Playbook, insurance broker
Three sets of hours, and only one of them is the broker's
The times on the contact page are the least useful hours a broker publishes. What a visitor is usually working out is whether something can happen today: cover on risk before a job starts, a certificate issued for a contract, a claim reported tonight. Each of those runs on somebody else's clock, and answering all three with the office hours sends people away with the wrong answer three times.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for opening hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Putting cover on risk depends on an insurer being open rather than on the office being open, unless the firm holds authority to bind it itself, so a late Friday enquiry is a question about the market and not about the office.
- The claims line and any emergency assistance arrangement keep hours the broker does not set and often does not share, which makes them the hours worth publishing most prominently.
- Renewal correspondence lands on a date rather than in a working week, so somebody whose renewal falls on a Monday has the weekend and nothing else, and the office hours are what decides whether they act on the Friday.
- Issuing documents can be constrained by an insurer's own systems, so being able to speak to somebody at half past five does not mean a certificate can be produced at half past five.
How it arrives
- can i get cover started today if i ring now
- is anyone in the office on a saturday
- what time do you close for new business
- who answers the claims line out of hours
- my renewal is on a sunday what do i do
- how late can you issue a certificate
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Office hours by function | New business, existing customer service, claims support and accounts often keep different hours inside the same firm. One pair of times across the contact page is wrong somewhere, and the visitor finds out by ringing. |
|---|---|
| The claims and assistance hours, stated separately | Who answers, when, and what happens overnight and at weekends. These are the hours that matter after an incident and nobody should have to infer them from the office times. |
| What can and cannot start the same day | Which classes you can put on cover quickly, what you need in hand for that, and what has to go to an insurer and wait. This is the real question behind are you open now. |
| Dated closures and the arrangement covering each | Bank holidays, any shutdown between Christmas and the new year, and how a renewal or a claim is dealt with across it. A general note about bank holidays quietly turns into a wrong answer. |
The reply
The office hours are on the contact page, but they are probably not the thing you need. If you are asking whether cover can start today, that depends on the insurer as much as on us, and what we can normally turn round quickly is set out by class [1]. If something has happened, the claims line keeps its own hours and there is an out of hours arrangement, both listed separately [2]. And if your renewal date falls at a weekend, act on the Friday, because nothing goes on risk while everybody is closed [3].
It says the published hours are the wrong answer before giving them, which is unusual and correct here. It routes the three real questions to three different clocks. The renewal sentence is advice about timing rather than about cover, so it is safe to give, and it is the one thing a customer in that position genuinely needs to hear.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor needs cover to start on a named date, or asks whether something can be done before a deadline today.
I cannot tell you whether it can be done today, because that depends on the insurer as much as on us. Leave me your name, an email and the date you need cover from, and somebody will call you back rather than let it slip.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never promise that cover can be arranged today or by a particular date, because an insurer has to agree and the assistant cannot ask one.
- Never state an opening time your own material does not carry, since a wasted journey or a wasted call against a deadline is the worst version of a small error.
- Never treat the office hours as the claims hours, as somebody with an incident tonight needs the line that is actually staffed.
- Never say cover carries on over a weekend past a renewal date, because whether it does turns on the policy and the arrangement rather than on the calendar.
Questions
- Is this really worth a page?
- It is, because the question is never actually about hours. Almost everybody asking wants to know whether a thing can happen before a deadline, and separating the office clock from the insurer's clock answers what they meant.
- Can it say whether we can put cover on today?
- No. That depends on the class, on what the customer has to hand, and on an insurer it cannot ask. It can publish which classes you normally turn round quickly, which is a fact about your firm and safe to state.
- Should the assistant behave differently out of hours?
- Only in the fallback message, which is worth writing so that it leads with the claims route. Overnight is when incidents arrive, and it is the one time the widget is the only thing awake.
Keep reading
- Everything for a insurance brokerProduct information is safe ground. A personal recommendation is regulated, and no assistant may confirm whether a loss is covered.
- Handling opening hours in generalHolidays, seasonal variation, last orders and multiple sites. Keeping one source of truth so the assistant and your map listing agree.
- What can be adjusted, and the request that is something elseA wording in large print is an adjustment. Letting a relative deal with the policy is a change of authority, and not the same request.
- Coming to a broker for the first timeThe first conversation is a fact find with a duty attached. What to have ready, what the broker must tell you, and who it searches.
- Coverage questions, and the only safe shape for the answerThe one question a broker's assistant can never answer, and the reply that still leaves the customer better off than silence would.
Try it on your own material
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