If P&C Insurance is the Nordics' leading insurance company, providing car, dog, life, accident, and home and contents insurance to over 3.7 million customers across Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the Baltics. A subsidiary of the Sampo Group, If boasts a processing time of fewer than 24 hours for 60% of the 1.4 million claims they receive yearly.
Ifâs 7,900-strong employee base has been recognized for prioritizing the satisfaction of its customers and providing the greatest insurance expertise, with 90% of customers giving the insurance giant top marks for their claim handling.
Bobby Corvalan, Head of SME Sales at If Erhvervsforsikringâs Copenhagen office, had a problem: he couldnât accurately track his teamâs insurance sales data for the current month. This was leading to inconsistencies in record keeping.
For example, if Bobby made a sale at the beginning of November, but the sale went into effect December 1, the sale would incorrectly appear in Novemberâs budget. Bobby would then be billed for the sale in November, despite the sale only taking effect in December.
âThatâs why we needed Plecto to highlight the sales we have made now, in this month,â he says.
A motivational boost
Besides this inconvenience with managerial bookkeeping, there was another issue: the sales team needed a performance boost.
Bobby realized this had to occur by creating extra responsibility, and therefore extra motivation, for the team to perform at a high level. For example, rather than passing customer calls along to the business center, the sales team could assist them directly.
âThe business center also has a budgetâthat is, some KPIs they need to live up to,â Bobby says. âSo we needed to find a way to motivate the sales team, so theyâre just not making a kind of service call that goes something along the lines of, âIs there anything else I can help you with?â âNo,â and then take a new call. We needed to ask about the customerâs behavior a little more.â
Ultimately, Bobby says the issue his office faced was culturalâgetting employees to understand their individual efforts contribute to the good of the team overall.
âThe ones who are always not performing well are the ones who say, âOh, Iâm not comfortable about showing my numbers.â And then that leads to the talk: âWhy do you not want that? Weâre a team, we need to focus on team goals, not only individual goals. But if everyone just puts in their little chunk, then we reach our goals.â
âWe had a lot of talks about this, but itâs a question of culture we needed to change.â
"The business center also has a budgetâthat is, some KPIs they need to live up to. So we needed to find a way to motivate the sales team, so theyâre just not making a kind of service call that goes something along the lines of, âIs there anything else I can help you with?â âNo,â and then take a new call. We needed to ask about the customerâs behavior a little more."
Bobby Corvalan
Head of SME Sales, If Erhvervsforsikring
The Solution: Bring on the games
Bobby understood the best way to introduce Plecto to the team and change its culture would be via one of Plectoâs main featuresâgamification. With this in mind, Bobby began hosting challenges for employees.
The first was held over the summer of 2023 and involved five teams drawn from different departments, working together to achieve a set goal of a certain number of points. The sales agent would earn five points if it made a sale to a new customer, for example, or if additional information was gathered on the customer when selling an insurance offer.
âThe teams could work together in a fun way and follow the bar that was just going up more and more, and they reached the goal,â Bobby says.
And just what was the goal?
âIt was eight million points, or something like that,â Bobby remarks nonchalantly.
âBut they reached that, so they had free ice cream for the whole summer!â he adds with a laugh.
This was only the beginning. Bobby held a second point-based competition for his team, this time with a focus on liability insurance. This competition was centered on three areas: selling insurance, sending an offer, and receiving feedback. In this case, feedback consisted of gathering information that would assist Ifâs business center teams upgrade in the future, or setting the customer up with an electronic payment.
Sure enough, sales of liability packages increased during this period.
The success of these competitions has provided further inspiration to Bobby, prompting him to reimagine the nature of work in his office.
âWe thought, OK, we need to make more small competitions for a long period. We will have them two or three times per quarter, just to make something different in employeesâ daily work.
âOf course, theyâre responsible for engaging with the customer, but itâs our responsibility as a leader to make it fun for them.â
Targeted help for employees
Beyond increasing sales for the whole team, adopting Plecto helped solve the employee motivation problem, as sales targets could now be individually tailored. Advisors who likely require extra motivation, such as new employees, can be specifically targeted by leadership for skill development.
âWe also try to develop new agents, because maybe we shouldn't set the same KPIs for them,â Bobby says. âWe can set them up individually with other advisors and say, âOK, you have only been here one year; you should not be set up with the guy who has been here 20 years. So you will start here, and these are your criteria.ââ
Additionally, using Plecto has allowed Bobby to solve the problem of real-time sales data. âFrom a leader's perspective, itâs also an easy way for us to see the performance, right here right now,â he says.
Where previously a controller would create countless reports that the sales team would have to go in and look at, with Plecto, the whole team is more focused on their performance because of the improved accessibility. âWe can just put the numbers up on the dashboard screen and everyone can see them, right here, right now,â Bobby says.
"We also try to develop new agents, because maybe we shouldn't set the same KPIs for them. We can set them up individually with other advisors and say, âOK, you have only been here one year; you should not be set up with the guy who has been here 20 years. So you will start here, and these are your criteria.â"
Bobby Corvalan
The Results: Sales through the roof
The adoption of Plecto on Bobbyâs team has led to some remarkable results.
âWe closed the year with about 50% more sales,â Bobby says.
Of course, heâs quick to add this impressive stat isnât solely due to adopting Plecto. Achieving an exciting metric like this, however, makes sense when one considers how much the sales culture at the office has changed.
âWe can see advisors have another mindset about sales today,â Bobby says. âOne year ago, they always said, âYeah, we talk a lot about sales but weâre not sales advisors. We are insurance advisors. We will only advise the customer.â (But) looking back over one year, weâve made huge steps about the sales culture here.â
The result? Long-term benefits to both the customer and the insurance giant. While improving the experience for customers who were receiving more relevant product recommendations and assistance, Bobby was able to improve alignment between the sales and business center support teamsâso much so that the floodgates for upgrading customers were well and truly unleashed, and the service teamâs performance has reflected such.
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Using Plecto has changed the way Bobbyâs office approaches personal success. Previously, Bobby says, the team would recognize those advisors winning a high number of small sales, while ignoring those who made fewer but larger sales.
With Plecto, however, things are different. âWe can find the employees that are behind the scenes in numbers because maybe theyâre obtaining bigger customers,â Bobby says.
"We shouldn't just use Plecto to highlight all the big sales, but people need to highlight team performance and how they can take some of the lower advisors in that journey and get them up. So I would say the focus is not on getting the top 10 percent up, but getting some of the other employees to perform 10 to 15 percent better."
âWe need to see who we need to congratulate for working well, because you can be a good advisor if youâre helping 100 customers. But other advisors are doing just as great in a small way.â
In the end, how does Bobby describe Plecto?
"Itâs easy to use. Itâs easy for employees to set their numbers in, and easy for the leaders to actually customize their dashboard just the way they want to have it."
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