In our new monthly spotlight series, we ask our team members to share a little bit about their role at BCS. First up – a peek into our service department with five questions for Dan Watkiss, director, Service Partner and Account Management.
Q: Describe your team’s function.
A: My team is our Account Management team and our function is to take care of our stop loss and ancillary/voluntary benefit customers. We define the customer as our Blue Plan partners, our brokers, our policyholders and our BCS sales team. Our main goal is to support our sales team efforts in adding new business and retaining our current customers.
Q: What role does your team play when it comes to launching a new product?
A: We are involved in launching new products from a distribution standpoint, starting with the operational needs to set up processes to quote and execute sold business. Once launched, our main function turns into assisting our sales team in those processes to quote and sell business.
Q: What would you say is the most important skill someone in your profession needs?
A: Empathy, without a doubt. From working with internal partners to handling an escalated service issue from a customer, understanding the needs and feelings of the other person can help you support them to the fullest extent possible.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: Simply, the people I get to work with here at BCS is the best part of my job. The functions of my role in particular are ones that allows me to work with so many people in so many different ways. That has always been a huge motivator for me and I am so incredibly fortunate to have found such a great group of folks to work with!
Q: How do you maintain work/life balance?
A: I live a little farther west from our office, right about where farm country begins. I have found that if I leave after rush hour in the morning, it only takes me about 35 minutes to commute in, compared to over an hour during the rush. So I wake up a bit earlier and handle emails and organize my day at home, so that when I get in to the office, I can hit the ground running. This also allows me to drop my kids off at school most mornings, which is a great way to get to spend more time with them. I also have had the opportunity to work from home on a couple of occasions when I had some service being done to my home. Having that flexibility and the support from my leadership and team has been great to maintaining a good work/life balance.
