Joanna Hagelberger is currently the Vice President of Customer Success at Rhoads Online, a technology provider of compliance solutions to the insurance industry. Her entire professional career has been in the insurance industry with the last 20 years in insurtech. Joanna is passionate about the customer experience, particularly the benefit a strong account management program can bring to an organization and its customers.
In her current role, Joanna is responsible for ensuring customers and prospects are having the best possible experience with Rhoads. Joanna received her BS and MS in Communication from Florida State University, she is a licenced insurance agent in the state of Michigan and she is a certified Executive Coach.
Questions
• Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?
• Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Rhoads Online? What is Rhoads Online? And what value do they bring to their customer base?
• Could you tell us maybe three things you’ve seen as recurring themes that come across being more proactive than reactive in the space that you operate in to ensure that you’re able to maximize on customer success?
• What are maybe one or two things that you believe as an organisation, especially in the insurance industry, specifically, you would need to be focusing on to ensure that you’re setting yourself apart and truly giving the customer more than they expect, and kind of living to what you were saying, trying to predict their needs before they know they even need it.
• Could you share with our listeners, what’s the one online tool, app or website that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
• Could you also share with our listeners, any books that you’ve read, it could be a book that you’ve read recently, or even one you read a very long time ago, but it has had a great impact on you.
• Now Joanna, can you also share with us what’s the one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about? Either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people.
• Where can listeners find you online?
• Before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track? This quote kind of helps you to get back on track. Do you have one of those?
Highlights
Joanna’s Journey
Me: Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your journey? How it is that you got from where you were to where you are today?
Joanna shared that she can tell you that no one as a little girl dreams or as a kid dreams someday I’m going to be working in insurance. So, most people decided, stumble into it somewhere along the way. And hers was a work study position when she was in college as a part of her financial aid, she was given a job working in the Employee Benefits Office at Florida State. And that ended up taking her into their insurance office where they administered their insurance, how their employees got insurance.
So, when she got out of grad school, and was looking for a job, she had this insurance knowledge of how the insurance space worked and that landed her with a position of a company that is today known as Willis Towers Watson. It was well as Willis at the time and became just Willis last year, and Madonna. And now has added new names again. So, that has taken her down a path, she’s worked for insurance brokers, insurance agencies, insurance companies, third party administrators, she’s been on all different sides of the business.
And about 20 years ago, she had the opportunity to jump to the other side of the business, and work in insurance technology, where insurance historically has been a very paper based, manual, difficult industry where everything is delivered by paper, every form is completed with pen and paper. And this company was working to build automation with insurance producers, the people that actually sell the insurance, the insurance agencies and the insurance companies, and how they communicate with the State Departments of Insurance. And that’s pretty much how she ended up where she is today, just have grown over time.
What is Rhoads Online?
Me: Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Rhoads Online? What is Rhoads Online? And what value do they bring to their customer base?
Joanna shared that just as she said that that insurtech that she went to 20 years ago, Rhoads is in that same space. So, what they do is help insurance companies and agencies predominantly connect those insurance producers, the people that are selling insurance, get them contracted, and make sure that they are appropriately licensed and credentialed to sell the insurance that they’re selling before they do. Because if an individual sells a policy and they are not properly credentialed, they don’t have all of the licenses contracts, and the insurance company hasn’t told the state that that person is selling for them, then the insurance company gets in trouble. So, making that all of those ducks are in a row and everything is in order, it keeps the insurance company off the front page of the Wall Street Journal and allows them to sell compliantly and make sure that the consumer is protected when they do it.
Being Proactive Than Reactive to Ensure You Maximize on Customer Success
Me: Now, a big part of what you do is customer success. And of course, that’s typically ensuring that the client is getting exactly what they want and desire. Not sure if this is a call that you made, or it’s just something that you live by as a mantra, but it states, “You can’t just be reactive, you have to be proactive, predicting their needs before they even realize it.” So, could you tell us maybe three things you’ve seen as recurring themes that come across being more proactive than reactive in the space that you operate in to ensure that you’re able to maximize on customer success?
Joanna shared that she thinks this is in any industry, it’s not specific to what she does. But customer service to her is something that is tactical and reactive. If you think about customer service, and customer service is something we all interact with, probably with a little bit of dread and we hope that it’s a good experience that we’re opening a Chatbot or we’re sending in an email or opening a ticket, or calling an 800 number. And we hope that for whatever reason we’re calling that number that whatever the issue is, is resolved. We want it to be resolved quickly and painlessly and to whatever satisfaction we hoped it would be.
And again, it’s very reactive, it is in response to whatever I as the consumer is bringing forward to that company, or as the customer, if it’s B2B or B2C, it doesn’t matter, customer service is about fixing that one little thing that the person calling in has announced needs fixing.
Where customers success to her is, is the opposite of that. It isn’t reactive, and it isn’t tactical. The important thing is that we’re being proactive, that we’re getting in front of the customer, and being intentional about having strategic conversations. Because as the company is moving forward, and as they’re growing, they want to make sure that that path forward and that growth is aligned with the path forward and the growth of their customers.
If their development team builds a brand new piece of functionality, and no one uses it, then that has been a waste of time of their development team number one, but also the opportunity costs that’s lost, because they didn’t build something that their customers would have really liked, what they would have used and what they would have needed. So, it is all about being proactive, and being strategic. And what she means by strategic is simply looking further ahead. It’s not what’s happening in the moment right now, it’s where are we going together and making sure that those things stay aligned as they continue to move forward.
Because what her goals are and what she’s trying to accomplish in six months, a year, three years, five years, those are going to keep changing as time moves forward. So, making sure that they keep having those conversations, leaving those lines of communication open, sharing what’s going on in the industry, and what’s going on in their customers’ business, as well as what’s going on in her business, that’s how they all move forward and stay aligned.
Organization Setting Themselves Apart and Giving Customers More Than They Expect
Me: Now, you’ve been an insurance for over two decades, Joanna, and I’m sure you’ve seen lots of ups and downs, hills and gullies kind of thing. But in your own experience, especially as we’re moving forward embarking on a new calendar year, what are maybe one or two things that you believe as an organization, especially in the insurance industry, specifically, you would need to be focusing on to ensure that you’re setting yourself apart and truly giving the customer more than they expect, and kind of living to what you were saying, trying to predict their needs before they know they even need it.
Joanna stated that she really thinks the big thing, especially in the insurance industry, is that the Googles and Amazons of the world have set an expectation for across all industries, that technology is easy to use that “I should be able to get the answers to my questions with the click of a button and with the phone that’s in my hand, I shouldn’t have to go to the horror, a real computer, I should be able to from a mobile device, be able to do anything that I should need to be able to do with any business partner of mine from my phone.” So, she really thinks that that expectation is where the insurance industry needs to focus.
There’s so much talk about AI and Blockchain and Chatbots and all of the magical technology that’s out there. But if we can’t meet the basic table stakes of being able to get a quote for insurance from her phone, then that insurance company will not be able to succeed. If she is standing on the side of the road and I live in Michigan in certain times of the year and they hit deer, it happens and if she’s on the side of the road because she’s just hit a deer or had any kind of an accident. If she can’t pull out her phone and initiate that claim from her phone, she’s not going to stay with that insurance company because they haven’t met her need when she needed them. So, being able to meet those basic needs from core technology is where the insurance industry needs to focus right now.
App, Website or Tool that Joanna Absolutely Can’t Live Without in Her Business
When asked about an online resource that she cannot live without in her business, Joanna shared that she has a couple. Because of what she does, the CRM that they use, that’s how she keeps her pulse on what’s going on in their business. So, they happen to use Salesforce. But she’s used HubSpot in the past, and there are other great CRMs out there. But the most important thing is having one central repository to be able to see everything that’s going on to the lifecycle of your customer. If you’re working in customer experience and you can’t see what’s going on with your customers, and you’re trying to use an Excel spreadsheet or some other form of technology, there’s just no way to get that 360 degree view.
But personally, within customer success, there is an amazing website called kapta.com. And kapta.com is a technology that integrates with your CRM, not what she’s endorsing here, she’s sure it’s great, but she’s not actually used that technology, but the number of resources that Kapta has on their website to help people that work in key account management, whatever form of that that is you work in, they have so many resources available to help account managers be successful with their customers, and to help organisations and leaders know how to help their account managers be successful. So, Kapta is amazing.
And then specifically in her industry, insurtech Connect, ITC has a six things newsletter that is just incredible. It keeps you informed of everything that could be going on in the insurance industry that has anything to do with technology. And it’s an interesting read for anyone.
Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Joanna
When asked about books that have had a great impact her, Joanna shared that there are two that she finds herself going back to over and over and over again. And the first one is Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, it helps from an organizational perspective, as well as on an individual perspective. Whether you’re working with customers, with employees, “Knowing the Why of why you do what you do.”
And a common theme in her world is, it’s not about you. It’s not about her, it’s not about what she’s doing. It’s about the customer, and it’s about the employee and why they do what they do. And if we can be other focus and know why people are motivated to do the things that they do. And to know what our Why is and why we get up each morning and why we’re helping our customers and why these things matter. She’s listened to Simon’s podcast, and it’s just brilliant. And that all started with Start with Why for her.
The second one is a book called Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, it’s by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei. And it’s all about empowerment, and when you’re working in account management or customer success or customer service, this is a tough job, it’s a tough job where the people in this space spend a lot of time getting yelled at oftentimes, and they’re trying to make the customer’s world a better place. And when you can come from a perspective of empowering those people to be successful, to have the ability to make the decisions that makes the customer’s world a better place, it’s better for the customer, it’s better for the company, and it’s better for the human that gets to make those decisions. If they sit there all day every day saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t know. But I’ll check on that and get back to you.” That’s a very difficult space to be in. So, being able to empower people is their greatest version of themselves, it’s really powerful and it’s really a game changer.
What Joanna is Really Excited About Now!
When asked about something she’s really excited about, Joanna shared that this year, she got the opportunity to spend some time really diving into the Enneagram. And if the listeners aren’t familiar with the Enneagram, it’s a personality assessment type of profile that looks at why people behave the way that they do. So, Enneagram have types, you do an assessment, it gives you a direction on what your type may be. And then you do some more homework and you confirm that that is your type.
And Beatrice Chestnut, wrote a book called The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge. And she’s really had the opportunity to pour into that and what she loves about it is it doesn’t matter what part of your life you’re looking at, whether it’s about your employees, your boss, your co-worker, any other co-workers, your spouse, your kids, family members, customers, it doesn’t matter, being able to get insight into what charges people up, what gets them to behave the way that they do.
And then when they’re doing well, why you might see some other characteristics where when they’re feeling stressed, or things are difficult, you can look for other traits that might come in. It has been incredibly insightful, and she feels like reading Beatrice’s book has been a college level course on this. But the amount of insight that it’s given into people.
And then the other thing that is maybe a little bit more approachable to people rather than reading a giant textbook is Ian Cron has a podcast called Typology that is just fascinating, where he talks to people with different Enneagram types, and about how they interact with the world. And it’s just fascinating and it’s been so much fun to learn this year.
Where Can We Find Joanna Online
LinkedIn – Joanna-Hagelberger
Website – www.rhoadsonline.com
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Joanna Uses
When asked about a quote or saying that she tends to revert to, Joanna shared that she does have, Maya Angelou, which she’s sure many of our guests have quoted, because she’s very quotable. This is how she hears it in her head is that, “People will forget what you said and did but people will never forget how you made them feel.” And she feels like when we’re dealing, this is all about customer experience. And if we can just remember that how we make our customers feel and how they experience us makes all the difference in the world.
Me: Amazing. Thank you so much, Joanna, for taking time out of your very busy schedule, and hopping on this podcast with us today and sharing all of the great insights that you’ve learned and just best practices that you’ve taken on as an individual as a customer service practitioner in your own right, especially in your industry. And just looking at some opportunities that we can strengthen, building out our customer success teams and actually giving customers as you had stated earlier, giving them what they need before they even know that they need it and I thought that was really brilliant. So, thank you so much again.
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Links
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
• The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge by Beatrice Chestnut
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