For years now, I have had insurance agent after insurance agent admit – sheepishly – that they were not ‘fully utilizing’ their agency management system.  Don’t feel bad – you have company.  Back in November of 2009 Wired.com noted in their Gadget Lab blog that the iPhone App Store Apps hit six digits.  More recently, the NY Times suggested that the average iPhone owner actually uses only 5 – 10 apps with any regularity.  Out of over 100,000.  Yet no one accuses iPhone users of ‘under utilizing’ their devices because the assumption is that each individual iPhone user gravitates to the apps that are most useful for that individual.

Independent insurance agencies have a wide range of feature options, not only with their agency management systems, but with other technology tools like email, websites, and mobile devices.  So, if there is a shortcoming that insurance agents are guilty of, it probably isn’t under utilizing the technology available to them, but rather, the shortcoming may be not choosing the right five or ten tech features that help achieve agency growth and profit objectives.

What is it that makes Apple’s iPhone, iMac, iTunes, and other products so wildly successful and easy to use.  One suggestion, quoted in a recent NY Times article, is that they are ‘disease’ free; that is, none of these devices is afflicted with ‘featuritis’.

“A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley…They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

We see insurance agents struggling under the weight of management system features; independent agents have the freedom to represent any insurance company that will sign a contract; to launch a facebook page or twitter feed; agents can build and manage their own websites without worrying about restrictions imposed by one mother-ship product supplier.  But does all this freedom of choice lead to featuritis?  What is the minimum feature set delivering maximum benefit for independent insurance agents?  What do they need from the companies they represent, the marketing programs they choose, website solution and social media options…what is that minimum set of features that is super simple to use and provides the most important set of benefits in such a way that it would make Apple wish they had come up with the answer?

There is ample evidence that suggest too many options delay decisions and increase dissatisfaction with the choices we make (See Barry Schwartz’s excellent book on the topic: The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less). Enter a new definition of quality, posited in a Wired Magazine article: The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine. The article leads with discussion of the cheap, and easy to use Flip Ultra camcorder. Despite the lack of features, the camera has sold like hot cakes, grabbing a 17% share of the camcorder market in just two years.

Other ‘good enough to get on with it’ products and services cited in the article include gmail and Zoho Writer, a Microsoft Word substitute with fewer bells and whistles (but most of the features you are actually likely to use). Oh yeah, and what about the advantages of a (relatively) unsophisticated, unmanned Predator aircraft vs. a $45 million F-16 (options, including pilot, may cost extra)?

Wired isn’t alone in noticing that cheap and simple solutions are often the best ones. In the upcoming sequel to Freakonomics – called Super Freakonomics – Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner have included a chapter chapter entitled The Fix Is In – And It’s Cheap and Simple.

I think this movement toward ‘good enough is more than effective’ is good news for agency manager perfectionists. Instead of wrestling with decisions about which expensive and complex software or web service to work with, just go with what works, and can be had for little or no money. Here’s a few favorites that insurance agency managers should be thinking about:

For video calls, and free long distance, try Skype. Depending on features you may wish to add (a traditional phone number, the ability to call out to land line or cell phones, e.g.), you may pay a few dollars a month.

And speaking of YouTube, there is no simpler way to get your video converted for streaming and to add it to your website.  We have been using YouTube for a variety of purposes at Confluency Solutions, and set up our own channel a little over a year ago.  Use YouTube videos to explain insurance coverage, the claim process, or to highlight safety issues.  Oh, and the cost – free.

Video email can be free, or you could pay as much as (gasp!) $99 a year.  Eyejot is our service of choice.  At Confluency, we use it for proposal deliveries, conference/trade show follow ups, and to set up renewal reviews.

Email management, CAN SPAM compliance, and newsletter sign ups can be facilitated by several services.  MailChimp is free, as long as your ‘subscription’ list is $500 or less.  After 500, the monthly fees are low.  (Your insurance agency might have 2,000 customers, but how many email addresses do you have?)

For web conferencing, including document and screen sharing, try DimDim.  The service is reliable, easy to use, and free for up to 20 attendees in a session.

The list could go on and on, but in my experience, these are good places for most insurance agencies to start.

Marketing Sherpa posted survey results about how businesses in general think social media (SM) fits into the marketing tool box.  Basically, most businesses see SM as a complementary, but not a replacement tactic.  However, most businesses view SM as important enough to warrant its own budget line item and staff.  What does your insurance agency think about social media like Facebook?  Take a poll and me know.

You could say ‘insurance’ is the answer, and at some level, it is.  But that glib answer makes many of us miss several of  the imperatives of any business:  getting customers, keeping customers, and making sure our customer relationships are profitable (so we can stay in business).  I attended a recent agency association convention where I heard two comments repeated that I have heard for years:

1.  Oh, you guys do web stuff?  I’ll give your information to my technology guy to review.

2.  I’m in the insurance business, not the technology business.

I felt the need to post my take on those comments, but I didn’t feel like typing.  So here’s what you get: