Cathi Giblin
HRH A&E/AVA Insurance Agency, LLC
A Hilb Rogal & Hobbs Company

Hilb Rogal & Hobbs of Connecticut LLC, located in Hartford, is part of the seventh largest insurance brokerage firm in the United States. As an industry leader, one of HRH of CT’s charters is to expand its business by providing additional services to clients. HRH of CT took that charter to heart and recently implemented CSR24. Pat Reynolds of HRH of CT noted, “We had been looking at 24/7 service for some time and really felt that we needed it to compete effectively in our market. If we can’t offer the types of services our customers expect with today’s technology, we won’t be competitive. CSR24 is a great selling tool and has positively affected our acquisition of new accounts.”

Another main reason HRH of CT selected CSR24 was to reduce the certificates of insurance workload. “We had a group of staff members doing thousands of certificates and we felt that with CSR24, we could free them up to handle other tasks, while providing our customers with faster turnaround on their requests” commented Reynolds. However, there was some concern that the policyholder might feel that self-service meant the agent was asking the customer to do their work. That was not the case - in fact, the very first customer introduced to CSR24 “absolutely loved it!” Not only was it easy to do, the HRH of CT representative carries a Blackberry device and was able to show the policyholder that the email notification for their request arrived on her Blackberry in minutes. Seeing the email gave the policyholder confidence in the service and that her requests would be responded to promptly. “The customer was completely impressed,” stated Reynolds. 24/7 service is really making a difference in our agency. We are so pleased with CSR24, that we are rolling out this great service to more and more of our policyholders, and are personally meeting with them to present the new service. It’s a great way to gain face time with the customer in a proactive way while solidifying an unprecedented level of service.

Reynolds also notes that CSR24 is a valuable disaster recovery tool. “The CSR24 data is kept off site and separate from our agency management system so it can be accessed by our agency personnel as a backup system to be able to service our client’s needs should our agency management system go down, in case of a problem at our office, or if there’s a weather difficulty in getting our staff into our office. Obviously these are times when our clients are in need of our service and having this secondary option ‘just in case’ is invaluable.” Reynolds also appreciates the call center service, “The ability to have calls directed to the call center when the office is closed, whether due to an emergency situation or simply an office holiday, picnic or meeting, provides us peace of mind that our customers have access to excellent service, even if we aren’t immediately available to answer the phone,” stated Reynolds.

CSR24 has proven a variety of benefits to HRH of CT, and Reynolds appreciates that she is working with experienced industry professionals at Artizan Internet Services. They are people she has worked with before and it makes a difference that they understand the business. HRH of CT is so convinced of the value of CSR24, they’re in the process of assisting HRH offices in MA and NY with their deployment of CSR24 too.

“We were an HRH acquisition (The Hobbs Group) and were converted from Applied to Sagitta. We service 800+ A&E firms which similar to contractors have heavy service requirements for Certificates of Insurance. We thought the Applied Systems method of COI issuance for single and renewal certs was wonderful. Prior to the conversion, we guaranteed 24 hour turn around time on certificates which we always met with time to spare. The difficulty in setting up and issuing a COI in Sagitta forced us to reduce our service standard to 48 hours and we even at that struggled to meet it. We investigated a couple of services seeking a replacement process that was affordable and, at a minimum, as easy as Applied to operate. We found that the system offered by CSR24 was exactly what we had been looking for and then some!

At present, we use CSR24 internally to issue certificates of insurance. Our AM's/CSR's love using CSR24. It is uncomplicated and user friendly. We are transitioning COI issuance from Sagitta to CSR24 upon renewal. In some instances, our AM's have chosen not to wait for renewal and have done the setup mid term--that speaks for the system! We anticipate that we will eventually offer the COI issuance service to a select group of our larger clients and see how it goes from there. In addition, we will be investigating the other services offered by CSR24 to see what else may be beneficial to our operation.

CSR24 has allowed us to take a negative and make it a positive. Our service standards in this area have improved tremendously!”