Tech Backup Saves Agency After Storm

Tech Backup Saves Agency After Storm Call center service enables agency to respond after office is devastated

In business, it is often said that timing is everything, and for one Florida agent who suffered through the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan last summer, the saying could not be more fitting.

In mid-September, as Ivan approached the Florida panhandle and Alabama coasts, Ashley Hunnicutt-Barkocy was anxiously preparing for the storm. It was a Sunday afternoon at Hunnicutt Insurance's Ft. Walton Beach, Fla., location. Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy, the agency's principal owner, was in the office reviewing her disaster plan and cutting payroll checks for the month. She had a bad feeling about Ivan.

“I was nervous,” she explained. “Ivan began with a vowel. I know it sounds strange, but we always seem to be worst affected by hurricanes that start with a vowel. Opal started with a vowel.”

Opal, which struck the Gulf Coast in 1995, caused insured damages of $2.5 billion (in 2003 dollars), making it the eighth most-costly U.S. hurricane for the industry, according to the Insurance Information Institute. The storm took nine lives in the United States, and 59 overall, as it churned through the Caribbean before hitting the U.S. mainlaind.

While preparing for Ivan, a fax came to Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy from AMS Services, the Bothell, Wash.-based agency management software provider to the insurance industry. AMS was alerting customers to Service 24/7, a suite of products designed to provide 24-hour response for an agent's customers.

The agency had recently moved from AMS' Sagitta management system to AfW Online, making clients' files available over the Internet. With the pending storm, it seemed wise to her to add another layer of security for the agency so it could transact business in an emergency.

Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy called AMS that Sunday and asked Darrell Stanley, director of professional services, to set up the service. That day the steps were taken to make available a help desk with trained customer service representatives for policyholders to speak with if they could not reach the agency. What usually takes a week-to-10 days to complete was done in about 24 hours due to the impending storm.

“This was an extraordinary circumstance,” Mr. Stanley noted.

This was significant for an agency that writes more than $10 million in premium, with 70 percent commercial business, much of which is condominium associations located primarily along the coast, Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy noted.

Mr. Stanley explained that AMS offered Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy access to a call center staff with contact and insurance information from the agency. Customers calling into the agency would be forwarded to the call center where representatives accessed rudimentary information to help the customer begin the claims process. There was also an 800 number for customers to call.

The service costs $70.83 a month, plus $8.25 per call for additional calls beyond an agreed-upon number, said Mr. Stanley.

On Tuesday, the evacuation orders came. All of the agency's phone calls were forwarded to Service 24/7.

On Thursday, Sept. 16, Hurricane Ivan hit the shore with winds clocked at 121 miles-per-hour a devastating Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Three times during the life of Ivan, as it progressed through the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico, the storm reached Category 5 status (winds of more than 155 mph).

Ivan would take a total of 92 lives14 in Florida alone and unleash 111 tornadoes, 20 of which sprang up in Florida, according to the National Weather Service Web site. Ivan caused $6 billion in insured losses, making it the fourth-worst hurricane in U.S. history, the Insurance Information Institute said.

The Hunnicutt Agency would not be spared. Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy said hers was the worst hit of any agency in Florida.

Ft. Walton Beach “sustained more direct damage from Hurricane Opal,” she noted, “but we did not sustain as serious damage [then] to our office building, or as many problems with adjusters, as we have this time around. It's been the most difficult six months in my life.”

Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy said the roof was ripped off the agency's building, damaging everything, including information that had not been transferred from the old Sagitta hard drive.

“You could see the sky when you looked up from inside the office,” she recounted. “Lots of the electrical equipment was soaked. The phones were soaked.”

Immediately, the agency went into action. With the help of Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy's husband, Steve Barkocy the agency's operation manager and other members of her family, including her father, John (who was retired), they put the agency's operations back together.

With some laptops, the rental of a recreational vehicle and some generators, the agency had a place to work again.

With Service 24/7 in place, customers would contact the call center and receive information on who to contact for claims service, she noted. A report was e-mailed to the agency and picked up on the laptops.

The agency called the customers back to make sure they were being taken care of and offer any further service needed. They also took an ad out in a local paper telling customers to call the 800 number to get in touch with the agency about claims.

“As soon as we found out that our clients spoke to the call center, we would call them back,” Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy said. “Who do you want to talk to the call center or your agent?”

The original catastrophe plan called for relocation of the office and waiting for telephone service to be re-established. As it turned out, that would have taken a lot of time and customers would have been calling the agency and receiving no answer.

“The only reason we were not run out of town by our policyholders is because AMS had a call center available to us,” said Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy. “It required a lot of ingenuity, but we had an excellent [catastrophe plan] in place. If AMS had not advertised the service, we would not have known about it.”

Within less than two weeks, Hunnicutt Insurance found temporary office space, but today the agency is still battling with some of its insurers over its own losses, while fighting with carriers and adjusters to settle customer's claims, she added.

“Our clients were very impressed [with the service], even though we sustained major damage. They were able to call and get help with contacting someone over their claim,” she said. “It showed exceptional customer service. AMS made us better prepared by having the service there.”

Being prepared and providing superior customer service also paid off in another way, she noted. “It is a great advertisement because we have written about 15 new accounts over the last 30 days from people who were unhappy with their agent because they felt their agent didn't go to bat for them,” she pointed out.

“I've had to put a lot of faith in God in the last six months,” confessed Ms. Hunnicutt-Barkocy. “But also, I take my job very seriously, because if I can't be around to help my client when they have a problem, when they have a loss or a claim, then why do they need me? So I take it personally, in the sense that I want to be there to help them.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 8, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.