LAST month I described how, following our acquisition of another agency, we found that a few of the acquired clients continued to make multiple walk-in premium payments at our office for their direct-bill policies. We were prepared to lose their business to eliminate walk-in payments, but we didn't want our move to be misunderstood as something we were doing to make our lives easier. In fact, we wanted to expand our services to include annual policy reviews and a customer newsletter, but processing walk-in payments took away from our ability to do so.

The first thing we did was demonstrate to our newly acquired clients that we wanted to give them greater value. We took out an ad in the local newspaper announcing our new services, which included a new agency Web site, policy reviews and newsletter. We also posted this information at our office and stressed that these services were coming at no additional cost. We encouraged all our clients to give us feedback on our first newsletter and tell us what topics they would like to see covered in future issues. We were pleasantly surprised with the number of suggestions we received. We also posted a mailbox outside our office for after-hours pickup and delivery of documents, but made no mention of using the mailbox for payments.

After publishing our second news-letter, we began offering annual policy reviews and encouraged our clients to schedule appointments. When clients came in for their reviews, we stressed our appreciation for their business and the importance of reviewing their coverage annually.