Jared Seyl Farmers Insurance: Busy Work and How Farmers is Working to Reduce It

In the field of insurance, employees are expected to work hard, sometimes staying at the office late into the night. However, people who do it too often don’t impress Jared Seyl. In fact, the Farmers Insurance Denver District manager believes that overtime is something to be avoided unless absolutely necessary. He also thinks that being busy for the sake of being busy doesn’t really add any value at all to one’s work.

Researchers at Columbia University recently found out that busy-ness is generally perceived as a status symbol. For many people, the busier they are, the closer they think they are to greatness. However, being busy by itself does nothing if the work doesn’t have a purpose. For example, when Jared Seyl joined Farmers Insurance, he noticed that people kept stacks of paper on their desks. When he asked one agent about the workload, the agent replied, “Oh, I’m actually done with all of them, but people here don’t like empty desks.” When he asked further, he found out that the agent was actually one of the most efficient in the district, but was afraid to let people know how easy the work seemed for him.

Stories like the one above aren’t unusual to Jared Seyl. Fortunately, Farmers Insurance is working on initiatives to reduce the amount of busy work that people do. Customer service representatives’ call queues have been reduced significantly thanks to chatbots that answer simple queries. This gives them the freedom to take on more complex calls. In addition, customers can now use Alexa to access their policies, among other things. As chatbots take in more calls, they learn more about their callers’ needs, such as the most frequently asked questions and most mentioned search terms.

However, for Jared Seyl and Farmers Insurance, these technologies are not out to take away jobs from humans. Instead, they are designed to make humans’ lives easier through the reduction of busy work.

Farmers Insurance Steps Up For California Wildfire Victims With MCCs

Jared Seyl is the Farmers Insurance district manager in the Denver District. Since taking over the post, Jared Seyl has overseen the introduction of over 50 financial products, managed the growth of insurance agents in his district, and led an unprecedented increase in clients choosing Farmers Insurance over other insurance providers. While he is based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, he has established a network of agencies all over the Denver metropolitan area, including Westminster and Centennial.

Jared Seyl and Farmers Insurance are committed to protecting their clients against uncertainty, whether it be personal injuries or calamities. For example, when wildfires hit Los Angeles, Ventura, and Butte Counties in California, Farmers Insurance was among the first insurance companies to go to the area and assist clients with filing their claims. Farmers deployed its Mobile Claims Centers (MCCs) to the three affected counties. For Jared Seyl ,the Farmers Insurance Mobile Claim Centers are best described as “insurance offices on wheels”. They have been deployed to states affected by calamities such as hailstorms (Texas), tornadoes (Missouri), and hurricanes (Alabama) and allow Farmers to provide immediate relief to clients who are still reeling from the effects of natural disasters. Each MCC is connected to the Farmers network, which makes it easy for agents on board to print checks to cover temporary housing costs and file claims with the company.

Farmers also provides emergency supplies, including hot meals for victims and first responders, household supplies, toiletries, drinking water, and toys for children. Jared Seyl recalls that Farmers Insurance even helped a family find their lost pet on more than one occasion, and in the aftermath of Hurrican Harvey, a number of MCCs even had therapy animals on board. With Farmers stepping up to help its clients in so many different ways, Jared Seyl cannot be any prouder of the work that he does for both his agents and his customers.