Virtual assistants give agencies another way to think about staffing, capacity, and how work gets done.
As some agencies look for ways to manage growing workloads and free licensed employees for higher-value work, virtual assistants (VAs) have become an important part of the staffing equation. For agencies, the key to getting the most value from the VA model is figuring out who should be doing what.
Ask an agency owner why they hired a virtual assistant and many are focused on freeing existing employees to do work they don’t have time to do. “My agency had plenty of work. Service demands have increased and employees spend so much time handling existing accounts that new business opportunities were becoming harder to pursue,” explains Chaneé Boehnen, principal of Lundell Insurance. “We knew there was business sitting in our own records that deserved another look. Over the last few years, we’d lost customers that we wanted to win back.”
For Boehnen, this was where a new virtual assistant could focus, taking the former accounts, requoting them with the agency’s carriers, organizing the results and identifying promising opportunities for licensed employees to pursue. She’s also taking a similar approach to renewals.
“When an account comes in with a significant premium increase, the VA can do much of the legwork to explore alternatives before the licensed agent reviews the options and works directly with the customer,” she explains.
Start With the Work Your Agency Isn’t Getting Done
Virtual assistants aren’t new, but their use in insurance agencies has expanded well beyond basic administrative support. VAs may retrieve policy documents, gather pre-renewal information, prepare certificates and auto ID cards, enter client updates, process routine changes, manage certificate holders, clean up data and complete other service and administrative tasks.
Some agencies use VAs for a defined group of repetitive tasks. Others use insurance-trained VAs in roles that support more of the service process. The common denominator is work that needs to get done but can consume a significant amount of an experienced employee’s day. That creates another way for agencies to think about staffing, particularly when experienced insurance professionals are difficult to find.
“We see agencies start with work that is structured, repetitive, and process-driven—work that consumes staff time without always requiring senior-level judgment,” explains Santosh Kumar Baston, CEO of Insuserve-1. “Starting in these areas allows the agency to establish workflows, build trust, and demonstrate value before expanding the virtual assistant’s responsibilities,” he says.
Instead of beginning with, ‘we need another CSR,’ an agency can start by examining the work itself. Four questions can help:
- What’s consuming the team’s time?
- Which tasks require an insurance license, experience, and judgment?
- Which tasks are important but don’t necessarily require those things?
- Where are employees spending time that could be better spent talking with clients, solving problems or developing business?
“I use virtual assistants in personal and commercial lines, as well as for phones, data cleanup and maintenance. I also have a VA that supports me directly,” says Mark Shoultz, vice president, Priority Risk Management.
“If any agency owner is considering the model for the first time, I always recommend they start with hiring a VA to be their assistant,” Shoultz explains. “Look at all the work filling the agency owners’ day, particularly the things they don’t enjoy doing that don’t require a license. If someone else can take that work over, the owner gets time back while also learning how to manage a virtual employee.” From there, the same exercise can be applied throughout the agency.
The opportunity to realign work doesn’t mean everything should be shifted. Insurance licensing requirements are an obvious consideration, and what an unlicensed employee can do varies by state. A VA may be able to gather information, enter data, conduct research, prepare materials or complete other steps in a workflow. A licensed employee can then review the work, exercise insurance judgment and communicate with the client where required.
Shoultz explains that his unlicensed VAs can’t sell, solicit, or negotiate insurance based on the laws in Indiana. That shapes how work is divided. “Let them do all the legwork,” he says, and then have the licensed person review and present it.
That division of labor can be important for another reason. The goal isn’t simply to outsource tasks but to make better use of the people the agency already has. If an experienced account manager is spending hours retrieving documents, updating routine information or cleaning up data, the agency isn’t getting the full value of that employee’s knowledge and experience. Moving appropriate tasks elsewhere can create more time for client conversations, coverage discussions, problem-solving and relationship building. But the agency still owns the outcome.
Get the Process Right First
The fact that work has been delegated highlights the need for processes, supervision, quality control, and review. One of the most important steps should happen before a VA begins working for the agency: defining the workflow.
Remote work leaves less room for the informal instructions that often fill gaps in an office. If no one inside the agency can clearly explain how a task should be completed, when it should be completed, where information should be entered, and what should happen next, handing that task to someone thousands of miles away will become an issue quickly. “A virtual assistant can’t fix a workflow that has never been clearly defined,” Baston says.
Documented workflows and step-by-step instructions give a VA something to reference when questions arise and help establish consistent expectations about how the agency wants work handled. Creating that documentation may also expose inefficiencies the agency has lived with for years. Answers to questions like what happens when a certificate request comes in or what issues need a licensed employee to review become more critical than ever.
Agencies that get the most value from VAs tend to do four things well: clearly define responsibilities, document workflows, provide consistent feedback, and include the VA in regular team communication. They also establish measurable expectations for accuracy, turnaround time, productivity, and escalation. “The objective should not simply be to transfer tasks,” Baston says. “There should be a controlled process with clear procedures, defined authority levels, quality reviews and appropriate escalation points.”
Make the VA Part of the Team
“I communicate with my VA throughout the day using Teams, chat, video and email,” says Boehnen. “Even so, making a remote employee feel like part of a five-person agency isn’t automatic. It’s hard to make her feel like part of the group. We’re still trying to figure that out.”
Shoultz has encountered the same challenge. His Philippines-based employees communicate with the rest of the agency through Slack and video meetings. They also get together locally for dinner and join agency gatherings remotely. But keeping VAs actively involved and maintaining collaboration across the entire team remains something the agency has to work at, he says.
That may be an important distinction for agencies exploring virtual staffing. If the VA is going to function as part of the agency, management can’t simply send a stream of tasks offshore and call it integration. Remote employees need context, ongoing feedback, and who to ask when something isn’t clear. They also need to understand how their work contributes to the agency’s larger goals. “The agencies that achieve the greatest value treat their virtual assistants as an extension of the agency rather than as an external task-processing service,” Baston says.
Strong communication is especially important early in the relationship. Baston recommends agencies invest heavily in training, calibration, and feedback during the first 30 to 60 days. As the VA learns the agency’s processes and expectations, responsibilities can gradually expand. “The most successful model is a partnership,” explains Baston. “The agency provides process, clarity, and access, while the virtual assistant provides consistency, capacity, and operational discipline.”
Artificial Intelligence, VAs and the Team
The rise of virtual assistants is happening at the same time agencies are trying to understand another potential source of capacity: artificial intelligence. The two don’t necessarily compete.
“Both AI and VAs are parts of the same evolving workforce,” says Shoultz. “I can see agency work moving through a combination of AI, virtual assistants, account managers and producers, with each handling the work best suited to them.”
“I think each producer should really have not only an account manager but also a VA, and then also AI to help empower them to accomplish more,” Shoultz says.
Baston expects AI to change the VA role rather than eliminate it. “The role will move from primarily processing transactions to supervising automation, reviewing exceptions, validating information and coordinating workflows,” he says.
AI can extract information from documents, compare policies and quotes, identify missing data, classify emails, prepare forms, summarize communications and detect inconsistencies. A VA can then operate those AI-enabled workflows, review output, resolve exceptions, update agency management systems and make sure the work is completed accurately. Licensed agents, account managers and agency leaders remain responsible for the work that relies most heavily on insurance expertise, judgment, and relationships.
Instead of looking at AI, VAs and traditional employees as separate staffing decisions, agencies can look at the work itself and determine the best place for each part of it. The potential is in how the pieces fit together.
Look for Work Your Agency Isn’t Getting Done
For an agency wondering whether a VA makes sense, the first step is looking at where the agency’s time goes. What work repeatedly gets pushed to the bottom of the list? What are licensed employees doing that doesn’t require a license? Where are producers and account managers spending time on administrative work instead of clients? And what important work simply isn’t getting done?
For example, Boehnen’s lost-customer project started with a business opportunity that already existed. The agency didn’t need another person simply because everyone felt busy. It had hundreds of former clients worth another look and no capacity to do the work required to find the best opportunities among them. The VA created that capacity.
This is a useful way to think about virtual assistants. The question isn’t whether a VA can replace someone already sitting in the agency but whether changing who does the work can give the people already there more time to do the work that requires their experience, judgment and relationships.
Is Your Agency Ready for a VA?
Before adding a virtual assistant, take a closer look at the work you want that person to do.
- Identify the bottlenecks in the agency. What necessary work isn’t getting done or is taking experienced employees away from clients and revenue-producing activities?
- Separate tasks from roles. Don’t assume every task currently handled by a CSR, account manager or producer needs to stay with that role.
- Align with licensing requirements. Determine what an unlicensed VA can and cannot do in the states where your agency operates.
- Document your processes. If you can’t clearly explain how the work should be done, it will be difficult to delegate successfully.
- Decide who reviews the VA’s work. Build quality control and licensed review into the workflow where appropriate.
- Plan for security and access. Determine what systems and client information the VA will need and how access to that information will be protected.
- Make the VA part of the team. Include remote employees in communication, meetings, feedback and appropriate agency activities.
- Start with something defined. Choose a specific set of tasks or one workflow, learn what works and expand from there.
- Measure what changed. Did account managers gain more client-facing time? Did response times improve? Did producers have more time for new business? Did previously neglected work get done?
Leave a Reply