To paraphrase the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, independent insurance agents don’t get no respect.

It’s bad enough that a recent career survey ranked your profession below janitors, bookbinders and even editors (see my related blog, ”At least you’re not a roustaboust“). Now, the latest Forrester Research consumer survey reveals that your customers don’t even find you fun.

The survey, conducted over the Internet last October, gave independent agents an overall score of “okay” from 4,600 consumers who had interacted with a variety of companies. Forrester asked consumers to rate insurance companies on three areas: “meets needs,” “easy to work with” and “enjoyable.” Several insurers, including USAA, Liberty Mutual, Progressive and The Hartford, were ranked “good” by respondents. But when it came to being “enjoyable,” consumers rated independent agents “poor,” while giving them “good” ratings for “meets needs” and “easy to work with.”

What does this mean? Evidently it’s not an ease-of-use issue; respondents ranked agents “good” on meeting customer needs and being easy to work with. And it’s not just a carrier issue, either. Savvy carriers know, and slower carriers are discovering, that it’s not enough to simply provide ease of use through technology and real-time services — in fact, that’s just the starting point (see this related article on Deep Customer Connections’ recent survey on agents telling carriers they need more ease of use).  

From just looking at the numbers, the problem seems to be with the agency system itself, as several carriers got high marks from consumers as being enjoyable to work with. Granted, the results may be skewed because of the focus on personal lines insurance purchasers, but this dissing of insurance agents shouldn’t be the case. It all boils down to the perception of insurance agent as unnecessary middleman, useful perhaps, but more likely just another roadblock between the customer and the underwriter.

The irony is, agents are in a much better position to deliver real customer satisfaction — and yes, even “fun” – than any insurer ever could. In our monthly agency success stories, we speak with agency owners, especially those in small towns or rural areas, who don’t think twice about emergency customer visits, of knowing the names and ages of teenaged drivers about to be added to a family’s auto policy, of engaging customers in intimate conversations to discover their plans for the future and how insurance coverage can help protect those plans. These agencies and their employees are also connecting to their communities through charitable work, recruitment at area schools, and other ways to create engagement with customers and prospects. It’s a testament to the level of service that every independent agent should be providing to valued customers, especially at a time when every customer counts.

And inevitably in today’s world, part of that customer outreach is through intelligently developed and executed social media planning. Maybe that’s where the smart carriers have an edge on agencies — they have the financial wherewithal and staffing to plunge right in. (Luckily, you don’t need these resources to make good use of this new tool: check out ACT’s recommendations for creating a social media policy for your independent agency). 

With more insurers, including traditional direct writers, using multiple distribution methods, the stakes are higher than ever for agents to prove themselves invaluable to their customers — not just by meeting their insurance needs in a smart and timely way, but by engaging with them on multiple levels.

What’s your agency doing to build your brand perception with your customers?

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud’s recently released interim survey of state insurance fraud bureaus includes some predictable stuff, and a couple of surprises. For instance, it’s no surprise that the bureaus reported that all types of insurance fraud were up, and that their operating budgets were down.

What did surprise me, though, was that agent fraud is the third most prevalent form of fraud being reported by the bureaus, right behind bogus health insurance and drug diversion:

Suspect cases involving insurance agents increased substantially year-to-date in 2009. A total of 69% of respondents said agent cases were up slightly higher or much higher so far in 2009, while a quarter reported no change. Only one bureau said the number of cases involving agents had fallen in 2009.

We contacted CAIF’s Dennis Jay, who minced no words:

Let me be clear upfront: The vast majority of agents are honest and committed to their clients’ best interests. But a small and disturbingly growing minority are painting the entire profession as a bunch of crooks. .

Survey results and CAIF’s own database of agent fraud cases culled from news stories and other sources shows a steady increase in agent cases since 2007 through 2009. “This suggests agent fraud cases may be rising, but also may reflect increased crackdowns by insurers, fraud bureaus, state AGs and other fraud fighters to better detect agent scams,” Jay said. “Or it may reflect both trends. At bottom, agent scams are a significant consumer problem, and constant headache for insurers and state regulators alike.”

Stealing premiums without buying the promised coverage is one of the most common forms of agent fraud. “It’s easy to commit, and can leave clients dangerously uncovered when they have a claim,” Jay said. “Some agents are selling bogus health coverage, which is spreading rapidly around the U.S. We’re also seeing producers selling overpriced life products clients may not need, want or understand. Seniors especially are frequent victims of annuities scams. ”

Crooked agents also are selling “shady investments in non-insurance areas far out of their insurance expertise, and often without a license,” Jay said. “Smaller businesses in high-risk operations also have been sold fake liability coverage or had premiums stolen. They’re vulnerable because liability premiums tend to be high and coverage isn’t always easy to find.”

Agent fraud is the Mr. Hyde opposite of the Dr. Jekyll of agent-as-expert-consultant, with wise guys using their industry knowledge to exploit the average Joe, Jay said. “Dishonest producers coldly exploit their position of trust. They’re authorities in a highly complex, technical arena that most people don’t easily understand. So average, trusting consumers tend to believe whatever agents tell them. This is especially true of seniors, who’ve built up larger portfolios that crooked agents try to drain. The profession’s leadership and carriers also keep urging the public that agents are professionals that people can trust. So when people believe the marketing messages, trust their agent and then get swindled, that leaves a bad taste in the public’s mouth.”

To avoid public backlash, Jay recommended that the industry get behind some serious housecleaning.

The agency community’s associations across all lines should be challenged to aggressively help weed out the bad actors before state legislators take punitive actions and the agency profession’s public image among customers plummets lower. If people think they can’t trust producers, their first temptation might be to try direct writers. There’s so much at stake competitively that the entire agency community, especially the leadership, should aggressively clean out its closet.

In our December look at agency Internet marketing, the first question in our reader survey was, “Does your agency/brokerage have a Web site?” The response was 81%. Why not 100%, you might ask.

Another person asking was Duke Williams, a blogger and consultant on agency Internet use. Last month, Duke decided to conduct an informal survey of “feet on the street results for actual agency Web presence.” His methodology was simple: he used the “find an agent” feature on many insurance carrier Web sites, and Googled the term “car insurance city name state name.” He used the SuperPages, YellowPages and about a half dozen other lists online.

In individually searching several locations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida, he found:

• 248 independent agencies
• 49 Nationwide agencies
• 19 online-only agencies
• 51 State Farm agencies
• 26 Allstate agencies
• 7 Farmers agencies
• 7 Alpha agencies
• 2 Farm Bureau agencies
• 1 GEICO local agency
• 1 Direct General agency (rregional non-standard auto insurance carrier with owned agency locations)

While these results seem to indicate a strong presence for independent agencies, a closer look tells another story. Of the 248 independent agencies that came up in the search, only 64 — a paltry 25.8% — had a Web site, and only a fraction turned up in the Google “local results” search.

Delving deeper, Duke discovered that the agencies with Web sites weren’t consistent in functionality, even in non-real-time. For instance, 51.6% had quote request forms, but only 12.5% had “request a policy change” forms, and only 20.3% had “report a claim” forms. Not surprisingly, Duke reported that all the national direct writers had very high functionality.

While you could argue that Duke’s results are atypical — focused on a limited geographic area and a single line of business — you’d be missing the point. In every way, direct writers are making it easy for consumers to find and use their products and services — and it isn’t all about price.

Woody Allen once said that “80% of success is showing up.” When it comes to Web pages, the odds are even better if you show up with a functional product that makes it as easy as possible for people to use what you have to offer.