How Insurance Agencies Can Benefit from AI

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In today’s fast-paced insurance industry, staying ahead of the competition requires embracing technological advancements. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a game-changing innovation that has the opportunity to transform insurance agency operations – no matter the size. AI isn’t new per se – it has been around for decades, just in different forms, and with the latest debut of generative AI, there is a new surge of creative thinking in how AI can solve the simplest of daily pain points. Let’s explore the potential of AI in the insurance industry and show how agencies like yours can leverage its benefits to enhance efficiency, customer service, risk assessment, and profitability.

Optimizing Routine Tasks

AI’s ability to optimize routine tasks is one of its most significant advantages for insurance agencies. AI can take automation a step further, help skip standard workflow steps, and provide recommended next-best actions to reduce manual efforts and free up time for agents to focus on more profitable activities. Imagine AI-powered algorithms that process vast amounts of data, enabling lightning-fast claims processing and policy issuance. Not only does this improve efficiency, but it also empowers agencies to handle a higher volume of transactions.

Crafting Content Just Right for Your Audience

We all know that content is king, but having relevant content and messages that meet the needs of all your prospects and customers can be hard to scale. AI can supercharge your sales and marketing by assisting with content generation. Whether short-form content, email messages, or newsletters, AI can give you that jump start to get the messages moving, so you spend less time out the gates and instead focus on the close. AI can also help you automate campaign management, automatically moving individuals through different email campaigns based on pre-defined triggers and events.

Personalized Customer Support with AI Chatbots

Being online 24/7 can be challenging for a growing business. With AI-powered chatbots, you can revolutionize customer support in your insurance agency. These intelligent virtual assistants engage with customers in real time, providing immediate responses and personalized recommendations. This support assistance ensures your customers are never left unanswered, whether they need information about their policy or updates on a claim. By implementing AI chatbots, your agency can deliver a delightful customer support experience while reducing the need for additional human resources.

Enhancing Risk Assessment and Decision-Making

AI algorithms are invaluable for insurance risk assessment, fraud detection, and underwriting processes. By analyzing massive amounts of data and identifying patterns, AI models provide accurate predictions and uncover potential risks. Picture AI algorithms that analyze social media activity to detect fraudulent claims or determine an individual’s eligibility for specific policies. With AI’s analytical capabilities, your agency can streamline decision-making processes, minimize risks, and improve accuracy.

Making AI Practically Valuable for You

Gone are the days when AI was only accessible to large insurance companies with deep pockets. Today, technology partners like EZLynx are focused on bringing AI’s best benefits to your desktop. We have many proofs of concepts underway, focused on how we can make our products more valuable for you and how we can leverage generative AI tools to speed up and improve the quality of our product development lifecycle. Our mission has always been to bring you value from technology advancements in practical ways that make you a better agency. We promise to be your partner in making AI advancements valuable for you and do that smartly, safely, and responsibly.

In an industry where efficiency, customer experience, and profitability are paramount, insurance agencies cannot afford to overlook the potential of AI. By embracing AI, your agency can optimize routine tasks, provide personalized customer support, enhance risk assessment and decision-making processes, and ultimately improve the bottom line. The time to integrate AI into your insurance agency operations is now, with numerous accessible and affordable AI tools at your disposal.

Posted in Insurance Industry |

How to Win the Game of Digital Marketing

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Grow Your Insurance Agency with Digital Marketing

“Winning” in today’s always-online culture means insurance agents need to leverage every facet of digital marketing to reach their agency’s full growth potential. Expanding your marketing campaigns to digital channels can be a real game-changer in the insurance industry. And you don’t have to hire a digital marketing agency to execute your strategy. There are many things you can do on your own.

To tap into the power of online marketing, though, you’ll need to understand what it is. Digital marketing is any aspect of your agency’s marketing efforts that takes place online. The goal of digital marketing is driving traffic to your website to generate new sales leads, increase sales with current customers, and build brand awareness and loyalty.

How can you do this effectively? By knowing where to focus your digital marketing game plan. Some online channels you should pay special attention to are:

  • Website

    Having a modern, user-friendly website is central to your digital marketing strategy. A simple-to-use website with fresh content optimized for different browsers and mobile devices helps build trust in your services to attract new clients and keep current customers coming back.

  • Content Marketing

    Having an appealing and user-friendly website is a great start. But you’ll still need to build on it. Content marketing delivers information (content) to a targeted audience that is helpful, useful, or even entertaining. It’s a great way to strengthen relationships with prospects and clients. Content marketing isn’t about selling but a way to build loyalty and bring prospects closer to a purchase.

  • Customer Reviews

    Most customers start by checking your online reviews, which can have an outsize impact on whether a prospect goes with your agency or another. Reviews can even affect your search results ranking, so It’s critical to have a way to generate five-star ratings from satisfied clients.

  • Email Marketing

    Email helps you bring in new customers and maintain relationships with current clients to keep them using your services. To take full advantage of email marketing, you’ll need software that lets you save time and stay organized with automation and pre-loaded email templates your agency can use out of the box.

  • Digital Advertising & Search Engine Optimization

    Digital advertising, also know as pay-per-click or PPC, via paid ads on Google and social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook lets you use demographic, location, and profile information to market to the audience most likely to be interested in your agency. This pinpointed advertising method can give you an excellent return for every dollar you spend on your marketing plan.

    Another excellent way to up your insurance marketing game is to optimize your website for search engines so that potential clients can easily find your brand. This is referred to as search engine optimization or SEO. Putting content on your website that includes keywords and terms that people search for on sites like Google and Bing is one of the first steps. Just be sure you don’t overuse SEO keyword terms since that can result in a poor showing in the search engine results. Additionally, you can optimize your website metadata page titles and descriptions. There are search engine optimization tools and applications you can use to help you optimize your website.

  • Social Media

    Social media campaigns are another effective way to get the word out about your brand. To fully capitalize on social media marketing, you’ll need to set up an agency business page on each social media platform.

There’s always more to learn about how to win with digital marketing. For more information on insurance agency marketing and a list of 9 questions to ensure you’re taking advantage of every online marketing channel’s potential, read our Digital Marketing EZGuide.

Posted in Advice, Miscellaneous |

EZLynx Takes Gold in the 15th Annual 2023 Golden Bridge Awards

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EZLynx Rating Engine is recognized for its innovative and intelligent comparative quoting process.

Lewisville, TX– August 29, 2023 – EZLynx, an Applied company, announces its win at the prestigious 15th Annual 2023 Golden Bridge Awards®. The Globee Awards, known for organizing world-class business awards programs and business ranking lists, has honored EZLynx Rating Engine with Gold for the Business Information Solution category.

The Golden Bridge Awards celebrate organizations that have demonstrated outstanding achievements, innovation, and excellence across various industries. This prestigious recognition program honors the trailblazers, disruptors, and visionaries who have pushed the boundaries of possibility and made significant contributions to their respective fields. From cutting-edge technology advancements to groundbreaking marketing campaigns, the Golden Bridge Awards provide a platform to showcase and celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of these organizations.

“It is an honor for EZLynx Rating Engine to receive this award,” said Michael Streit, general manager, EZLynx. “For 20 years and counting, EZLynx has demonstrated our passion for helping independent insurance agents thrive by building innovative tools. We will continue to create solutions to help insurance professionals achieve success.”

The Applied products and logos are trademarks of Applied Systems, Inc., registered in the U.S.

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Finding the Best Agency Management System for Your Business

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As an agency leader in the insurance industry, choosing the best management system for your company is one of the most significant decisions you’ll face. So, what do you need to know about these systems to ensure you choose correctly? Agency management systems are software applications that allow you to perform your essential business operations. These systems allow you to integrate multiple company operations via an online (SaaS) platform. Offering capabilities like policy management, accounting, integrated rating, sales automation, reporting and more, agency management systems help independent agencies save time, stay organized and gain an edge in the market so they can take their businesses to the next level.

The Importance of Agency Management Systems

Agency management systems are so crucial that 99% of insurance agencies use them. The highest quality systems don’t just help a business function, though; they help it thrive. A great system will streamline data input, consumer interfacing and business-to-business connectivity. It will even allow you to leverage data for critical insights into your performance. Features like these can give your company the agility and foresight to increase revenue, even in a competitive market.

Finding the Agency Management System That Fits Your Needs

Identifying the agency management system that fits your business’s needs is essential. An excellently designed system can supercharge your company’s growth, but a poor management system can stunt your potential. So, how can you make sure you’re picking the right system? Before you make this all-important decision, you need to know the right questions to ask.

Questions To Ask About an Agency Management System

Knowing what you’re looking for is the first step to finding it. So, what specific questions should you ask to ensure you get the best product possible? Well, to start, you should ask if an agency management system can help you:

  • Save time and effort?
  • Maintain and form valuable connections?
  • Identify and take advantage of new opportunities?

If the answer is yes to all three, you’re off to a good start.

There’s still more to consider, though. Make sure you’re getting the most out of your business with a management system that offers the specific capabilities your company needs. You’ll also want to look for a system that:

  • Manages your whole business Save time and money with a system that lets you manage standard and commercial lines on a single application.
  • Increases customer satisfaction with improved service Satisfied customers are loyal customers. Keep everyone happy with easy-to-use customer self-service applications.
  • Uses data to identify sales opportunities Leverage the power of data to help you increase revenue. An ideal system will help you keep track of sales, target opportunities and predict future revenue streams.
  • Expands your market reach with practical communication tools A system with effective communication tools is essential for maintaining current customers and taking advantage of cross-selling opportunities.
  • Saves time and money by increasing efficiency Free up your employees to focus on more critical revenue-generating tasks by automating routine processes.
  • Keeps your customers coming back Improve customer satisfaction with a system that helps you respond more quickly to clients’ needs.
  • Helps you gain insights from your data Make more use of your data with a system that generates reports and charts to easily track performance metrics.

A good agency management system empowers your company to fulfill its true potential. In addition to saving time and money, the right system can increase customer retention and help you expand to new clients and markets. When you choose a system with features that match your business’s needs, the possibilities are endless!

For more specific information about what to look for when selecting an agency management system, including a 10-point checklist, download our EZGuide: How to Find the Best Management System.

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How Customer Portals Help Your Agency Stand Out from the Pack

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In our always-plugged-in world, it’s more important than ever for your agency to have a robust online presence. The strength of your business’s digital appearance and functionality shows customers that you’re a modernized agency and is a great way to promote the quality of your brand.

When you think online presence, the first thing that comes to mind is an agency’s website. But it’s become more important to customers that they can actually conduct business with your agency through your online portals.

Client expectations around online accessibility are driven by consumer experiences across industries and include:

  • 24/7 access on clients’ schedules and at their convenience
  • An aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly customer portal that sends the signal that your business is efficient and modern

Customer self-service portals deliver the digital engagement today’s insurance shoppers have come to expect, giving them the ability to:

  • Access policies, ID cards and documents
  • Submit change requests and generate certificates
  • Follow claims and make payments online
  • Have mobile access from anywhere

In fact, customer self-service is becoming so popular that the degree to which you offer it will set you apart from other agencies.

Clients now look for constant access to their policy details and often prefer using online self-service portals for simpler tasks instead of talking to someone. This is a win-win for you and your customers as you save time and money with online portals, and customers get their desired service.

 

The Latest from EZLynx Client Center

With our most recent product release, EZLynx makes building your brand online even easier.

You can now customize EZLynx Client Center with brand elements like your agency logo and preferred color theme. This provides a consistent branding experience between your agency’s website and customer portal. Thinking about it from your client’s perspective, your self-service portal will feel like just another dedicated area of your agency website when they share common branding elements.

Share timely, agency-specific welcome messages to help you elevate and reinforce your value proposition with visitors. You can even include video links to further reflect the distinctive character that makes your agency uniquely you.

Are there particular areas of customer self-service that you know your clients appreciate more? Now you can promote those options front-and-center when clients log into the portal to get to what matters to them even more quickly.

A strong, consistent brand identity makes your agency stand out in a crowded marketplace. With EZLynx Client Center, you can give customers what they want with top-notch client self-service while benefiting from a more cohesive branding experience across your agency’s entire online presence. Ready to learn more about how EZLynx Client Center can help you provide amazing customer service?

Visit our Client Center product page to get started.

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Insurance CRM vs. Insurance Agency Management System: What’s the Difference?

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Having the right tools and systems is key to effectively managing an insurance agency. Insurance is all about relationships with your customers, so it only makes sense to invest in insurance tech designed to help you better manage prospects and clients across the insurance lifecycle. Two common tools that come to mind are an insurance CRM (customer relationship management) system and an insurance agency management system (AMS). While both systems can help insurance agents manage their businesses, prospects, and customers easier, they ultimately serve different purposes.

What is a CRM?

An insurance CRM system is software used to manage, track and organize an insurance agency’s customer relationships. Its capabilities include lead tracking, customer interaction management, and sales and marketing task automation.

It centrally stores customer information, including contact and policy details, and agency interaction history. CRM software can help agents track sales, identify cross-sell opportunities, and measure marketing campaign effectiveness.

What is an agency management system?

An insurance AMS is a comprehensive agency management solution beyond simple customer relationship management. Management systems allow insurance agencies to manage the complete customer lifecycle. This includes delivering enhanced customer service and communication that meets customer expectations, automating and streamlining processes, retaining customers and winning new business, and using data to help improve operations.

The best systems have intuitive tools for agency management, automation, retention, commercial submissions, eSignature, email marketing, text messaging, client self-service, payments reporting/analytics, and more. Designed to integrate with carrier systems, agency management systems streamline daily tasks with automated workflows and allow agents to easily access customer quotes, policies, claims, and other documents all in one place.

What are the key differences between an insurance CRM and an agency management system?

Insurance CRM

Purpose: Manage insurance customer relationships.

Features: Typically includes lead management, customer profiling, marketing automation, and sales tracking.

Workflows: Designed for workflow efficiency and to automate sales and marketing processes.

Integration: Typically, do not integrate with carrier or third-party applications.

Insurance AMS

Purpose: Manage all aspects of an insurance agency’s business operations.

Features: Policy management (rating, quoting, sales, servicing, renewals, etc.), billing and payments processing, commission tracking, and reporting/analytics.

Workflows: Designed to automate policy management, claims processing, marketing and sales, quoting, accounting, payments, self-service, retention, cross-selling, reporting, renewals, and more.

Integration: Integrate with carrier systems and other third-party applications.

Is a CRM or management system better for running an independent insurance agency?

While a CRM and insurance AMS are great tools to help agents better manage their businesses, they have different purposes.

CRM systems are used to improve sales and enhance customer relationships.

Insurance agencies need CRM systems to:

  • Streamline the sales pipeline
  • Forecast sales
  • Track and manage sales tasks
  • Quickly visualize the close ratios, deal aging, producer success
  • Provide insights needed to recapture, win and cross-sell opps before the X-Date

Agency management systems are used to run the entire business.

Insurance agencies need management systems to:

  • Manage all lines of business in a single application
  • Improve efficiency by automating processes
  • Provide exceptional customer service
  • Improve and streamline sales processes
  • Communicate and market to customers effectively
  • Increase customer retention
  • Provide insights for data-driven decision making

Ready to make your management system your most productive employee?

Discover EZLynx.

EZLynx, the industry’s fastest-growing agency management system, has everything you need to drive the best business results. Built for the startup and growing agency, EZLynx is an easy-to-use, all-in-one AMS that accelerates growth, prioritizes retention, and streamlines your agency’s workflows. Unlike other management systems that provide disparate, incomplete, or overly complicated solutions, EZLynx has everything you need to manage clients through the complete insurance customer lifecycle.

If you would like to learn more, chat with us to schedule an appointment.

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MLC Agency Creates Better Experience with EZLynx

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Independent agency leverages all-in-one management system to create more internal efficiency and greater customer value.

LEWISVILLE, TX– July 27, 2023 – EZLynx, an Applied company, today announced that MLC Agency has selected EZLynx to be the technology foundation of its personal and commercial lines business. Through EZLynx’s advanced automation, MLC Agency will be able to standardize its operational processes and data on a single platform that will improve productivity, simplify management, and seamlessly connect to their customers.

“As our agency and book of business continue to grow, it became increasingly important to invest in a management system that would provide greater automation for our team and customers,” said Morgan Newitt, owner, MLC Agency. “By utilizing EZLynx, we will be able to have all our data on one platform and create more efficient processes that will help our team grow to the next level and provide the service our customers deserve.”

EZLynx’s integrated agency management technologies provide comparative rating, agency management and automation, commercial submissions, retention tools, consumer quoting, email marketing, text messaging, online client self-servicing, and so much more. The system maximizes agencies’ potential by increasing their ability to retain current customers while acquiring new business. By providing a central location, EZLynx enables agents to generate and store quotes, policies and documents, as well as easily remarket with up-to-date information that is synced from agents’ daily policy downloads. Through advanced automation and the ability to seamlessly connect to insurers and insureds, agents using EZLynx improve productivity, simplify management, optimize serviceability and increase profitability.

“Growing agencies have to balance multiple priorities – finding new customers, servicing and retaining existing customers, and running their business. Doing this effectively requires investing in the infrastructure to grow,” said Michael Streit, general manager, EZLynx. “EZLynx will enable MLC Agency to manage their business on a single platform, making their team even more productive and empowering them to continue to deliver the top-tier customer service they are known for.”

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Omega Insurance Group Elevates Agency Experience with EZLynx and Applied Pay

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Independent agency leverages all-in-one management system and digital payments solution to automate agency operations and better serve their customers

LEWISVILLE, TX– JUNE 15, 2023 – EZLynx, an Applied company, today announced that Omega Insurance Group has selected EZLynx and Applied Pay to create more employee productivity and focus on business profitability. Leveraging EZLynx as the productivity extension of their operations, with Applied Pay integration, Omega Insurance Group will be able to automate daily policy management workflows and provide a digital payments experience to customers, allowing staff to focus on providing the best service to their customers.

“As our world continues to become more digital, it was time to look for ways to embrace technology to better meet the needs of our customers and staff with more automation and technology choices,” said Ryan Sanne, Agent Partner, Omega Insurance Group. “When we looked into EZLynx, we saw how much easier it was to pull reports and loved the functionality of having the all-in-one rater and remarketing function – then when we realized that they were part of Applied, we knew it was the perfect system for our operational needs and growth goals.”

EZLynx’s integrated agency management technologies provide comparative rating, agency management and automation, commercial submissions, retention tools, consumer quoting, email marketing, text messaging, online client self-servicing, and so much more. The system maximizes agencies’ potential by increasing their ability to retain current customers while acquiring new business. By providing a central location, EZLynx enables agents to generate and store quotes, policies and documents, as well as easily remarket with up-to-date information that is synced from agents’ daily policy downloads. Through advanced automation and the ability to seamlessly connect to insurers and insureds, agents using EZLynx improve productivity, simplify management, optimize serviceability and increase profitability.

Applied Pay is a cloud-based electronic payments hub that enables agents and brokers to provide their clients a secure, online way to pay for new and recurring premiums. Directly integrated into Applied Epic, Applied CSR24 and EZLynx Client Center, Applied Pay provides intuitive, branded checkout pages where policyholders can go to pay for premiums via text link, credit card, ACH, digital wallet, or other payment methods. It automatically handles payment authorization and tokenizes sensitive information to increase security and ensure compliance. The solution also reconciles receivables at the account level, reducing manual workflows and improving the accuracy and timeliness needed to reconcile payments.

“Insurance agencies focused on growth have realized the opportunity technology can provide to act as a productivity partner and differentiator in meeting customer needs,” said Brenna Johnson, vice president of product management, EZLynx. “EZLynx and Applied Pay will empower Omega Insurance Group to automate processes, provide a better picture of their business, manage customer relationships, and create greater productivity for their team to continue building long-lasting connections and positive experiences with their clients.”

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Your Virtual Agent Selects EZLynx to Elevate Remote Work Model

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Agency utilizes cloud-based agency management system to standardize its operational processes and create an efficient digital experience for staff and customers

LEWISVILLE, TX– MARCH 16, 2023 – EZLynx, an Applied company, today announced that Your Virtual Agent has selected EZLynx to support business growth and remote working environment. The EZLynx management system will enable Your Virtual Agent to automate workflows and manage book of business on a single platform, allowing staff to prioritize retention, streamline agency workflows, and support staff and customers anytime, anywhere.

“At Your Virtual Agent, we believe we can bring our clients the trusted insurance agent experience in a modern world, which means our business too needs to operate on modern technology,” said Jaclyn Slavens, agency manager, Your Virtual Agent. “We are a predominately remote operations, and the more we learned about EZLynx, we saw a partner that mirrored what our agency believes in – that virtual piece of not having to be in the office Monday through Friday to write business, retain business, and communicate with your customers.”

EZLynx’s integrated agency management technologies provide comparative rating, agency management and automation, commercial submissions, retention tools, consumer quoting, email marketing, text messaging, online client self-servicing, and so much more. The system maximizes agencies’ potential by increasing their ability to retain current customers while acquiring new business. By providing a central location, EZLynx enables agents to generate and store quotes, policies and documents, as well as easily remarket with up-to-date information that is synced from agents’ daily policy downloads. Through advanced automation and the ability to seamlessly connect to insurers and insureds, agents using EZLynx improve productivity, simplify management, optimize serviceability and increase profitability.

“The insurance industry is largely viewed as lagging behind, but today’s insurance professionals and customers are pivoting towards remote environments, looking for more digital ways to interact in all aspects of life,” said Brenna Johnson, vice president of product management, EZLynx. “EZLynx will enable Your Virtual Agent to manage all lines of business in a single system regardless of role, time or location, creating greater connectivity and productivity for the agency and customers alike.”

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Robinson Bryant Agency Selects EZLynx to Standardize Business Operations

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Independent agency leverages all-in-one agency management system to centralize agency operations and gain a single view of the customer

LEWISVILLE, TX– February 21, 2023 – EZLynx, an Applied company, today announced that Robinson Bryant Agency has selected EZLynx to run its business operations. The EZLynx management system will enable Robinson Bryant Agency to standardize its operational processes and data on a single platform, allowing staff to more effectively service and sell with quick and easy access to client and prospect information.

“The insurance industry is constantly evolving and especially as an independent agency, it is crucial that we utilize the most innovative solutions in order to best serve our clients and stay ahead,” said Otanaio Robinson, president, Robinson Bryant Agency. “From the start, it’s been clear to us that EZLynx’s integration capabilities would be the single solution to standardize our business, versus the inefficient, multiple systems we were using. We are excited to utilize the innovative tools EZLynx management system offers to better serve and manage our clients through the complete insurance customer life cycle while maximizing our agency’s potential on one single system.”

EZLynx’s integrated agency management technologies provide comparative rating, agency management and automation, commercial submissions, retention tools, consumer quoting, email marketing, text messaging, online client self-servicing, and so much more. The system maximizes agencies’ potential by increasing their ability to retain current customers while acquiring new business. By providing a central location, EZLynx enables agents to generate and store quotes, policies and documents, as well as easily remarket with up-to-date information that is synced from agents’ daily policy downloads. Through advanced automation and the ability to seamlessly connect to insurers and insureds, agents using EZLynx improve productivity, simplify management, optimize service ability and increase profitability.

“Today’s speed of operations and increasing competition doesn’t afford agencies the chance to manage multiple systems and manual processes any longer,” said Brenna Johnson, vice president of product management, EZLynx. “EZLynx will enable Robinson Bryant Agency to automate their business with an all-in-one agency management platform, delivering the automation and connectivity needed to give their team the freedom to focus on providing an enhanced customer service that will improve the agency’s overall efficiency and profitability.”

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