Agencies Underpay CSRs, Overpay Producers, Consultant Bates Tells New England Reps.

The reason independent agencies struggle to attract customer service representatives (CSRs) is that agencies just do not pay them enough. Instead, agencies overpay their producers.

Consultant Virginia Bates of VMB Associates Inc. in Melrose, Mass., expressed this opinion before New England field representatives belonging to the 1752 Club recently.

“The people are out there. There are good people graduating and working to whom insurance would be a step up,” Bates maintained. But they aren’t lined up to work at insurance agencies “because we don’t pay enough. In other industries they can do much better.”

Bates anticipated the logical question of where agencies are supposed to get the money to pay CSRs more. “There’s plenty of money in most agencies,” she said, “but it’s put in the wrong places. They’re paying producers too much.”

Bates advised that agencies must “change the dynamics” to find ways to pay CSRs more and stop rewarding producers so much for renewals that are really handled by CSRs. “CSRs are seething over producers getting four or five times what she is getting. Why would someone want that? We lose people who ‘get it,” said Bates, who acknowledged that her recipe amounted to “deep surgery” for most agencies.

But for agencies that have made the change, “It’s heaven,” she maintained.