When George Patterson’s sister told him she needed to get her car towed long distance, he wondered if renting a U-Haul might be more cost effective than a towing service—but the site needed the year, make, and model of the car in order to provide a quote. He didn’t know all that information off the top of his head and he wasn’t in his office to pull it up in her policy in HawkSoft, but he realized he had another option. He pulled out his phone, logged into HawkSoft Agent Portal, and found the information he needed in seconds.
This is just one example of the power of HawkSoft 5’s most anticipated new feature. Agent Portal, a browser-based view into your HawkSoft client and policy data on any device (even those without HawkSoft installed) is being rolled out to customers over the following weeks. This new core feature is included with your HawkSoft subscription at no additional cost.
Not sure what Agent Portal can do for your agency? Hear more from HawkSoft User Group member George Patterson of Williamson Insurance Service in Ohio on how this tool helps him provide great service to his clients even when he’s outside the office.
This article at a glance:
- Your office, in your pocket
- A mobile-friendly experience
- Client & policy details at your fingertips
- Commercial lines potential
- The independent agent advantage
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How do I set up Agent Portal? Once you’ve updated to HawkSoft 5, you can set up Agent Portal in seconds by activating it in HawkSoft Marketplace, setting your user permissions to control who can access Agent Portal, and logging into the portal with your Agency ID and HawkSoft password. See our Help article on Agent Portal Setup for more details. |
Your office, in your pocket
One of George’s favorite things about Agent Portal is that it’s accessible anywhere, not just on his office workstation where HawkSoft is installed. “When I’m out with family and friends,” he says, “inevitably, because of my profession, they’ll ask me questions about the policies they have with me. Before Agent Portal, I was always in a pickle because I wouldn’t have their policy number with me, and not all carriers will let you look up a policy by name, or even if they do it can be tough if they have a very common name.” Without access to HawkSoft, the best he could do was tell them to call him the next day once he was back in the office.
Agent Portal changes all that. “Now, I can go into Agent Portal and pull up my nephew’s policy and renewal date and answer his question intelligently instead of telling him to wait until I get into the office Monday morning,” he says. “I don’t need to be near my computer or my tablet, which I often don’t have with me when these things come up. I can just pull it up on my phone. That’s been pretty great, and I’ve had that happen probably half a dozen times already.”
“I can go into Agent Portal and pull up my nephew’s policy and renewal date and answer his question intelligently instead of telling him to wait until I get into the office Monday morning.”
A mobile-friendly experience
George especially appreciates that Agent Portal is designed to be easy to view and use on mobile devices, with tabs for different information like Contact Info, Policies, Lines of Business, Coverages, and more. He primarily accesses Agent Portal from his phone. “It’s extremely convenient,” he says. “It displays very well on my phone, and it’s easy to use. There’s nothing that’s counterintuitive. I’m glad HawkSoft’s development team created Agent Portal with mobile in mind, because the technology landscape is constantly changing, and before too long we’re all going to be out there doing business on mobile devices.”
Client and policy details at your fingertips
Agent portal makes it easy to view important client and policy details and drill deep into coverages. Here’s some of the information you can find in Agent Portal:
- Client contact info - tap to launch a call, email, or address
- Personal profiles - see details like date of birth
- GPI - find policy number, carrier, premium, policy dates, etc.
- Coverage details for Auto, Home and Boat - view coverages, drivers, vehicles, fees, etc.
- Commercial policy details - see Hazards, Scheduled/Unscheduled items, etc.
George often uses Agent Portal to look up policy information. “I would say coverages, effective dates, and policy numbers are the most frequent things I look up in Agent Portal,” he says. “People can ask me and I can reach into my pocket and say ‘this is your deductible,’ or ‘I can tell you what that effective date is.’ It’s really terrific to be able to do that.”
He’s also used Agent Portal to reference contact info for clients, citing a recent example where he was sending a sympathy card to a client and checked Agent Portal to get their mailing address.
Commercial lines potential
So far, George has mainly been using Agent Portal for Home and Auto policies, but he’s excited to expand it to the commercial side of his business as well. “Once I roll this out to my commercial producers,” he says, “I think it’s going to be a big deal. They meet so many people on the job site, or at their office, where policy information is not readily available to them. Agent Portal will help them provide the information their clients need in those situations.”
“My commercial producers...meet so many people on the job site, or at their office, where policy information is not readily available to them. Agent Portal will help them provide the information their clients need."
The independent agent advantage
When asked what he thinks the greatest benefit of Agent Portal is to agencies, his answer is, “I would say it’s the ability to be informed while you’re away from the office setting. While you may not be able to answer every question they have, you can pull up relevant information and speak intelligently about the policy.”
“It [Agent Portal] lets us maintain the relationship aspect that is so important to the independent agent channel, and yet still have all the technological tools that competitors like direct writers may offer.”
To George, it’s all about building trust with the client. “It gives independent agents the power to show that we are connected and we are relevant. It lets us maintain the relationship aspect that is so important to the independent agent channel, and yet still have all the technological tools that competitors like direct writers may offer. I think that will give us such a tremendous edge with our clients.”
Want to know more about HawkSoft Agent Portal?
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