Small Changes Lead to Big Results
by Kitty Ambers, COO, AVYST 
I attended an industry meeting where the concept of the “21-day challenge” for embracing change was discussed. We all agreed on the idea that it takes 21 days of consistent action to begin to create a new habit and is a great place to start. Diet, exercise, and stop-smoking programs are some perfect examples of the three-week approach to experiencing change. Consider embracing the same concept to resolve business issues.
During an agency consulting engagement, I worked with a client who was intrigued by the insurance policy cancellations that their office had been experiencing. Historically, the management team would review cancellation activity on a monthly basis and complain. Instead, we created an action plan to investigate the cancellation situation on a daily basis. As a result, we implemented 3 actions over 21 business days, and created measurable improvement in the cancellation situation:
- Retraining the Download Processor to act on cancellation notices proactively,
- Requiring the use of reason codes for cancellations, and
- Providing training to customer service agents on conversational servicing techniques to address cancellation requests and offer options.
Mary Kay Ash used to say, “you can eat an elephant one bite at a time”. Sometimes, we get so completely overwhelmed by the big project that we don’t even begin.
I encourage you to break things down into bite-sized, manageable steps and take action. Whether trying to incent new behavior, or remedy an existing situation, realize that every worthwhile “change” takes time. And don’t give up or give in too soon!
Give it at least 21 days!!
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About AVYST – Keeping Insurance at the Heart of Insurtech
AVYST eForms Wizard provides sales professionals with a digital solution to gather complete and accurate information at the point of sale. The ability to enter data once, directly onto digital eForms, minimizes errors and omissions. Learn more at www.avyst.com/go.
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