The challenges of Covid - Timebox

Since lockdown started and we were all asked to work from home or remotely, the challenges of ensuring the wellbeing of staff and their efficiency in working from home has been one that a lot of brokers have faced. We asked Simon Davies, Director at Timebox, to give us his thoughts on the importance of timekeeping when it comes to retaining clients and gaining new ones during this hardening market within these unprecedented times.

The importance of keeping clients and gaining new ones

With most brokers at the moment looking to ensure they retain the clients that they have, having a tool that can help maximise the margin received from their clients whether by way of commissions, fees or a mixture of the two is proving to be helpful.

The ability to carry out these “open-eye” pitches for new business is also ensuring that time and more importantly money, is not being lost, on no-hope prospects, or those where there’s a lot of time to be spent and little chance of winning the new client.

The solution solves lots of problems for brokers, when it comes to ensuring that they are maximising the margin that they make from their clients, the products or services that they sell, through to making sure that their staff - who are again, having to work remotely in a lot of cases, are not spending too much time at their respective “desks” and maintaining a good work / life balance.

Timebox gives brokers a much clearer understanding as to the activities all employees are carrying out now. They can easily confirm that their standardised efficient methods of working within their usual office environments, can be and have been, transferred to working remotely and in most cases from home when using Timebox.

The importance of timekeeping

Being able to also look at how staff transact with clients whilst not being in the office has also highlighted that, in some cases, to provide that great service – which we all want to do – members of staff are over-servicing their clients and carrying out tasks that are really not covered by the commissions earned or fees charged. Having the facility to be able to make that informed decision about how brokers want to work with their clients moving forwards whilst in lockdown and when more localised lockdowns return, is another hurdle that can be overcome and help get them “back to business”.

Another issue that seems to be arising, is the additional time it now takes to place business, which in turn is increasing internal costs, whilst the income earnt remains as it was pre-Covid. Having the data available to highlight this and the tool to help change how brokers approach business placement in the most cost effective manner moving forwards will also assist in ensuring that brokers not only survive the pandemic, but come out the other side stronger than ever.

What’s the solution?

Timebox is an award-winning time recording tool, that will enable brokers to track the time taken by their staff in transacting with their clients, selling the services that they offer or products that they sell, and in carrying out any internal and compliance tasks.

Alongside this, Andrew Gibbons from Mason Owen, who’s been using Timebox within their business since December 2014 told us:

“There have been no substantial changes to working practices during the on-going Covid-19 situation, other than the fact that our business is working remotely from our offices. However, Timebox has helped to tell us what we already thought about our business, that our colleagues are hugely productive and the business is benefiting from being in a position to analyse and manage change where necessary with the aid of reliable data”.

Having time and effort logged, is also giving staff the ability to easily show their clients the work that they continue to do for them and in increasingly difficult circumstances.

Again, Andrew also told us, “the analysis/reporting that can be produced from Timebox, also assists quoting for new and existing clients, specifically allowing us to compare similar businesses in terms of time spent and our relative costs;  to enable us to estimate more accurately the pricing of our own services”.

Timebox is offered to Club 110 and Key Partner brokers with a unique Aviva offer and links in perfectly with our “Back to Business” campaign.

View the sales sheet here to find out more information about adopting the Timebox proposition as part of your Club 110 membership.