Reflections and Roadmaps: Elevating AgencyBloc's AMS+ and Beyond in 2025

In this episode of Insurtech Building Blocs, Tim Robinson and Cory Schmidt reflect on the past year, discussing AgencyBloc's growth, product development, and the importance of customer feedback. They highlight new features and innovations set for release in 2025, as well as strategies for enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction. The conversation emphasizes the company's commitment to continuous improvement and adapting to market trends.

Takeaways
- AgencyBloc has been focusing on product development and customer satisfaction.
- Customer feedback is crucial for product optimization.
- The integration of new features is a priority for AgencyBloc.
- The company is committed to making their products easier to use.
- There is a strong emphasis on understanding customer needs and preferences.
- AgencyBloc is excited about new tools to enhance customer efficiency.
- The team is preparing for significant innovations in 2025.
- Continuous improvement is a core value at AgencyBloc.

Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Reflections on the Holiday Season
02:54 AgencyBloc's Growth and Product Development
05:55 Customer Feedback and Product Improvement
09:00 Innovations in VoIP and Mobile App Development
12:15 New Product Launches and Future Plans
18:00 Website Solutions and Marketing Strategies for Agencies

Insurtech Building Blocs is presented by AgencyBloc, the #1 Recommended Insurance Industry Growth Platform serving the benefits and senior market space with 6,500+ customers across multiple solutions within the platform. With a range of insurance-specific solutions for sales enablement, client and policy management, compliance management, quoting and proposals, and commissions management — all with highly recommended customer support — we've got you covered.

Learn more at https://www.agencybloc.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/agencybloc
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/agencybloc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/agencybloc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agencyblocams
X: https://twitter.com/agencybloc

Transcript

Tim Robinson (00:02.262)
All right, welcome to another episode of Insurtech Building Blocs. I'm Tim Robinson, CEO of AgencyBloc. I'm joined by my co-host, Cory Schmidt, our co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. Cory, awesome to see you. How you doing?

Cory Schmidt (00:18.733)
You as well, Tim, doing well. Coming off the slumber of the holiday break and trying to wake my brain back up. I don't know about you.

Tim Robinson (00:27.538)
Much the same, and we've heard this a lot where the compressed time between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, the Christmas holiday season, it's real. You know, I felt like, this year I was ahead of the normal curve as far as, you know, thinking about gifts and getting things ready. But man, was it, there was some serious compression in there and I feel like I need a break from the break.

But that happens, right?

Cory Schmidt (00:58.797)
Yes, yes, I know the feeling, but it was nice. It was great to have a little break. We're recording this, you know, between the holidays. And so I think our team is still, you know, enjoying some time off. So I'm excited for everybody to be recharging and ready to come back, you know, hit the ground running. In the meantime, we can all play with all of our new Christmas toys, you know, between now and the first of the year.

Tim Robinson (01:24.27)
That's fair. The only, you know, it's funny because I had this, this, uh, conversation with, with my, my two boys who are 20 and 18 now where historically, you know, when they were eight, nine, ten, it was fun. You'd go find the toys, all those things. And you're kind of like, "Ooh, I really wish I would have had this when I was eight, nine or ten." Now it's, "Well, these skis?

Yeah, I'd love to have these skis!" So, it's on their list. I actually have fun shopping for ski equipment or whatever it might be. So everything gets more expensive, unfortunately, but I guess there's just less things under the tree. So it was a trade-off, but, you have to have some fun with it. So, I am super excited for our discussion today though. I think, prior to the holidays, you'd put out an op-ed to the community

Cory Schmidt (02:02.7)
Yes.

Tim Robinson (02:19.854)
uh, talking about AgencyBloc, our products, uh, what we've been working on, uh, a look back, uh, really over, over the last uh, couple of years. And it is hard to, hard to believe for me, you know, two years with the team, uh, yourself that we're a 16 uh, year old business, right? We celebrated that just a few months ago. Uh, a lot's been changed. It's always fun to uh, uh, see some of the pictures that, that

scroll across and yourself and business partner Adam and some other team members that are still with us in some of the early days. Maybe Maybe a step above working out of a basement or a garage, but but probably not too far, but pretty cool to see how far we've come as as an organization and team and our product suite. So it'd be great to hear from you

just some of your thoughts, you know, as you were putting together, putting together that op-ed. A: what was the, the synthesis or why  put it together and B: what were some of the key points that you felt like you really wanted to communicate out to, to the community.

Cory Schmidt (03:36.323)
Yeah, happy to share. You know, I think for me it was an opportunity, you know, going into the end of the year. We always go through the period of, you know, setting goals, reflecting back. What have we done well? What haven't we done well? What do we want to accomplish in the year ahead? And one of the things that, you know, that we've been talking about a lot internally is just, you know, leaning in with existing customers and making sure that the products continue to be best in class.

we tout "#1 Agency Recommended Solution" That's not a made up term. We're using real reviews to base that knowledge, but we always need to continue to strive to do better. And so as I was thinking back to AMS+, which launched in January of 2024, we did a lot leading up to that to bring the product to market. Like our teams were...

furiously bringing two products together. Like we acquired Radius at the end of 2022. It took us a couple of months to kind of dig in and understand exactly how the products might work together and what each product set was really good at. And so we really spent the next eight or nine months, so this is in '23, bringing the products together. And I think...

The good news is we made a tremendous amount of difference in terms of the capabilities that our products had, like customers that ask for a number of things, a large majority of which were solved by bringing those products together. So January of '24, the combined solution launched, but we undoubtedly had to take... To make decisions along the way, I'll say, in terms of how the products would work together.

I'm not sure how many of the folks listening have run software companies, but when you have two disparate software technology solutions that do different things, it's not always easy to make them talk seamlessly with each other. Huge shout out though to the team and the work that they did to do the work and then launching in January. Lots of excited customers around the new capabilities and features.

Cory Schmidt (05:54.351)
But one of the things that kind of became apparent as the year went on is just, you know, we needed to go back and I'll say smooth off some of the rough edges. So you bring these things together. The picture that I shared during one of our marketing off-sites was, you know, kind of looked like the Ghostbusters mobile, you know, where they take all the parts and like it looks like they've, you know, welded them all onto the car. And so I think it's just a good analogy that it wasn't quite as polished as it could have been.

And so I think the team agrees and I think we've always had a culture of really leaning in and listening to our customers. And when our customers say something like we listen to them and they said, "Hey, this is clunky, this doesn't work quite as well as it could." And so we're taking that pretty seriously. And so we're gonna be investing a lot of our time in the coming months and in fact already have of just making that experience better.

making the products work more similarly to each other. for those of you that are AMS+ users, I'm talking about managing leads similarly to how you would manage a customer, right? So that that's more of a cohesive, consistent experience. So I think that's the area where, looking back, we needed to do more and now we're going to do more. We're going to own up and we're going to step up and make it work really well and really focus on making AMS+ easy to use, which...

You spend 16 years building features into a software product. It undoubtedly gets more complicated to make it easier to use. But that's really going to be our mantra for the next few months, and I think it will show.

Tim Robinson (07:34.188)
Yeah, it's a, this is always regardless of the product, software, hardware, consumer devices, whatever it might be is, you kind of go through this phase of rather rapid innovation. and that can be done through either you're building out the features yourself or you acquire a product, integrate that product and you want to get it to market so that you can get adoption, so you can get feedback and really understand.

where there may be opportunities for optimization. And I think we've done a really nice job of that. mean, I give yourself and the team a ton of credit for what we were able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time, you know, against the backdrop of 16 years. And you look at all of the things that we brought to market in less than 12 months. It really is great. I think they, to your point,

there were really important features that help our customers be more effective, manage their book of business, attract new customers, be more profitable, do all those things. And we saw that bear out through the enrollment, open enrollment season that just ended. But to your point, we've learned a lot as well. So we're leaning in, we're addressing some of the areas that we felt were also some of the feature gaps.

I think some pretty cool stuff coming for the VoIP functionality. I don't know if you want to share there, but I guess I will. And you can tell me different, but I think we're actually building out a mobile app to support our VoIP functionality, which I think will be a tremendous lift or opportunity for our customers to be able to find additional ways to leverage our functionality there.

Cory Schmidt (09:28.92)
Yeah, totally agree. And I think you made the comment of, you know, get the product to market and get feedback. And I think, you know, wanted to maybe make a special shout out to like our customer success managers and also our, customer support teams. Like the amount of feedback that we've cataloged and have access to is pretty phenomenal. And I don't, I don't know that a lot of companies like track and organize the feedback quite the way that we do. Maybe some do, but I'm really proud of how our team has done that because

You know, as your company grows and certainly the company has grown a lot, especially in the last few years, you don't always have that direct connection to the customer that you once had. And I'll say like, when I open up our, our feedback portal and take a look at like what's been voted on and what has the highest, momentum, you know, for lack of a better word, like recent kind of feedback, like it never ceases to amaze me how well our team does at capturing and logging that feedback.

You know, even have a solutions team internally that has reached out to customers and had more in depth phone calls where they can really understand, you know, how customers are using the product. And to your point, Tim, on the mobile app, like that came as a direct result of a lot of those conversations. Like, you know, we're hearing agents are trying to use the new communication tools in the field. It's not as easy to do so through like a web browser. They want something that's more native to their device. and so we're to lean in heavily on that front. Like I think it's a huge opportunity for us to,

you know, to continue to expand on the communication tools that we already have. and so we're excited to, you know, to further invest in that realm. I think, you know, can't say enough awesome things about, you know, our internal teams, you know, logging and sharing that feedback and, also the willingness of our customers to share that feedback. Like sometimes, you know, customers are just mad and they, don't share something like, or they're irritated by something. They're like, "I'm not going to pass that along", but

Man, we have a lot of very invested customers, I'll say, in our platform that have been with us for many of them for many, many years. And they continue to trust us and they basically have encouraged us all along the way to just continue to do better.

Tim Robinson (11:44.258)
Yeah. And it's, you know, it is the reality is we may not be able to get to all the requests or practically we're not going be able to get to all the requests. Right. But certainly being able to catalog and view and prioritize based on the broader need. It takes a lot of discipline. You know, and one of the things that I've said a lot with, with the team and in other organizations is I love product management because you get.

The analytics, you get the creative and you're ultimately solving problems, right? Customer or customers problems. And so you get to feel good about really good about that. But the biggest challenge with it is you've got infinite demands and finite resources. And, it's, it's part of the fun, you know, part of the joy that comes out of it, but it's incredibly difficult. and I know we've spent a lot of time as a leadership team at, offsite.

A couple off sites, a number of virtual sessions really working through what are the things that we should, should deliver to have the greatest impact to really help our customers be more efficient, be more effective in the work they're doing. So, yeah, I think it's, really looking forward to where the core product set is going as we, head into '25 and beyond. and to your point.

as well, it's, it's a part of our culture. can hear it and see it when, when you're having conversations, we've got the various communication channels and you can see how team members are advocating for certain things. And, we just, you know, sure. It gets into our methodology so we can be thoughtful about how we approach it, but it's always appreciated. and then that also provides a bit of the catalyst or the starting point for the additional features.

Uh, that and products that we can bring to market. So it's the, as we say, kind of hardening the core, like really the usage, simplifying the usage, making the, uh, utilization even easier, even smoother for our customers. Uh, but then where do we take the product from here? And so what we're able to do in late '24 is do a, uh, a soft or a limited release on some pretty great, uh, products.

Tim Robinson (14:04.662)
And now we're starting to see more traction and really come out with a formal release in, I think most of them are in Q1, if not Q1 into early Q2 and '25. do you want to take a moment and talk about a couple of those things?

Cory Schmidt (14:20.012)
Yeah, for sure. So the ones that we, you know, piloted in Q4, as you mentioned, Tim, Rx Collect was the first one. So we have a new tool that allows our customers to send out a questionnaire or a survey, if you will, to their beneficiaries or their customers to collect prescriptions, providers, and pharmacies in advance of AEP. And so that's a fairly laborious process. you

if you do it at the time of having kind of that first meeting with the beneficiary. But obviously if you can get that out in advance, those customers can go through the process of putting that information in and doing it in advance of AEP obviously makes our customers more effective during the busiest time of the year, which is basically fourth quarter. So we spent a lot of time in last year building out that capability. We had a fair number of customers piloting that as well.

and got some really great feedback, again, to your point, get something into the hands of customers and listen to them. So we've been actually actively making some changes and modifications to that feature and we'll be launching that, I think, certainly in Q1, I think probably the latter part of Q1. So that will also come with integrations to quoting and enrollment platforms as well. So obviously collecting that data is one thing.

All of that data will be housed securely in the agency management platform, but then a broker will need to get that into the quoting solution when it comes time to actually run quotes for that customer. so our team is working on that integration as well. So that one's, I think, really exciting. I think it pairs so nicely with all the other tools that we already have, like scope of appointment and the appointment scheduler and...

In fact, I believe you can actually attach those to the same email that's going out. And again, all of that will come back in into a single solution, single view of your customer record with all of the compliance directly attached to it. If a customer happens to call you up and say, "Hey, I no longer take this prescription, I'm now on this", or "I've added this prescription", you can also record that directly on their customer record so that, again, when the time comes, you can very quickly and easily

Cory Schmidt (16:44.587)
sync that into the quoting platform, you know, to leverage that data. So I think it's a really nice add to our platform. I think it's something that is going to save our customers a lot of time. And again, like save them time during what's probably the most hectic time of the year, which is AEP.

Tim Robinson (17:05.324)
No, and I think the prospects of, trying to find ways to help our customers, they're having a lot of really meaningful, important conversations and our ability to support those and make those as streamlined as possible, it matters. know we have other thoughts for product expansion where we can...

provide additional opportunities or additional relief, I guess I would say. So, look forward to talking about that at a later date as well. And maybe, just as we kind of transition, here we are heading into '25. There's certainly some things in the market that we're going to be staying close to. know our customers are, whether it be some of the CMS

rulings. There's probably some leadership changes that may have some impacts. yeah, we're recording, I've been talking and we're looking forward to bringing on some guests that will really help I'd say maybe, I don't know if, I guess I'd say provide some clarity on perspectives around a number of the transitions and shifts in the market. So looking forward to having those. We'll get those

Uh, teed up and, you know, I'd say start looking for those in early Q1, which is only a couple. I can't even say a couple of weeks away, couple of days away. Um, but, uh, look forward to that. Uh, We've got a new Chief Revenue Officer Um, so we're going to do a quick session with, with him. He's, if you, if you look them up, he's, he's done quite a few podcasts. So I think Cory and I'll probably learn a couple of things there. Uh,

Cory Schmidt (18:43.288)
Yes.

Tim Robinson (19:02.584)
but look forward to having Rick Fox on our next one. And then again, we're going to bring on some guests, which we think will definitely provide some great perspectives on the industry. If you guys have recommendations or suggestions for topics or guests that you'd like to hear from, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Let us know. We want this podcast to be something that's

really helpful on the work that you do, whether you're an AgencyBloc customer or not, we'd love for you to be a customer, but if you're not, we understand. And hopefully you'll see the value that we bring and the care that we have for our customers and the work that they do. So looking forward to 2025, a lot of amazing things going on in the product as Cory has mentioned and,

we're not done yet. I think '25 and beyond, We've, we've got some really cool stuff that we're gearing up to deliver and I look forward to sharing that with everybody.

Cory Schmidt (20:07.576)
Yeah, you mentioned, Tim, you mentioned what we were working on in Q4. The other thing that not really related to AMS+, but also ties really nicely together is we also piloted our new Medicare website solution. So that was also in pilot. In Q4, we were pretty quiet about it. I think we just did maybe a press release on the topic. So I think it's now out there and known that we have a solution for websites, for insurance agencies.

Tim Robinson (20:21.838)
Yeah.

Tim Robinson (20:29.357)
Yeah.

Cory Schmidt (20:36.495)
We started with kind of Medicare focus, but our team has been expanding that and actually going to be able to serve multiple lines of business based on, you know, what agencies are doing, whether it's group benefits, ancillary products, senior, ACA under 65. So pretty excited about that. Then, you know, we'll have our convo with Rick, but obviously his experience really fits in nicely. I know we'll be spending, you know, a lot of time building out

some additional marketing capabilities. You had mentioned attracting, retaining customers. That's the biggest challenge that we hear of from our customers. And we'll be spending a fair amount of time building tools that we think will better help them do that. Man, there's a lot to be excited about, a lot to still figure out, which what gets us excited and gets us up in the morning. But a lot of cool things that I think will be coming to AgencyBloc in '25.

Tim Robinson (21:34.006)
Yeah, that's the website and the content piece. I think very near and dear to our hearts as well, right? Some of our, your background was Spinutech, my background with FMG, which is where I met Rick through Agency Revolution. Anyway, there's a lot of passion as well as the product leadership that we brought in. So there's a lot of experience

in this area, so we look forward to bring it into the AgencyBloc solutions and making sure that it's relevant for, for our customers that to your point attract and retain retain customers, and be even more successful.

Cory Schmidt (22:18.894)
Yeah, I couldn't be more excited. There's still a lot, you know, again, we're going to invest heavily in hardened, like you said, hardening the core. call it smoothing off the rough edges, like making things really easy to use for our customers. All while we will continue to move the ball forward and really figure out ways to make agencies basically more efficient, more productive. Our goal is to make them more money essentially. And I think we have a lot of things in the mix that are going to help do that.

Tim Robinson (22:48.886)
Love it. Excited for '25, Cory.

Cory Schmidt (22:52.076)
Likewise. Yes.

Tim Robinson (22:55.15)
Well, really appreciate the time, the insights, very helpful. I always pick something up from these conversations with you. So hopefully our listeners have as well. And Cory, look forward to seeing you in 2025. See you soon in 2025, how about that?

Cory Schmidt (23:15.714)
Yes, Happy New Year, everyone. And yeah, look forward to continuing to share what's going on with it with, you know, with the team at AgencyBloc.

Tim Robinson (23:24.056)
Great. Happy New Year, Take care.