How ChatGPT is Helping Agencies Handle Communication - ITB InsuRant with Rick Fox

"What A.I. Can Do For Your Agency!"

Speaking to your customers is important, but it takes a lot of your time each day. So what can be done to free up your schedule, but also improve your communication efforts?
 
In today's Insurance The Brightway (ITB) “InsuRant,” Rick Fox gives you an inside look at ChatGPT and how it will help you up your game in everything from social media to marketing automation.

Subscribe and listen to the ITB podcast at www.brightwaydifference.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts today!

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Transcript

Rick:
Welcome back to another edition of the ITB Insurance the Brightway podcast. I'm the host, Rick Fox, and it is rant time, insure rant episode. I don't even know what episode number here. It feels like a bunch. Um, more and more people listening in. We appreciate it. Uh, two weeks ago, we ran it on kind of some impactful things that were going on and currently affecting the industry. And I teased one of those as chat.

GPT. So today we're going to talk a little bit about that. I know everybody out there knows what it is, has heard about it, has probably stopped their kids from using it to write their term papers or something like that, but it's real. It's not going anywhere. And I want to help you, for those of you that are out there that have tried it, awesome. Maybe I can help you, guide you in a few ways. For those of you that know it's there but haven't even thought about it,

This might be a good entry point. So let me give you like, I'm going to give you three ways to sort of kickstart how you look at chat GBT or how you might be able to start to incorporate it in what you do. Okay. So part of this, to start all of this, let's talk about what it takes to be a successful agency in 2023 and beyond.

And the words, so I asked myself that question when I was sort of jotting down notes for this. And a couple words came to mind right out of the bat. For me, number one is consistency. Number one, number two, number three, they're all consistency, to be consistent. But you need discipline. You obviously have to have knowledge of your industry. And then the other one that sometimes gets lost is constant communication. We're busy.

We don't talk to our customers enough. When I say that to an agent, an agent says, I don't have time to talk to my customers. That's all true. Everything I just said is true. But are there ways to use things like ChatGPT to be more in the public eye with your brand, with your message, with your content in a way that didn't really take you as much work, energy or time as you thought. I remember, let's say five years ago, maybe more when blogs became a big thing. It's more than five years. And people are like, I can't keep up with blogging every week. I now know people and they'll remain nameless, not in my organization, but outside my organization. They're literally using chat GBT to write blogs every week.

And you could do that. That's not in my list of three, kind of is, but it's attached to one. But when you think about all of the ways that we need to be out in market, communicating not only with emails to our customers, text capabilities, but now you're talking about social platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, our websites. I mentioned blogs. Are we doing press releases? Do you have paid ads going out to generate leads using chat GPT can help set the table for a few of those things. So I'm going to give you three things that immediately would help you. If you're willing to go back to the beginning, what does it take? Be consistent, be timely and constantly in communication with your customers and use chat GPT. So number one.

Number one, and I think this is the easiest of all and the most impactful, and what you kind of have to do in today's world, number one is social media posts. So think about this in terms of...

Are you active on social? I'll give you an example. This is a bright way example that we're working on. So we podcast and shout out to Don Foley, my producer who does an amazing job, not only with the podcasts, but the posts that he does that I get some feedback on. Wow, the way you guys set up your posts that tease it two days before and launch it on the day of and all, it's awesome. So shout out to Don on that. And even that.

It's a lot of work. But I'm like, well, why aren't we on Facebook? Why aren't we putting the podcast? It's because we're not as an organization. I'm kind of working on it and we're heading there, but we're not posting enough consistent content. Whereas, if we podcast, because we podcast every week, if we put that on our page, that's what would show up. Hey, there's a podcast. Hey, there's a podcast with not enough things. So you have to get consistent and constant with your thing. You have to be able to build, do you have a social schedule? Do you post timely content? Are you doing those things now? The answer is for most of you, probably not. And if you say yes, you say yes, but we could be better. That's what I say, yes, but we could be better.

So if you can add the agency's voice, and instead of like having to write the things or personalize the caption, or you might get like doing things that aren't as personal or has spent as much energy on, they don't get the kind of engagement you want, and they become almost a negative social experience for your customers, prospects, carriers, investors, whatever it is. So now, bring chat GPT into the conversation. Agents can literally prompt chat GPT to summarize something for them. Let's take an article, for example. It'll even add emojis or hashtags. It'll ask questions back to keep people engaged and make that content much more engaging for them to listen to.


And the main thing here to think about is you can't just say, okay, do it and post it. But if you're not doing those kinds of things now, use ChatGPT for your first draft. Try it. Trust me, this is a game changer for you. Anybody out there that doesn't think of social platforms and having a social presence that has a positive vibe to your brand aren't important you're thinking about it wrong. They're important. And if you don't have the time, which is what most people say, or the understanding of how to be putting out content that is impactful, chat GBT can literally cheat code for you into articles, blogs, headlines, things like that. And then you take it, and instead of spending an hour to write a blog, you spend five minutes and change a few words and make it sound more like you or take out a line or add an emoji or whatever you would do. And you're off and running. Now here's the, here's the catch.

Again, mention it one more time. The first, it's a first draft. Here's the catch. Don't go do this. Like, so I hope you're writing down notes and you're going to go figure out how to get, if you haven't gotten there, how to look at chat GBT, how do you engage with chat GBT. I want you to make yourself a deal that you will be consistent for a certain amount of time, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, because you can't go do this once. Help it, have it help you like.

Um, summarize an article that you could put into a smaller social post or, or write a blog or whatever you might have it help you do once and then not do it anymore. So make sure you're ready. I hope you are. Please, please be ready. This is the future. This is the now. Social presence, social media isn't going anywhere. Ask your kids. Your kids are the next generation.

I, they talk to, they talk to their friends. We moved to Florida. They're still close with their friends in California because of social. That's the way they, that's the way they communicate. So make yourself a promise or your agency a promise or your personal brand. If you're a producer, man, take advantage of this. Go be a presence and use ChatGBT again. Don't just do it and think it's perfect. You do still have to put a little work into this.

But if you get the first version and you can then look at it and say, bam, change this, and I'm ready to post. And you have a cadence that you're on. Maybe it's once a week, maybe it's twice a week. You're doing small things. You're doing big things. You're putting those on your website now, which makes your website more intriguing when people come see you. That has a huge impact on things you do.

Next point. All right. That was one social media, social media posts. Huge. If I was done right now, it's a win for you at chat.GBT. If my list is list of one, you just got what you needed and you're winning. All right. Second thing though, we're going to do three is marketing automation. So think about this in terms of, are you using marketing automation right now? There's a lot of great companies out there.

Those of you that know me very well know I used to work with and for one of them, Agency Revolution, but there are marketing automation platforms where you can buy the system, you can implement the system, and then there'll be templates of things that are already written for you to start automating your marketing and automating that constant communication that's necessary for your clients in today's world. But if you want to try to use the thing you have and you don't like the templates and you want to write, you don't need to. Same exact concept. You want to write a template campaign for a marketing automation, let's say it's a cross-sell or whatever it is, you get to use ChatGBT to write the templates for you. Again, first version, you're always going to want to look at it.

But putting yourself in a position where you can use it to write templates, first versions of templates in your marketing automation. By the way, this is a plug for any of you that aren't automating your, your communications do it today. So important constant communication. You can't do that manually. You have to do it with automation. And now you add chat GPT into that in a way that you could help you write some of those things, you might not feel comfortable writing. Again, I always tell my teams, don't bring an idea and let's create it together. Bring a solution written out and let me edit it. And that's what ChatGBT can do for you. Can write that cadence, they can write that welcome kit email, they can write a cross cell, you just give it the parameters and let it go. And then you take that as the rough draft and you spend a little bit of time, stay consistent, boom. That's money in the bank right there. And here's the other piece, and this isn't on number two, this is on the whole thing. Somebody's listening to this, that's your competitor, and they're going to do it. So this isn't a, this would be cool to do in the future thing. Excuse me.

This is today, automating your communications, constant communication, social presence, all of that stuff. Powerful content is now. The others, the wolves are at the gate, or whatever that saying is, that people are doing this now. If you are not, you need to be in the game.

And then finally, this one gets a little more tactical, actually, around your pipeline and pipeline control. So think about generating leads right now. How do you do it? And most agencies are doing it different ways and managing that, the lead gen and what's coming through and why it's coming through, is somebody's doing that for most of their day. That's what they do.

And then there's like, there's some, so think about it in terms of how would I use chat GPT? So here's how you could prompt it. Put the agency brand voice in, meaning like, this is how we talk, this is how we think, that's my prompt. What sales stage that person might be in.

And what is the, like say the, you know, is it a homeowner's campaign? Is it, am I looking to draw auto leads or whatever is that? And again, this makes sense in the bigger picture of just how we go about managing our pipelines. So then you could put chat GBT in there to support writing the stuff that you're doing, the journey of moving.

Is it an email? Is it a text? Whatever's coming next after we're in a pipeline, how do we move into the next phase in the pipeline?

Now, obviously you got to still be involved in this and you don't have the ability to like take, like put it on and think that chat GBT does everything. And this was really more supposed to be more thought provoking than anything else that you've heard the words. You've heard people say chat GBT. You've heard somebody that used it to do something or that, um, you know, some, some famous person wrote an apology with chat GBT. I heard that about John Morant.

Um, things like that, but in business, it is becoming a tool that you have to be, you have to put on your radar and more than on your radar is you have to start using because others are they're deploying it now and it's real and it helps and if you are willing to commit to the consistency of whatever it is that you are, so let's take a step back and look at you as a, as an, as an agency, as a firm, as an individual building brand, if you feel like you've got a pretty good idea of who you are, who you want to market to, and what that means then why not cheat code this thing a little on some of the writing? Cheat code it on some of the management of how things move from place to place.

Chat GPT is scary in some ways. I mean, for two ways. One is I don't know how to do it, so it frightens me. The other is people are saying AI is gonna take over the world. Well, today it is here. It is real. And agents or people in every industry are using it. I guarantee you that you received a solicitation email from someone today about whatever, phone systems, you know, cleaners, some email you got today that was a solicitation came, not as a first draft, but they use chat GBT to build that out. Guarantee it. I guarantee it. Are you thinking in those terms? Again, the whole point of these rants is to just to give you a perspective. It's just one guy's perspective on things. But you all know, I've have spent many years in this industry. I have talked to more agencies than I could ever count doing some great things. And this is one of those things that's here. It's not going anywhere. And we're on the verge of it being a must-have table stakes type situation. So get out in front of it. But more than anything, even ChatGPT, what I'm telling you here is make sure you understand your brand, who you are and then get it out in the market. I'll finish with the point that I've made way too many times that some of you are still needing to hear, which is this is still a referral business, but that referral is completely different than it was five years ago. It used to be that I told Don about an agent, Don called that agent and bought insurance if the price was good and they got along. Today, I tell Don about an agent and Don goes online looks for reviews, looks for what kind of content they have. Do they look like they're adding value? Is the website, you know, not 30 years old? Is it intuitive? Can I get around the, like, the referral is like step one, and then your digital footprint becomes step two. Is your digital footprint strong enough to withstand that kind of pressure without things like valuable, impactful, real content. And if your answer is no, and most of us it is, I'm raising my hand, we have a ways to go in our journey.

But if it is not up to where you want it to be, ChatGBT can really cheat code you into the game. And I think that's the way you should be looking at it. It shouldn't take over your marketing. It shouldn't be the end all be all. But if you build a consistent model for a certain amount of time, my hope and I hope your hope is that at the end of that time, it will have changed the way you look at the way you communicate the consistency that you'll have around posts, content, blogs, your website, all of those things. Chad GBT's here, it's not going anywhere, and neither am I. So we'll see you next time as we keep doing these things. Thanks again to everybody who tunes in. Do me a solid. Go subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. ITB, Apple, Spotify, everywhere you get them. Give us a review if you like what you're hearing and make sure we're connected on LinkedIn.

Love the direct messages, love the positive feedback, love all of those that have joined the community of this podcast that we put so much time and energy in to make sure that we're trying to put out good, what? Good content. Thanks again, everybody. Hopefully that helped a little bit, at least gave you a perspective. Maybe it's something you wanna act on. I hope it is. Good luck out there and we'll see you next time.