beg to differ. E&O is substantially higher through the agencies than the Call Centers.. Especially considering that any policies written via the Call Center MUST adhere to regional guidelines.. Granted, not all are perfect but we don't have too many issues as far as policies written at the CICs.
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I, for one, never understood the purchasing of esurance.
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I, for one, never understood the purchasing of esurance.
