Running Clock Rant: “Agency Relationship Survey”

Every year we get dozens of emails exhorting us to take the Agency Relationship Survey. Every year the participation drops a little more. Besides the fact that the survey interprets our frustration with the company as frustration with our managers (much the same way the ALI interprets customer frustration with the company as customer frustration with the Agency) – there is a more BASIC reason for the growing lack of participation.

This is what I hear on face to face, at conferences, at up-comm meetings, from agents: Although the company does occasionally address issues of processes, leadership and back office performance, they don’t actually want feedback on important issues of corporate decisions that go to the heart of agent/corporate relationships.  Corporate doesn’t really care what its’ 13,000 (?) agents think about decisions that truly affect our ability to do business or a lot of issues that NAPAA attempts to address would not be issues. The expense to the company of administering the NAB under pretense addressing agent issues would not be necessary. The model of management vs work-force would no longer exist.

As the saying goes “two heads are better than one”. There are 13,000 heads who want to succeed, who work from the ground up, who interface directly with “the street” and who have good ideas and something to say. A majority of agents know that there are better ways to do business, and only need to look to IA’s to see that model working. We would like Allstate’s blessing and backing, as well as their hands-off where they are straddling the line of employee vs contractor relationships

Many realize that nothing will change where change is truly needed.  Why waste time on the Agency Relationship Survey?