When an insurance agency's systems fail during renewal season, your IT provider should respond to the critical issue within 60 to 120 minutes, and that number should be written into your agreement. But response time is only half the answer. What matters with clients on the phone is how fast your CSRs and producers are quoting and servicing again, and that depends on whether your provider planned for it before anything broke.
At Tomorrow's Technology Today, critical-issue response is guaranteed in writing: 120 minutes on our Gold plan, and 60 minutes on Platinum and Titanium, during business hours. Managed IT runs $175 to $350 per user per month.
Response Time Isn't the Same as Back to Work
A response time is when a technician starts working your problem, not when it's fixed. Some fixes depend on a vendor, like your agency management system provider or your phone carrier. That's why the better question is: what's the plan to keep my team working while this gets fixed? It usually comes down to three things set up in advance:
- Files and email in the cloud, so a failed computer doesn't take a CSR's work with it.
- Backups that are tested, so a restore is a known process. We restore-test every backup every other week, with screenshot proof.
- Secure remote access ready to go, so staff can keep working from another location if they need to.
What Response Should Look Like, Hour by Hour
- Before you open: client dashboards are reviewed again at 4 a.m. by our overnight engineer, so problems are caught before your team logs in.
- 7am to 5pm on business days: a live technician answers the phone. No phone tree, no callback tomorrow.
- Critical issues: a guaranteed response within 120 minutes on Gold, or 60 minutes on Platinum and Titanium.
- After hours: an answering service tracks down a technician, and the work is done remotely.
- Around the clock: 24/7 managed detection and response through a human-staffed Security Operations Center.
Real Client Examples
The problem: Two team members at one of our agency clients suddenly needed to work from home. Separately, faxing between the agency's offices stopped working.
The solution: For the remote work, a technician had both employees connected securely within about 30 minutes, then upgraded the agency to a more secure remote-access system as a planned project. For the fax outage, a technician took the call live and worked with the phone provider to find the problem.
The result: Both staff kept working within about half an hour, faxing was back the same day, and neither problem landed on the owner's desk.
5 Questions to Ask Before Your Next Renewal Rush
- What's your guaranteed critical response time, and where is it written? Ours is on the managed services proposal you sign.
- Who answers when I call? A technician, or a ticket queue?
- If a CSR's computer dies at 10 a.m., how is she working by lunch? Look for a plan, not "we'll order a part."
- Will you work directly with our agency management system vendor? We do, and we ask every agency to keep its vendor maintenance agreements current so there's always someone to escalate to.
- When was our backup last restore-tested? A backup no one has restored is a guess.
Get It in Writing
Response times only protect you if they're in your agreement. See what should be included in a managed IT agreement for an insurance agency, and what managed IT costs for a 10 to 50 person agency.
Why Insurance Agencies Work With Tomorrow's Technology Today
- Supporting independent insurance agencies since 2011, and local businesses for more than 20 years
- Technicians who answer the phone live during the business day
- Headquartered in St. Henry, Ohio, with an office in Fort Wayne; woman-owned and woman-led
- Every technician is security-trained to CJIS standards and background-checked
- We require every client to carry at least $2 million in cyber liability coverage, and we carry $2 million in professional and cyber liability coverage ourselves
- Microsoft Partner
See how we support independent insurance agencies across Ohio and Indiana.
Want a plan in place before your next renewal rush? Book a 10-minute discovery call. Call us at (419) 678-2083 or visit www.TomTechToday.com/discoverycall to schedule yours.