I Thought You Were Taking Notes

29 Jun I Thought You Were Taking Notes

Has this ever happened to you?

You and one of your colleagues are meeting with a client discussing a wide range of key issues involving coverage, benefits strategy, “what if” questions, etc. You get back to the office and plan to enter the meeting notes in your agency/document management system. Unfortunately, you find out that since both of you were involved in the discussion, neither of you took notes. This prompts you to attempt to recreate and document the discussion.

If this has not happened to you, you are fortunate. It occurs frequently in many agencies.

As you may imagine, out of the various E&O Plus Key Components, one is focused on client communication. Among the best practices within this section is:

• All communication relevant to the client’s insurance program must be retained in the client file. Producer/client discussions in the field are not exempt. It is critical to document questions on coverage such as the “what if” conversations that occur informally.
• Conversations, emails, texts, form letters, and other communication between the agency, client, and carrier should be saved in a central client file. This will make it much easier for anyone looking for specific information to find it.
• The agency should have a defined filing structure with naming standards, and retention policy followed by all employees. Many agencies have created a “naming convention tree” that details exactly which documents are to be stored in each section. Once again, the goal is consistency to enable the prompt retrieval of documents.

Back to the issue of taking notes. When meeting with a client, the agency producer is often accompanied by an account manager. In these situations, it is typically the account manager’s responsibility to take notes about the discussion. Upon getting back to the office, those notes (and hopefully any notes taken by the producer) are entered in the system. One key suggestion is for a recap of the client discussion to then be memorialized back to the client. The goal here is to ensure all parties have a common understanding of what the client is looking to accomplish. This will be a key piece of evidence if a problem develops and the client states they have a different recollection of the meeting. In addition to detailing the more salient points of the discussion, the notes should reflect the date, time, and location of the meeting as well as the names of all parties that attended the meeting.

You may be wondering what should happen if the producer is the only party meeting with the client. This certainly does happen. In these situations, the primary responsibility now falls on the producer to be the talker, the listener, and the note-taker. Not an easy job, but a critical job. This is very similar to the role that myself and the other E&O Plus reviewers play when meeting with you and your representatives. I always try to have my questions typed and in a binder. This makes it easier to take notes. If producers are not using this approach, they may want to consider it.

The bottom line is that all agency personnel should focus on having solid, quality notes from their discussions with clients (including any decisions that are made). As the saying goes, “if it is not in the file, it didn’t happen.”