Wading through the minefields of insurance can be a daunting task for most of us. Faced with a barrage of insurance telemarketers, email-blasts and advertisements, it’s often hard to know which way to turn. One local firm is mixing up the way they approach the business in an effort to make choices and options more customer-centric.
As the self-described “grandpa” of Manning Insurance, CEO Richard Manning agrees that insurance can be complicated, but it doesn’t need to be.
“Our business model is to walk people through both the personal side and the business side of insurance, making sure that they have all the options and that they are the decision makers,” Manning said.
Manning’s company empowers the customer through its emphasis on person-to-person communication. They go out of their way, literally, to make sure that you feel at home with their insurance.
“We can come to your home, home office, or a Starbucks and have a cup of coffee and talk,” Manning explained.
Manning Insurance goes above and beyond to make sure that their customers don’t feel like numbers or statistics, but are spoken to and treated like people – something that is very refreshing and in need of in the current business climate.
“I try not to make it an official read-down-a-checklist kind of thing,” he said. “It’s more “conversation.” And it should be more of a conversation than it should be a following of a checklist and we want to make sure that [the customers] fully understand it. So if I’m mentioning some acronym, of which there are millions of, I want to make sure that they understand it. I want to make sure you know the difference between a co-pay and co-insurance, or a Medicare supplement and a Medicare advantage, or I don’t want to leave without you understanding that.”
It is that personal and holistic approach to insurance that really separates them from other insurance companies and is part of a better way to understand and purchase insurance.
“I started almost 30 years ago, and I’ve always gone out and seen what [businesses] have,” Manning said. “You notice things like ‘you’re vastly over insured on your business property’ – stuff like that which the customer may not even think about. When you go to a company and talk, you can get an idea of what they are expecting or what they want from their insurance company or should they consider self insurance”
Manning describes the whole process as “like making a friend” and Manning Insurance has been doing just that, making friendships that have lasted generations, “serving kids and grandkids of [their] original clients.”
For more information, call 800.427.4001 or visit www.manningins.com.
