RHS 105 - Ron Shroyer Explains How to Rule the World With Data (and Donna)

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. Our guest is Ron Schroer, the VP of Sales for Arias Analytics here in North America, the company behind Donna for Agents.
Now you've heard me talk about Donna for Agents both because I'm a user of Donna for Agents, a believer since the first 10 minutes that I heard the pitch from the CEO, Anurag Shah, who Ron talks a little bit about in the episode, as well as Ron. They were doing a dual presentation in one of Paradiso's events, although Paradiso had mentioned the tool to me a few months prior.
I hadn't had a chance to dig into it, and then I got to meet Anurag and Ron at this event that Paradiso did last September. And 10 minutes in, I wanted to tell everyone to leave and just basically spent the rest of that day peppering them with questions, talking about where I saw the product going, all the different use cases, and signed up that week.
Like two days after I got back, I was signed up and ready to go. And I've been a user ever since.
And I've gotten some pushback from people, not pushback, questions, better way to put it, questions from people saying, hey, Ryan, you're a startup agency, like you don't really need, you know, off the top of your head, you can remember all your clients, you don't really need that kind of thing. And as we talk about in this episode, my investment into Donna as a product that we were going to use and implement from day one in this agency was more a philosophical core belief in who we want to be as a company as much as it was us needing the product.
I want to build Rogue and anything else that comes out of Rogue. I want it to be built on understanding at a deep level our customers so that we can be better at serving them.
And we get into that in depth. Ron is a tremendous human, not just a tremendous professional in our industry.
He goes into his background, his history. We talk a lot about Donna.
We talk a lot about data analytics, its uses. We provide a bunch of use cases.
And I think you're just going to love this episode. Whether you ever use Donna or not, whether analytics is something you're into or not, I think when you hear us walk through some of the potential use cases for this type of information, why I'm so bullish on a tool like Donna and other tools that do this.
I mean, not everyone gives the same information the same way. Neon is working on a lot of this.
Obviously, I'm a huge fan of that product as well. I'm just not on Salesforce yet, so I can't get to Neon.
But this is the kind of episode where I think, my hope is you get to feel a little bit of what is possible if you dig into the data you have in your agency and however you get to it. So I think you're going to love it.
And because Donna is also a sponsor of this show, although this episode has nothing to do with them being a sponsor, whether they were or wouldn't, I'd still want Ron to be on the show because he's an awesome dude and Donna's a great product and very interesting. I'll just say go to DonnaForAgents.com and get the demo.
Go to DonnaForAgents.com and get the demo. Just know what the product is about, right? That's all I'm asking.
I didn't let you down on Tarmica. I haven't let you down on Mick Hunt and the work he does at Premier Strategy Box.
I haven't let you down on Chris Langell and Advisory Evolved when Better Agency was a sponsor. I didn't let you down on them.
Better Agency is tremendous, right? Like every tool that I have as a sponsor of this show that I talk about are tools that I believe in. I believe in these tools.
Donna for Agents is one of those tools. And whether you ever end up using them or not is of no consequence.
Just know that this is out here and what it can do because maybe you find something else similar to it that works for your agency. But I want you to know, I want you to be aware.
I think it's important. I think it helps us serve our customers better.
I don't think it helps us deliver on the true value proposition of what an independent insurance agency is meant to be. And it's just a great pleasure to provide you with this episode.
All right, let's get to it. Yo, dude.
There he is. What's up, man? How are you? Good, dude.
Just, you know, doing the thing here. Trying to keep the agency going and talking to cool cats like yourself.
Oh, that's always fun talking to you too, my friend. Dude, a couple of big announcements lately.
You got Portals, so Bradley Flowers, and then the other one like two days ago, three days ago. Yeah, so I mean, also Coverica was out too as well.
We got Bradley's Compadre and iProtect too. And then looking forward to these.
We got a couple other exciting things going on, too. Some little bit larger strategic relationships that should be rolling out here over the next few months.
It's amazing. Yeah.
I'm so happy for you guys. All you sons of bitches at home, I've been telling you, I called Tarmica, and now I'm calling Donna.
So if you're not on it, then just deal with it. We're going to get into exactly what Donna is, why it's so exciting, why I like it, why you got involved in this project.
I also want to share a little bit about your backstory with the audience as well, just because, you know, you're one of the good guys in the space that I think, you know, people should know who just want to be connected. But yeah, I just like to give everyone at home a hard time since I'm basically always right on my calls.
And I had Donna very early. So I'm only half joking.
I'm occasionally wrong, but it's rare. No, man.
So dude,, let's get into it. So first, before we talk about what's going on with Don, all that kind of stuff, just I want to talk about Data Linux in general and some of the use cases that you guys are seeing.
I think there's a lot of really fun things to talk about. But before that, just give everyone a quick backdrop on your history in space, because this isn't your first foray into data and analytics in the insurance industry.
So, so maybe if you can just go back as you, as far as you think is relevant, we can, we can do that. Yeah, for sure.
So I appreciate it too, Ron, and always a pleasure talking to you. And it is an honor being on your podcast, man.
You have a lot of great rock stars, a lot of people in the industry that are very influential and doing some phenomenal things. So I'm very excited to talk to you today.
So, you know, my, my background, I've been in sales for roughly 16 years, coming straight out of school, a lot of professional services and technology. But the last seven years have been in the insurance industry.
I ran into, and it's kind of funny when you have those certain events happen within your career. I got fired from my one job that I was in with Thompson Reuters because of a non-compete with my prior company.

And the non-compete had some teeth in it.

And those things are kind of fun to deal with.

And I had to get out of the industry.

So like a lot of people, I fell into insurance.

I had an opportunity to go and be a producer for Huntington Insurance, which Huntington's a top 50, top 60 brokerage in the country, out of their Pittsburgh office. And they were starting the process of bringing in people from outside of the industry and teach them insurance, you know, from a mentorship standpoint, obviously the technical aspects.
And this is roughly around 2013 when this happened. And this is right at the same time of Obamacare.
So or ACA, for that matter. And I was on the EB side of things, too.
So that was really an interesting time to come into the industry, especially in that perspective. But I always had a really, you know, interest on the PNC side, you know, commercial risk for that, and even personalized for that matter.
So we had a chance to kind of work in conjunction with those different business units. But I was at Huntington for a couple years and I love the industry.
I mean, it is so well connected with the people, just how the industry has an influence on what goes on with the rest of the world because everybody needs insurance. But you learn so much about everybody's business, regardless if it's a manufacturing company, a healthcare company, even the personal side of things too.
And I just think that it gives you a really unique perspective of the importance of risk management in a lot of different ways. So when I was working through with Huntington, I started to look at, hey, what are these technologies that we're trying to utilize for me to generate business myself as a producer, but just to operate the business in general.
And I think a lot of your listeners, and you've talked about a lot, there's been a lot of change in the last five years. But if you go back seven years ago, it was still very, very stale as far as what access you had to understand opportunities to grow a book of business, to even understand exactly what you had as a book of business and where those opportunities might be.
And I've always loved the technology side. So eventually, I got a call from the gentleman who placed me at Huntington.
He used to be the head of global sales at Aon. And then before that, at Sedgwick.
So he had some big jobs. I'm free for those too.
He called me. He goes, hey, I got an opportunity for you that I think you're going to be perfect for because you got the tech background.
You also got your feet wet in insurance too. And it's with a company called RiskMatch.
And RiskMatch is a data and analytics company that was originally founded by Kabir Syed. And Kabir was the head of commercial operations for Marsh.
And he built Marsh's internal analytics platform that was called Market Connect. And what Market Connect did, if you think about how big Marsh is, it basically brought together all those different data points.
I need to understand my client base better, my carriers better, the economics of my trading relationships with my carriers. Just give me visibility into my book so I can make decisions.
So he left Marsh after being there for 17 or so years and started Risk Match. And what Risk Match did was it brought that same concept to middle market insurance agents and brokers to give them the same resources that the big boys have.
So I was there for four and a half years. That's basically split roughly two years before the acquisition within Vertifor.
We built a business, had a fantastic team. And I was by far the youngest, most inexperienced person on that team as it pertains to insurance.
But my God, I think about like the client engagement managers, the sales leaders that were a part of that organization and what I was able to learn and take from that was just phenomenal. And then after the acquisition with Vertifor, I was there another two and a half years or so.
So we got acquired in April 17. I ended up leaving in November of 19 after that.
But Vertifor is fantastic. I mean, they treated me well.
They helped us grow that organization. It provided me a lot more opportunities to get to know hundreds of different agencies, what their challenges were, how we could potentially solve them.
So I just fell in love with the technology side of the insurance industry. But as the evolution turns, you get through an acquisition, you start to look at career pathing and whatnot.
I was ready to take more of a meaningful role within another scaling organization. So Arius reached out to me in summer of 2019, and we started having conversations.
And Arius is really unique because we are still in that data and analytics realm. But what Arius does is they are most concerned with, I want to know what's going on with my end customer.
The end customer is that most important thing to any insurance agent, brokerage, anything in the world, even a carrier for that matter, because without that customer, nothing happens. And what we want to do at Arius is be able to bring better insight to what's happening with my end customers so you can make better decisions on how can you engage them? Where can I go to sell them the policies that are right for them at the right point in time? And are they in a good spot with us right now for us to be able to approach them for that? Or are there some retention challenges that they may have? And what can we do to make sure we're hanging on to our clients? And I think that's the most important thing that agencies that we work with now is you've got such a huge goldmine of opportunity within your existing clients that, and that new business is always important.
I'm not discounting that, but if you take a look, a deep look inside the opportunities you have, you can grow exponentially with the customers that are already in your door. It's way less expensive, um, from a retention standpoint.
And then also from an, a front end organic growth standpoint. I mean, if you could save a point of retention, it's, it's makes it easier to get your growth goals in place.
And that's what our technology ultimately does is help agencies do that and carriers for that matter too. Yeah.
I think that, you know, it's, it's funny being, being where I sit today, um, man, having spent time in the, in the technology side of our business and specifically, the exposure you get to agencies, right, to be the ability to talk to producers, customer success leaders, you know, agency owners, and get all these different perspectives and insights, because, you know, there's just so many ways to skin this business. There just is, I mean, there's just, there really aren't two agencies that you could set side by side and go, hey, they do it the same way.
I mean, it just, even if they look and feel they could both serve small, you know, they both can serve small business, like approach it from 15 different angles and none of them are the same. And, and I feel like coming at this from a technology side is one of the few places that you really get to see that because you're trying to help all these different institutions fit your product or use your product to fit in, you know, so it makes, it's like this weird problem solving thing.
It is a dynamic place to be in a, I think an opportunity to understand our, our industry in a way that, that many don't. Well, without a doubt, you think about the last five years and just, first of all, the investment that's coming into the industry.
I mean, outside of like the private equity side, that's aggregating agencies, but from the technology standpoint, the amount of players that are out there, you have the legacy players like Vertifor and Applied and, and, you know, Haw has been a fantastic partner too, and all the other agency management systems like NALSerts and QQ and so on, which are their part of Vertifor. But, you know, I think it's interesting because there's a lot of people that sometimes they start a product and then try to find a problem.
I think what was unique when I came to ARIUS is Frank Centner's on our board and we were kind of going through business plans when I was presenting for them to even hire me as well. And Frank's like, I think this could be applicable to the agency channel of it.
And then so we took our foundational product that we have before for carriers called Crux, which is still there. But we developed this Donna product because agencies need access to that technology.
And if you think about some of the largest industries, like everybody knows everything about us as consumers. I mean, you can hop into Amazon or anywhere.
They're going to be able to trigger right away. What's Ron most likely to buy what's Ryan most likely to buy because of his last transactions.
And we just want to bring that easy, that easy insight to agency. So they know where to go to be able to grow.
But you look at some of the awesome technologies, you mentioned small business. I mean, we work closely with the Tarmica team for to be able to make small business profitable agency zoom.
I mean, you know, some of the voice companies like Lightspeed and Cotter group, and, and there's just so many awesome companies that are out there right now rocket referrals to be able to engage as well. There's a unique set.
And, you know, I'm not, I would love Donna to be in the hands of every single agency out there too, but there's a lot of different opportunities to build out a pretty unique tech stack that's gonna help you scale as an agency. And I think that's the first step you gotta do is just figure out what's my end goal and then be able to build backwards from that.
And then what technologies are gonna match up with that too. But I think we're getting closer to this connected ecosystem of all these API connected tech partners that can really help you make your workflow very efficient.
But just, you know, make help you get to your goals a lot faster too. And even like Vertifor and apply, they're getting down the road of being able to connect to some of these outside technologies that aren't underneath their ownership because they know it's going to bring value to their underlying clients.
And I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic in the industry right now. Yeah.
Well, I completely agree with that latter statement. I think this is one of the most exciting times that has ever happened to our industry.
I mean, it just, I mean, look, you know, take my own, I started an agency in seven days before COVID hit and we're still here. And the only reason that that's possible is because of the technology that's available in the marketplace today.
I mean, we've only met with two of our clients in person, two in 15 months. And, you know, that, you know, and not saying that's the way you have to go.
Just that that's just one of the many thousands of ways that you can do this business. And what I see, so Andrew Ryan and Jack Hurtvik, just spoke to them yesterday.
They will actually be the episode that comes out right before this one. So even though we're recording it a day later, it'll be the episode before this.
So people have heard that. We were talking about how you're seeing two ecosystems evolve.
You have ecosystems like Vertifor and Applied who have kind of doubled into, right or wrong, not an indictment. They're going to be a full stack solution, right? They're going to go top to bottom.
They're going to have the marketing automation. They're going to have the data analytics.

They're going to try to have all their pieces in one stack. And then you have the agency zooms, the better agencies, the now certs, the hawk softs that are taking tools like Donna, like rocket referrals, different VoIP systems, different texting systems.
And they're basically just creating these open ubiquitous connections that kind of let you pick and choose what you want to use as an agency and what fits you. And then you have agencies kind of self-selecting into what model works best for them.
And for some of them, it is just, Hey, applied, give me everything that I need, you know, and, and I'll work within the confines of that system and be perfectly happy. And then you have other people who are like, no, I want to be able to plug this in and take a little, one of these, and I'd rather use this tool.
And I think, again, I just think that speaks to where we are as the maturation of our industry from a technology perspective. And it's just one more exciting piece.
Well, I think, and I want to jump back to your comment too, as far as, I mean, with you starting the agency before COVID, and I think COVID proved a lot of, and I kind of use you as an example of the grit that's involved within this industry and how awesome it is too, because that had to be incredibly challenging. And if you think about any organization to be able to shift like that too, that you mentioned, they would not have been able to do it without technology too.
All of us i mean you and i were together a month month and a half ago up in boston that was that was one of the best times we've all had in roughly a year because we're all together hanging out in person hanging out at the hotel just talking about the industry talking about all kinds of fun stuff and just getting our relationships closer um and i that relationship aspect is never going away in this industry i mean it, it is so vital and important. And I think there's a lot of, you know, people that may sit there and think some of these technologies are going to disintermediate those relationships.
And it's not that. I mean, we're going to help enhance this for it.
I mean, I look at the past year and a half and I mean, Anya Rock Shaw is our CEO. I mean, he's just on top of being a wonderful human being.
I mean, he's a fantastic CEO with the way that we push through the challenging times within COVID because we have a huge India presence. And obviously they're going through a tough time right now over in India.
So there's a lot of things that we have to work through. But I think it just shows the grit, determination of agents, of tech partners to be able to get through this together.
And we're all going to come out fantastic on the backside. And I sit there and I look at the relationships and that's the most important thing.
Like we would not be in the spot we are right now without people like you, without Chris Paradiso, without guys like Andrew Ryan and Jack Herfic and Matt Namoli. And I'm going to leave some people out and I don't want to, but I mean, there's just so many wonderful people that have helped us get to the spot we are.
And we've got a lot of great things that are going to be coming out here soon too. Yeah.
It's funny. Those I was talking to somebody and they were referring to the group of people that has started to like go to those meetings in Boston is like the Paradiso mafia.
It's like, he's like the crime boss of this, this insurance underworld family where everyone just like gets together. But, you know, I think, you know, as I, and I learned this a lot.
I learned this a lot during my trusted choice days, you know, for better or for worse. And I'd say in general, it's probably in that positive.
The, the, the big eyes national association works very similar, right? People spend time together. They do deals together.
They refer people to each other and they develop relationships and they know they can to some extent, trust each other. And I feel as, as I've, I don't know that I necessarily understood it at first.
And I actually had a really good conversation on this show with, um, Sheffy Ben Huda, who I'm an enormous fan of. Um, and you can go back and listen to the episode, but we had this amazing conversation around, um, you know, we, we were, it came up that there are still many deals done in our industry, you know, two, two, two old white guys in the back of a bar with a glass of whiskey, you know, talking about nothing, but talking about everything at the same time.
Right. And she was like, you know, I hate that that's still the way the industry works.
And I said, you know, I, I hate that it still is two old fat white guys, but I don't mind that the industry works that way. So remove the, you know, the racial profile, you know, and physical and age profile of that human.
Right. But the fact that you, there still needs to be a high degree of trust in order for me to do business with you, I think is very important.
I think, yes, it slows things down, but I think unlike so many other industries, and this is definitely an evolved thought of mine, it's not the way that I've always believed, but the pace of our industry, while frustrating at times, it also keeps us successful, right? We don't have one of our largest carriers like Bear Stearns or whatever, just crashing to the ground, obliterated, gone. You know what I mean? Like that doesn't, that doesn't happen in a really long time.
And a lot of it is because of the pace that we move at. And because you really have to trust each other, you really have to, you know, have gone through the gauntlet a little bit and earned it before people will bring you into these inner conversations.
And, and, you know, I think it's important. I think that, and just speaking to your, to your relationship side, I don't think those things will ever go away.
Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, you and I are in the same spot, man.
I don't, I do not think that any of us want that to go away too. I do like now that you are starting to see a lot more diversification of people in senior leadership roles.
We work with a lot of fantastic people across the board now, you know, from carriers, from brokerages to agencies, so on and so forth. And I mean, going back to like Sheffy and obviously her and Avi with what they do to be able to bring, you know, make people more informed of what's happening within the industry.
I mean, coverage is fantastic. I mean, those two are tapped in like no other.
So it's great. Every single night, I look forward to, you know, 745, eight o'clock getting that email, seeing what's happening.
And so, I mean, it is really nice that all of us have access to people like this that are, that are informed, that are influential, that can really help us all, you know, just get better. Cause that's what it's about, man.
It's just, let's be as efficient as possible at getting better. Because like you mentioned before, everyone's been pretty freaking successful doing what they've done for the longest time.
But it's like, hey, how can I build this out to where it's going to be long-term scaling, growth, succession planning, and so on. And that's why the industry is awesome too.
Regardless of what people think of what's going to happen from an economic climate standpoint, I mean, it's about as recession proof of an industry as you get.

I know every time I start to get frustrated by the news, and obviously anyone who regularly listens to this show has a decent feel of my politics.

I always just come back to the fact that we're in basically a recession-proof, inflation-proof business.

And I don't think we should discount that.

I think we should be – if you're working in this space, I think it's important to remind yourself that while philosophically, I disagree with almost everything that comes out of the current administration's mouth, almost. I am very pro-diversity.
I don't particularly care for some of the ways they go about it, but I do think that in that particular regard, their heart is in the right place, hopefully. But monetarily, I think they're bonkers.
But then my wife said to me the other day, she goes, if they tax the shit out of us, all that's going to happen is insurance premiums are going to go up and we're going to net out at basically the same inflation adjusted income as anyone else. And, you know, that's crappy for other industries for sure, because not everyone has that, but for us, I think we should at least occasionally take stock of the fact that we are blessed in that regard.
You know, in that, in that, in that regard. So, so, okay.
So moving on, I want to, so I want to talk about Donna and Arias in particular. And you, you mentioned India.
You guys have also proven in Israel too. Am I correct about that? Wasn't, is Donna? Oh, so we, we have, we have a good bit of clients that are across the board in there, but the majority of what we do is held within some of the largest carriers in the world and their India branches too, as well.
Gotcha that corrupt product yeah yeah yeah i just i i wanted to for some reason that was in my head that that it had been proven to a certain extent both in both territories and i wanted to make sure that i was that that was accurate but it doesn't matter um okay cool so um so one of the things that immediately turned me on was this idea of the sentiment score.

And in some of the promos and in some of the times, and I just mentioned the product in the middle of conversations, I've talked about sentiment, but I'd love to get it from you. Yeah.
What is the sentiment score? Why is this really a game-changing aspect of understanding our client base that maybe we haven't seen in previous data analytics products? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that was one of the things that drew me to be able to join this organization too, or to want to join this organization, because it is a very unique perspective as far as how we utilize the data.
So I'm actually going to backtrack a little bit and give you a little more context on the India team and some of our carriers and how we got to the point with Donuts too. Because Aureus, you know, in my prior days at RiskMatch, we worked primarily with the data that was held just within an agency management system from like a client policy level detail standpoint.
Again, just uncover transparency of what you have. But from an Aureus perspective, that data is vitally important to what we do from an independent agency side, but it's not the only piece of data that we bring in.
So we bring in structured data sources like that agency management system or other systems they operate on, but also like unstructured data. So some of that stuff that you have from activities and all these things that happen from a CRM perspective, voice, email, chat, interactions, surveys and testimonials.
But if you think about like an agency's tech stack, and I mentioned that connected ecosystem, getting together, getting closer to a point of that. We take that information on all the clients from each one of those systems and tie it all into one spot for you.
Because if you think about those systems, there's some fantastic information to glean from each one of those individually, but tying it together is the tough part. So what we do with that data is we work primarily with existing customers, establish that customer journey, and that's how we're able to generate what's called centimeter.
So it's sentiment meter, kind of a play on words, and that's the sentiment score. So what we do with that centimeter score, zero to 100 scale, and it follows every event, interaction, and transaction that happens with an end customer since the inception of their first policy.
And the unique thing about that is it gives you real-time insight as of today. If Ryan has been my customer since July 2015, there's a weighted effect off of a policy transaction, a billing transaction, a survey, a testimonial, a conversation that I have with you.
Whether it's positive or negative, the outcome of that. And we've processed over 60 million insurance policies with this sentiment algorithm.
And it gets smarter and smarter as we go because of the volume of policies. So we can start to infer what's Ryan most likely to do next based off of his past behavior right now, and then be able to give you that forward looking view.
Okay, Ryan's in a good spot with us on that zero to 100 scale as of today. I need to go sell him.
He's a commercialized client. I got to go sell him a cyber policy right now or commercial crime policy.
He's my personalized client as well. And we bring in third party data to allow you to learn a lot more about Ryan as a consumer.
So we can start to say, hey, Ryan owns a boat. He has two other houses that he's not writing with you as an agent.
This is something you need to bring up during your renewal conversation. And he's happy as hell with you right now.
That's the best time to engage. So what we want to do is just point you in the direction.
Where do I have the highest likelihood to close more business with this specific customer? And then on the flip side, if I have customers that seem like they're starting to trend downwards on that centimeter scale that they might churn out, what are some of the things that we can do to get them back up to a spot to where we can start expanding that relationship with them? So if you look at our competitive landscape, we have business intelligence by the nature of the data we pull in. So let you know exactly what you have.
Then we run a ton of predictive models to say, what can we sell? How can we retain to this customer?

But then when you put that centimeter score on top of that,

that's when you get real precise as far as,

hey, these are the customers that I know I can go after

over the next 90 days.

And I think that's such a unique mix of what we do.

And then the flexibility of our platform is

workflow is so inherently important to every single agency. And we are getting to the point where we're connected to all these different tech partners, Tarmica, Rocket Referrals.
You know, we're going to be set up with Lightspeed and Agency Zoom and Cotter Group. The majority of the agency management systems we're set up with because what we want to do is push that insight into whatever environment our customers want to consume it in.
Because we want to be an enhancement of what they're doing right now. I don't want to be another step in the workflow.
So as much as I love Donna, she's the greatest thing that we've done at this point. It comes down to I want to know the sentiment score of my customers, and I want to know what can I do with them today.
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Yeah. That, so there's a lot to unpack in there.
I know. And I mean, in a good way.
So, you know, the thing, you know, the first thing that came to my mind was independent agencies' core value proposition is service, right? That's their core value proposition is we have real people who care about you, who are going to treat you right. We're going to take care of you, make sure you set up property.
Okay, so if that, if we can all buy into that being in some degree, right. Uh, uh, uh, the core value proposition of an independent agency, then I look at, um, net promoter score and I said, that's a wonderful tool.
Wonderful. But it is a, you know, random snapshot in time, six to nine months after an interaction, after a policy purchase before, you know, and I get that like rocker referrals in a great job of really dialing in net promoter score.
So this is not a knock on net promoter score, but is it gives you a general, maybe 15,000 foot, you know, if your gut is like, is like 10 miles up, right. Then you have, you know, net promoter score, which maybe it gets you in the atmosphere and you're, you're, you know, you're, you're maybe 30,000 feet from, from, from where your people are.
When I look at centimeter, I'm like, I am literally on the ground. This, this is giving me boots on the ground understanding of exactly what's happening because someone sends a, and maybe, and I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that are coming with the Lightspeed voice integration.
We can dig into emails and texts and phone transcripts and stuff like that, but like, uh, just kind of, uh, uh, uh, jumping ahead and then we'll get back to what it actually means. Like I can have a billing change and then receive an email.
And based on what the person was saying in that email, after a billing change or a billing, we can tell that billing change didn't go very well. Yeah.
So we're getting it. We're getting, we're getting an impact on the, a centimeter score because it's the second time they had to do something with their bill, which may, you know, maybe produce a negative or whatever.
I'm kind of estimating. I don't know the algorithm.
And then the language that they're using around those requests is showing us as well. And that drops the centimeter score down.
Now, as an agency owner or the leader of the customer success team or retention team, whatever, wherever you sit in the organization, there's no freaking way for you to know that particular client in that moment, right? Maybe they send you an email, God forbid, they go out to Google and change their Google review or some amount of months later, you get a net promoter score change with centimeter. All of a sudden you could get an update right inside your, your email or inside your dashboard that goes, hey, this person just had a problem.
Yesterday, their centimeter score just dropped 15 points overnight. You should probably reach out to them and see what's going on.
And now you can get ahead of that problem, see what's going on, solve it, and even better, go back into your organization and go, why did this happen? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And that's the, when I think about that process, I'm like, this, this allows us to, to actually deliver as close to a hundred percent of what our true value proposition is as possible. And that's, that's when I saw this, I was like, this is freaking brilliant.
This is, this is the solution. I couldn't agree more, man.
And I mean, that's absolutely awesome. And again, the net promoter score is very important to what we do.
And I'll just kind of talk about that with like rocket referrals. And I think down the line, once we get agency zoom with, with the Google reviews and everything else, because it's at, it is at a point in time, like you said, it could be six months ago and it's with a very small segment of your customers.
So you're missing a huge base of your customers. But when you look at digesting that tax, like I'm a testimonial, if I'm writing a review or if Rocket Referrals is doing that testimonial, we take a look at what is that language in that.
If I say, hey, rogue risk, I got my renewal. The billing was, or the renewal rate was incredibly too high.
I needed them to remarket. They were slow to get back to me.

All those little words that are joined together

are taken a look at.

And that's obviously going to drive a sentiment score down.

But what we want to do is people are making decisions

across their organization based off of a small segment

of their client base.

And then based on a point in time,

when you have access to look at a high level

across large sets of your clients.

But when you are down with boots on the ground, like you mentioned, an account manager, I

need to make sure that I'm here, that we're able to provide an opportunity to delight

our customers and turn every event that you have with that customer into an opportunity,

whether that event you're in right now is a negative one or a positive one.

Because I think, as you know, I mean, we all have had personal relationships and business relationships that have gone up their ups and downs. I mean, it's just the natural part of life with it.
But when you can keep a close eye on exactly when that happens, it does tie straight back to exactly what you said, that agency's value prop. We have service, we are accountable, and this is what we can do to make sure that we hang on to these best clients that are going to be profitable for us and we can grow with.

So that kind of brings us into this idea.

So I just described what I believe is like the fully baked perfect scenario of how this works, right? So a big part of that is this concept. And I think it's a term that anyone who's listening to podcasts like this one and some of the others in the industry, maybe even some others just in the marketing and sales space in general, you're starting to hear this term unstructured data.
So what is the difference between, say, structured data and unstructured data? And when I think about unstructured data, I about like reading the text of an email or a text message or breaking down the transcript of a phone call. Like, you know, can you just define those two terms for us as best as possible and then start to talk a little bit about how you guys are using unstructured data in the Donna tool?

Yeah, I mean, you actually explained it perfectly. So it's those types of data that's out there with unstructured pieces.
So voice, email, text, even to the point of when you got a ton of information on Excel reports that you can dump in that we have to go in. Once we grab that data, we can kind of pick and place whatever client it belongs to and so on, as long as there's like a unique identifier that ties into that client of it.
But the structured data comes from those systems where we get connections set up, whether it be via API or VPN or however, and it comes through in a very formatted process. I mentioned kind of client policy level detail fields from an agency management system.
So those are those things that we can just get reoccurring. The unstructured data is like a giant pile of, I don't want want to call it garbage giant pile of stuff that's out there that we are going to organize for you and place it where it needs to go so you can get the best insight out of it yeah so how is Donna taking that like like it just seems to me like I guess my question would be if if I didn't understand this my next question would be like okay so how are you getting any usefulness out of the transcript of a phone call that my CSR has with one of my clients like how does that how do you turn that into something that you can get you can that Donna then gives me that I can use like what is that how does that work exactly so and I think that's what's important with us getting tapped into the voice customers because we've done this a lot with our India customers.
We have the ability to, once we get that text recorded, it get it transcribed to natural English. We run it through our algorithms, everything else too, because we run it through English dictionaries, then on top of insurance dictionaries at the same time, because the word garage means something different in, you know, in personal lines and it does elsewhere too as well.
So So, and from stuff like that, um, we take out and then we look at those adjoining words. I kind of use that example with you.
If I call and say, Hey, my premium is way too high. I need you to remarket, or I'm going to leave the agency.
You take a look at some of those words that I did. We generate centimeter score off that too.
Um, the, the, and it's kind of like passive detractor, like that type of stuff of information is coming out. And that's what you, what's going to be able to affect that score with drive it, whether up or down based off that information.
So it's actually a really clean process. It seems like, you know, Jetson's type stuff, everyone talks about and whatnot, but it is pretty efficient.
We just get hooked up to companies that can just record it and then we transcribe it and get it wrong. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm, I'm really excited about that.
Yeah. Um, because again, think thinking about this from a, from a scaled managerial standpoint, and I've had people say like, what the hell are you doing with a tool like Donna? Like you have 200 clients or whatever we have.
And you know, you're, you know, you can't be getting it. And the truth is like, I'm getting stuff out of Donna, but this to me, and I've said this from the very beginning, since the first day, like one, I, you guys are our sponsor of the show, but I also pay for Donna.
Like I, I write a check to you guys and it's actually, you know, it's one of, it's one of the biggest investments I've made in the agency. And it was one of my best and smartest, in my opinion, because what I'm establishing and what I believe is that this type of insight and analytics, if I can have it baked into the culture of my agency from day one, it's going to, you know, my team, how we handle customers, how we build process, how we think through the way we want to do things will be based not just on our gut feel, which I do think is important.
It's important to follow what you think is going to work, but then to be able to validate that with actual statistics. And when I look at something like, you know, we're, we're eventually going to have, hopefully if things go well, a large inside Salesforce, right? Okay.
So that's great. What if I can see that the sentiment score for Tammy three months after she signs a customer is through the roof.
Every one of her customers has a 90 sentiment score after they've, after she sold a policy, maybe I should go spend some time with Tammy, even if her numbers aren't the best, right? Maybe, maybe Tammy's not the number two or three on the list every month, but her sentiment score is through the roof. So I think traditionally what we would do is go, just tell me who's the best salesperson and I'm going to follow what they do.
Right. But now it's giving us a whole nother layer to say, not just what are they doing from a volume perspective, but what is the actual experience that your customers are getting? You know, maybe Tammy's setting expectations better.
Maybe she's just friendlier. Maybe she's a better problem solver.
Maybe she understands the market better. Maybe, you know, there's a million reasons why maybe she doesn't, maybe she sells a few less policies, but her sentiment score is off the charts.
So it's like little things like that that I look at and I'm like, this is how you manage an insurance business moving forward. Now, it enhances our connection to humans.
It doesn't detract from our connection to the human. Yeah, it certainly does.
Now, we've had a couple of clients that have looked at it from that view too. Like, I want to use this as a tool for my team to understand what good processes look like.
But, you know, I think back a couple of weeks ago, I was on Heath Sheeran had has his town hall meetings and I was on there with Justin and Caitlin Egger. And they were talking through and they had a pretty unique perspective from a sales standpoint or a service standpoint from let's make sure they were writing good business because sales is one thing.
I mean, you can churn out sales like no other, but you want good, thoughtful, sticky business. That's not going to crush your loss ratios, your combined ratios.
That's going to stay with you. That's going to be profitable.
And I don't want to say easy to work with, but to allow you to be able to keep those customers and delight them. And I think using utilizing Donna from that lens, we see a lot because we're looking at cross portfolios of account managers, whose book of business looks like what as compared to others.
And I just think that's a really nice way from a coaching standpoint, but also from a replication standpoint from you as an agency on the operations side to say, hey, we need to figure out what these couple people are doing correct and make sure that we start to build out processes in place so everybody is in line with the expectations so we can make sure we're hanging on to our best customers. Yeah, I think that's awesome.
Another thing that you guys are doing that I'm a big fan of, and I think technology providers in general have to have an open mind to this, because I think the prevailing attitude, maybe even as recently as a few years ago would be, I want everybody in my ecosystem. How many logins? How much engagement? How much time are they spending in my system? And you guys have taken a very interesting approach that I have a tremendous amount of respect for and think is the appropriate approach in general, which is we don't care if they ever log in.
And the reason is because we're going to take our information and make it available in the systems that they're using every day.

And that's why the integration, which I know isn't live yet, but is in the works, hopefully, with some of the agency management systems and some of the agency Zoom potentially. like the the idea again and i and i'm i'm talking uh future state to a certain extent because it's

not live yet but like the idea that your sentiment score, say the sentiment score goes down, whatever your trigger is 10 points, 12 points, 15 points, you know, you figured out, you know, that's a business decision. You as the agency owner get a task or notification immediately sent to you that says this happened, and an email gets fired off or a text gets fired off to that customer in that exact moment that says, hey, I've become aware that something may have happened or there was an interaction that didn't go particularly well.
And I would love 10 minutes of your time just to learn what happened. Just so I can understand.
Even if the person doesn't take you up on it, it changes their disposition towards the agency because now you as the owner, you as a business leader are putting yourself out in front. And these are just some of the little things that you can do.
Maybe if it drops substantially, you put them in a whole new pipeline where you have a team of people who are restoking the flames of love for your, I mean, it's some crazy thing like that, but that's their job. Like, or, you know, restoking the flames of love for your, I mean,

I, you know, some crazy thing like that, but like that's their job, like, or, you know,

a certain person's job in your business is to jump into these sentiment score, these clients who have

sentiment scores with major drops and fix their fixers, whatever the problem is. Like that, that

type of connection to the data is where I think this becomes real world applicable for every agency

See you just said. And I think that with some of these opportunities that we have to work with some of these tech partners to get to that point, because everyone asks us, because we have a lot of different options of what we could do as a company with a product.
And do you guys want to be a CRM? Do you want to be a marketing company? Do you want to be an agency management system? And the answer is hell no. There's so many people that do all that better than us.
We are real good at understanding data and being able to give you really strong insights based off that data. And I look at that opportunity with agency zoom and running those trigger events and making that making our insights actionable.
Because what we do is we learn a lot from the recommendations that we make. So regardless of somebody spending 15 minutes at a clip within the actual Donna platform, the most important thing that we have is we've processed, we've got roughly a little under $2 billion of data that we process just within Donna, not to mention our legacy platform, Crux, that works a lot with carriers.

And that number is continually to grow every single month.

But our users have the chance to let us know, hey, was this recommendation a good one?

Was this one a little bit off base?

And it gets smarter and smarter as we go.

And not to get too much on the technical side, but the machine learning piece and the feedback from our customers, it's just like, you know, the Facebook stuff, thumbs up, hey, you like this or Twitter or whatever it might be.

It's going to help all of what we do get stronger, but also help the end result get stronger with our tech partners to push this stuff out into these other ecosystems. And that agency's own piece, I mean, I can't speak highly enough of Mo and Tolga and Kat and that team over there with what they've done to be able to build out their product, but their relationships with their agencies and what they're doing.
And on top of that, some of the other partners that we're all connected with and hate to use the word incestuous. But, Ryan, you know, I mean, like every single tech partner that we all work with has got the same clients, the same advisors.
And it's I mean, it's just so much fun. And we're all close friends, all the executive leadership teams of the companies too.
I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty great to be a part of. Yeah.
It was funny. I got accused the other day of being in a click.
Like you're in the click. And I was like, well, if by click, you mean I've worked for 16 years to establish trusted and respected partnerships with people that I know aren't going to screw me and I'm not going to screw them, then yes.
Exactly. Yeah.
I'm in a click, but you know, it's like, okay. You know, I mean, it's not like I have a popular Instagram channel and that's how I got in.
You know what I mean? Like I just, it's, it's funny to me. I think what is really cool about what you just said.
And it is, it is funny how like the mismatch and and crisscross but what happens is i mean and this is the truth guys if you're listening at home like when you find people this kind of goes back to our other part when you find someone that you know you can do business with and they're gonna be honest with you they're gonna be respectful they're gonna be trustworthy even if they disagree with you even if they disagree with the project or aren't interested in the project, they're going to give you that feedback. That's a valuable thing.
And, and, um, probably one of the most valuable things, you know, that exists because, you know, if you were to, if you were to look at my, at my bank account on daily basis, you would not say that I'm wealthy, but I believe that the connections I have, I am, I can call you on the phone and say, hey, man, have you seen this thing? What do you think about this thing? Like, I'm really I'm considering it, but I'm not really sure. And you'll be like, you know what, for this, maybe.
But for you, I don't think so. And I can get off that phone call and go, I know he wasn't trying to push me in this direction or that for his own well-being.
He was doing it because he wants me to be successful and because he has insights into something. And those kinds of relationships are so incredibly important.
And, you know, that's, and it's fun today being that, you know, where I was back in 2014, 2015, kind of looking out over the industry at trustedchoice.com and agency nation and seeing so much, there was a lot of turmoil. There was a lot of fighting and jockeying for position.
And I feel like today, a lot of that is over, or at least most of it. And what's happening is all these like-minded companies and people are coming together and starting to build real solutions.
And it just makes me so happy to see it because it's good for everybody. It absolutely does.
And I mean, you know, in this industry, it's not for the faint of heart at all with it. And I look at like the last handful of years, but especially the last couple with the relationships that we've been able to build again, like yourself with Paradiso and Amoli and all these people, you know, like Bradley Flowers and those guys down there.
And what I love is that when any single one of us picks up the phone and calls, 99% chance that phone's getting picked up right away. And we can talk through stuff.
I mean, you and I text back and forth about all kinds of industry relevant things, technologies and whatnot. I mean, it, I totally agree.
I mean, there's it, that's my favorite part about what gets me up is the relationships and what we're doing right now to make the industry a better place. And I love the transparency of someone and tell me, hey, Ron, you're totally outpaced by this.
I look at a guy like Mike Cormier, who I worked for at Risk Match. And this guy, he was the CEO of Marsh's Risk Consulting Business.
So he would just go out and buy companies for Marsh left and right. And I mean, he's seen a lot through the transactional side of things too.
But I sit there and kind of vent to him sometimes about things. And he just basically tells me, no in the wrong man here's here's the way you need to think about it too and you need people like that um versus everyone just saying yeah keep going buddy you're doing good stuff but that was me this morning I was having a moment and I was texting with Namoli and he just picked up the phone and called me and was like look this is the you know this is the way it is is the way it is.
Suck it up. And here's, here's how like, here you go.
And, and you just need that sometimes, you know what I mean? You just need someone to like, just like, it's almost like you need a slap across face. Like, okay, Hey, you had your moment to bitch.
Now it's time to get back to work. And, um, you know, you also learn who not to do business with, you know, you learn, you learn that guy't be trusted or she's going to, you know, she got to watch out.
Like, you know, that, that, that is just as important. And I think people discount that because, um, uh, it's, it's just as important to know who's a good person as someone who's going to hose you up because once you've hosed one person up that you're, you're, you're, yeah, you're, you're highly likely to do it again.
And, you know, you put your, your reputation online, you put money on the line, you put your time, your capital, your, you know, your friendships on the line. And if you do that with the wrong person, you know, you can, you can get in trouble.
So I think it's a, it's a safety net as well. And it's important.
Well, you, you, you mentioned the moly and I mean, that guy, he has a way about himself and if ever anybody has not had a chance to listen to him talk, I mean, I suggest hopping on some of his podcasts as prior ones and stuff too, but he is what you just said. I talked to him, you know, as much as anybody.
He has a way to be able to put things in perspective and a way to communicate very effectively too. I mean, I swear to God, like him and I are really unique because we're the same age, you know, played, you know, college athletics into it.
We both own gyms, the same type of gyms at the same time. So we're just like very in line with each other, just where we're at with our lives, both have a couple of kids and everything else like that too.
And, and I, I, every time I see his phone, his phone his number on my uh come up on my phone i mean i just enjoy every minute of that because that guy is tapped in as anybody as far as what's going on in the industry but he's one of the best freaking people you ever meet and him paradiso alike yourself i mean you guys are all about paying it forward and helping everyone um get to that spot that you want to be and i mean that again that's what said in the last handful of years, it's gotten so much better because the industry is heading that direction right now. Yeah.
Well, man, I want to be respectful of your time. I think I, I, you know, as we've gotten to know each other, I obviously think incredibly highly of you as a person.
I think what's going on with the company that you represent, Donna is a best in class tool in our space. You know, this probably to some people sound like a promotional whatever, but I don't give a shit because it's what I think.
You know what I mean? I had Rags on the podcast too. We did the same thing for Tarmaca because these are the tools that I use every day.
They are the tools that are, that are the core, not just usage wise, but like, I also, the way I think is like the tools you use create in some parts, like the philosophy behind which you build your agency, right? Like if you use a certain type of tool or represented by a certain company, that is an indication of what you believe, who you are. And I think to put data and analytics and the usage of it and really what it represents to our customer experience for me to put that at the core of Rogue.
And I couldn't be happier in our partnership. I couldn't be happier to be a user.
And, and I just think the world of what you're doing. And I hope, I hope everyone who listens, at least goes and gets the demo, at least hits the website, checks it out, get, get the socials in your ecosystem, just so you can know, you know, that's what I said about Tarmica was like, just know what's going on.
Maybe now's not the right time. That's perfectly fine.
Maybe never is the right time. But I do think it's important to know what you guys are doing because I think you're going to be a player for a long time in the space.
And I think some of the best in the business will be using you. And it just makes me happy to be able to share it with the audience.
Yeah, and Ron, again, I can't thank you enough for your friendship and partnership too and the opportunity to be on the show know, I'm more than happy to speak to anybody that wants to learn more from that perspective too. But I really appreciate everything you're doing for us.
But on top of that, all the other companies that you're involved with too. I mean, you're doing some great things, man.
So much appreciated on that end too. Thank you.
Where do people go? If they want to get in touch with you or learn more about Donna, where's the best spots for that? Yeah, yeah. So on Donna for agents.com and it's Donna spelled F-O-R agents.com and they can go on and there's watch a demo.
You can communicate through us through that channel. The emails will come directly to me.
If you need to chat with me directly, my email is Ron at Arias analytics.com with it. And then if you need to talk to Ryan and my cell phone number will be readily available too.
I I'm more than happy to have conversations with anybody that's interested, too. Would you be great? Awesome, man.
Well, hey, appreciate you, man. Be good.
All right. Thanks, man.
You too. See you.
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