Taylor Rosenberg joins us from inside The Iroquois Group’s Home Office. Taylor is the Company Experience Coordinator. If you aren’t sure what that job title entails or are wondering how your agency can implement this role this is a great episode for you. We cover the differences between Customer Service and Customer Experience as well as how this role benefits each part of the equation at Iroquois.
Edwin K. Morris (5s): Welcome to the trusted advisor podcast brought to you by Iroquois Group. Iroquois is your trusted advisor in all things insurance. I am Edwin K Morris. Taylor Rosenberg is the Iroquois Group Company Experience Coordinator. Taylor stepped into this role last year, and has already surpassed expectations. Taylor’s background is full of job and life experiences where Customer and company Experience are imperative prior to joining Iroquois. Taylor worked for many years at St. Bonaventure university handling freshmen admissions and new student orientation Company Experience Coordinator. Can you tell me a little bit about what that role is?
Taylor Rosenberg (47s): Absolutely. The Company Experience Coordinator role kind of dips its toes in a little bit of everything at Iroquois. The main goal is really just to make sure that our employees, our members, and any other relevant parties have all of the information and different things that they need to perform their job in a good manner.
Edwin K. Morris (1m 8s): So how did you find your way into this role?
Taylor Rosenberg (1m 10s): Every job that I’ve really ever had has dealt in customer experience or customer service. So I started working in the food service industry, but the hotel Lenhart in Bemis point, New York, I pretty much had every single job that you can imagine at that hotel. It is one of the oldest running hotel’s in all of New York state, I believe coming up on 200 years, but I was a bartender, a server. I also ran the, the front desk at nighttime security and there whole thing at the hotel, Lenhart is a customer experience. They have a lot of return customers coming back. And also when I was at St Bonaventure, I worked as an orientation Coordinator and that was really all about welcoming new students, making them feel at home at the new school that they chose. Taylor Rosenberg (1m 59s): And I also still currently coach the men’s ice hockey team at St. Bonaventure. And we really talk about the, the experience, the brotherhood of being on the bona’s hockey team. So we really emphasize the Experience and all of those roles
Edwin K. Morris (2m 12s): Sounds like you’re a perfect fit for this.
Taylor Rosenberg (2m 14s): Well, thank you. I really hope that i’m you, you know, living up to those expectations and I’ve only been in this role for about seven months now, but I really do feel like we’ve made some headway and we’re starting to enhance the and optimize the, the, the Company experience. Iroquois.
Edwin K. Morris (2m 32s): Can you, can you kind of detail what you see as the difference between customer service and this new?
Taylor Rosenberg (2m 38s): Yeah, and I, I do think there’s a little bit of a difference customer service. I think of more as a one time or short term deal, for instance, I am handling a lot of the commission’s questions that come into Iroquois. So I might only deal with, you know, a couple of questions a day, but I want to make sure that I’m a responding to these questions are in a timely manner, making sure I’m getting a thorough, correct information out to our members. Whereas the company experience or customer experience is more of a long-term thing. And one of the things that we’re currently doing is we’re evaluating the different commissions questions that were receiving and were taking that information and data and figuring out ways to optimize the experience, whether that’s with our user interface, our I member website, but we’re trying to portray the information in a way that is easier to use for our members. Taylor Rosenberg (3m 33s): And the end goal would be to have no commissions questions coming through because that would signal to us that our, our system is giving the information in a way that it’s easy enough to understand for our members as well.
Edwin K. Morris (3m 46s): I want to make that user available right now. And the other thing I want to ask is that in your hotel experience is this kind of feels like a concierge service. I mean, it’s more, it’s like you say, it’s more than just the one time. Hey, you know, also you have an X and see you later, this is more your representing more of the company’s integrity and a long term fashion. Yeah,
Taylor Rosenberg (4m 11s): Sure, absolutely. And we want to not only retain all of our members, but we are also working on gaining new members at Iroquois and I have my toes dipped and both of those pools.
Edwin K. Morris (4m 21s): That leads me to a great question to follow that up is how do you interact with these members.
Taylor Rosenberg (4m 25s): Number? So quite a few different ways. Like I mentioned, I am the first line of defense, if you will, in terms of our commissions questions. And then there are two other areas that I really help and have those a member interactions prospecting. There’s a part of that. Obviously throughout the pandemic, there have been a lot of changes in the way that everyone operates their businesses. So we have tried to come up with some creative and find new ways to attract new members. And we did a, just create a new program where we sent out customized Yeti mugs to a bunch of prospective new members. And some of these were people that maybe Iroquois , hadn’t had a lot of interaction with before, but a lot of these were people that may be were considering joining Iroquois. Taylor Rosenberg (5m 6s): They just weren’t sure if it was the right fit or not yet. And we are very confident that our model provides a lot of opportunities to these agencies.
Edwin K. Morris (5m 15s): You’ve got to keep that all in a very, probably a low effort kind of way, you don’t want to come off. It was a hard sale.
Taylor Rosenberg (5m 23s): Yeah, exactly. And a big change with that is our field representatives used to be out in the field. They would meet the agency’s out for lunch. They will talk to the principals, but a lot of that has gone to the wayside due to the pandemic. So again, we’re just trying to find a way to make them feel welcomed as we are trying to get them to join the company.
Edwin K. Morris (5m 43s): Well, and you’re kind of a Sherpa to the value behind the Company, correct? I mean, you’re helping them to understand what they get for this package.
Taylor Rosenberg (5m 54s): Yeah. And one of the reasons that I joined Iroquois in our mission and values statement, we do talk quite a bit about how all three parties are benefiting from Iroquois. So the carriers Iroquois itself and our member agencies. So there is that when, when, when aspect, and that was something that I really liked, again, going back to my sales experience in admissions, sometimes the, the sales portion of the job seems a little bit too pushy. And with Iroquois, we know that all three parties involved in the contract really are going to benefit from this. So again, using those Yeti Mugs or any other type of program, we can to just help these people realize that Joining Iroquois as a, a great way to gain more business, it’s really important.
Edwin K. Morris (6m 41s): So to wrap things up Taylor kind of tell me about what your looking at inside the culture of. Yeah.
Taylor Rosenberg (6m 47s): And so we’ve had a couple of different trivia events every morning. We do have a 10:00 AM meeting where Sue Massaro hosts a family feud style trivia. And everyone in the home office is invited to come to that meeting. And we check and see if anyone has any technical difficulties, or if there are any hot topics of discussion that we need to go over. But at the, at the end of that, there was about a five minute trivia where everyone tries to have a quick battle and figure out the answer to the family feud. And every month we do offer a prize for whoever wins the family feud event for the month. And also we have implemented a little bit more of a, a standard trivia. If you were to go out to a bar night trivia or something similar to that were there are different rounds. Taylor Rosenberg (7m 31s): And we always randomize the teams so that people that aren’t always necessarily interacting in their day to day jobs, have a chance to meet other people and have a little bit of fun. And we always try and schedule those trivia events at the end of the day on a Friday. So it’s a nice way to ease everyone into their weekend. And we do also have prizes for that. We’ve just recently did one for St. Patrick’s day.
Edwin K. Morris (7m 54s): Well, that sounds pretty exciting because when you’ve got a culture or a work organization that’s engaged around connection and a fun, that’s all it is.
Taylor Rosenberg (8m 5s): Absolutely. And we really try and emphasize that.
Edwin K. Morris (8m 7s): Thanks for being here at Taylor, it was awesome to hear about your new role and, and the exciting challenges coming in. You.
Taylor Rosenberg (8m 12s): Cool. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Edwin K. Morris (8m 16s): Thanks for listening to this edition of the trusted advisor podcast brought to you by Iroquois Group Iroquois, your trusted advisor for all things, insurance. And remember you get out of the office and sell. I am Edwin K Morris, and I invite you to join me for the next edition of the trusted advisor podcast.
