Fueling Growth with Partner Communities
Transforming the Insurance Broker Experience for the New, Digital Economy
For over 40 years, a leading insurance broker services network has provided access to affordable employee benefits, payroll, HR and employer services to over 200,000 businesses through its network of more than 20,000 partners. They have a history of providing exceptional services to their brokers, but their outdated payroll network lacked a technical solution to provide a great experience for their payroll partners.
A homegrown legacy system had an outdated user interface with a lack of communication and business intelligence tools. Most service was done via phone or email, and they maintained extensive – and expensive – support center operations to handle the volume.
Their payroll partners were frustrated by cumbersome, time consuming processes that were limiting their sales. Partners were struggling to identify opportunities for up and cross selling, causing support centers to be overwhelmed. They did not have a direct way to negotiate rates or plans, and there was no easy way to offer discounts. The experience was leaving brokers looking to other options.
It became critical to implement a solution that would deliver a gold standard of payroll services on par with the services they provide throughout the rest of their organization. To achieve their growth plans, partners needed access to a single source that provided them with all of the tools and information needed to increase their efficiency.
A Need for Connected, Self-Service Partner Community
The broker services network wanted to implement a modern, self-service partner community (also known as portals, forums, help centers, etc.) to improve the partner experience and provide partners with the tools to sell more, and faster. They chose Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Salesforce Community Cloud) as their provider to easily integrate with Salesforce products they were already using in their operations.
They engaged ArganoKeste to build the custom partner community, and we implemented a seamless experience that is helping brokers increase their sales volume, enabling scale for their payroll operations. ArganoKeste’s custom Salesforce Community Cloud implementation included:
- Self-service Community, integrated with internal systems, to enable brokers to retrieve accurate pricing, plan updates, and discounts instantly
- Real-time Customer Dashboards to provide partners with full visibility into customer accounts and the sales lifecycle
- Omnichannel Support including Live Agent chat, email, web and phone-based options to reduce call support call volume
“We wanted to update our outdated broker platform, but the most important part of the project was providing a higher level of transparency to our customers so we could better service them and their clients. Keste’s expertise helped us create a way to show our customers we combine our service with technology, far surpassing our competitors.” – Project Manager, Leading Broker Services Network
Modern Customer Experiences Drive Results
With success hinged on the efficiency of their services, the custom, partner community is delivering real impact to their top and bottom line.
The broker services network is now administering an exemplary customer experience and providing brokers with the tools to accelerate their sales. They also have greatly improved the efficiency of their support center operations by reducing their support call volume and operational costs.
It was a complete transformation from outdated, static partner network into a cutting-edge service platform that is agile to grow with their business as customer needs change.
Working with ArganoKeste
ArganoKeste began with a 2-week Discovery Session to create a roadmap for the custom, partner community. We then went through the Design and Development stages and finished with Quality Assurance and User Acceptance Testing to ensure a successful transformation.
The broker services network has an internal Salesforce department, and throughout the processes we worked in parallel with them to ensure the new partner community seamlessly integrated with existing Salesforce implementations.
Since the release of the partner community, Keste continues to provide enhancements to the community as needed.
Are you ready to bring your organization into the new era of digital commerce? Contact us to earn more about our solutions, including partner communities.
