Don’t leave customers hanging (even if you can’t serve them)

As we have previously discussed, forward thinking brokers are implementing unconventional and seemingly counter intuitive ideas, such as referring their current and prospective customers to other brokers and service providers.Brokers do this when they cannot immediately meet a customer or prospect’s needs, but still desire to take care of the person. In order to meet people’s needs, sometimes we have to look outside our own organizations and direct them elsewhere.This is a bold statement. Critics will surely say that we are throwing money away. Plus, talk is cheap: sure, we can say we will refer prospects and customers elsewhere in the name of the greater good of meeting their needs, but do we practice what we preach?In fact, yes! Last week, we did exactly that. Here’s how it went down.Shiraz, who is one of our customers, contacted us for assistance when his son, a filmmaker in British Columbia, urgently needed insurance. He’s on a tight schedule and the city of Kamloops requires him to have liability coverage in order to proceed with filming.As it turned out, he was denied coverage because of B.C.’s wildfires, and the insurer notified him at the last moment. That meant he had only two days to get coverage, otherwise his schedule would be disrupted, and his project greatly hampered.Although we are not yet licensed in British Columbia, we were not about to leave Shiraz’s son hanging without meeting his needs.We therefore reached out to our contacts among the insurance companies and one of them directed us to a broker in B.C. who would be able to meet the filmmaker’s needs.We connected them and the broker arranged the appropriate coverage for Shiraz’s son before his deadline. Everything clicked in place and he proceeded to film on schedule without missing a beat. Today, his film is complete and set to appear at TIFF next year.Needless to say, we will watch that film and remain connected with Shiraz for more opportunities to create value for his family, which directly benefits him by eliminating their stress.