Conifer Holdings

When insurance firm conifer switched to RingCentral, they turned their communications system from liability to asset

Region

Americas

Company size

100–399

Industry

Financial Services

cnfrh.com

Products used

Because RingCentral is one unified app that handles everything,
I was able to shut down four separate communications services we were paying for: our on-premises phone system, an in-house messaging platform, and two telco relationships.

Jason Brawner

Chief Information Officer

Becoming an insurance leader by catering to underserved customers

When they founded Conifer Holdings in 2009, the executive team wasn’t looking to compete with the insurance firms already dominating the industry. Instead, they wanted to offer insurance products to the businesses that those firms largely overlooked: niche operations such as taverns, wineries, and fast-food restaurants.

The strategy paid off. Conifer found strong demand almost immediately from these underserved hospitality businesses, and the company grew steadily year after year. Today, although the organization still operates with a relatively small staff, Conifer has six subsidiaries working together to offer a wide range of products in all 50 states.

But the insurance industry runs largely on phone calls. When COVID forced the company to transition its entire 150-employee staff to remote work, Conifer quickly realized the limitations of its communications infrastructure.

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A phone system that belonged in the liability column

Jason Brawner, Chief Information Officer for Conifer Holdings, points out that even prior to the pandemic, he was less than thrilled with the company’s phone solution. “We had an on-premise system that was technically VoIP, but it only worked well for people when they were in the office,” he explains.

One of Jason’s biggest concerns was business continuity. “We’re based in Michigan and with our phone system running in-house, storms could cause down time with the office network, meaning live calls could drop and employees could lose phone service for as long as the power was out.”

But Conifer had already invested in the phone system, and the IT team had gotten skilled at finding workarounds for the system’s shortcomings. Jason planned to squeeze another year or so out of that investment. Then COVID happened—and he realized Conifer couldn’t wait that long. “Our support and sales agents were struggling with the phone system at home. It just couldn’t support us as a remote company.”

With the old phone system, we couldn’t add someone to the support call queue if they were at home. With RingCentral, anyone can jump into a call queue from anywhere.

Jason Brawner

Chief Information Officer

RingCentral enables a 100% remote staff—and offers much more

When he rolled out RingCentral’s unified communications solution to all Conifer employees—enabling them to make and take business calls on their computers and smartphones—Jason realized within a day that he and his team had solved the company’s remote-communication challenges.

“At first, I was worried about how much new technology I was rolling out at once: a new app for voice, video conferencing, online fax, and team messaging. I thought, ‘I’m going to get calls from 150 employees asking for help.’ But RingCentral is so intuitive that everyone figured it out right away, and the whole company made the switchover without even a hiccup.”

Everyone is messaging with their coworkers on RingCentral all the time now. A lot of these people haven’t seen each other in almost a year, and I think the ability to relax a little and have fun with these messages is helping the team feel connected.

Jason Brawner

Chief Information Officer

But they were also the beneficiary of more RingCentral surprises

Solving the disaster recovery problem, and consolidating the company’s communications tools into a unified environment, weren’t the only benefits Conifer realized with RingCentral. After the implementation, the company discovered several business-enhancing features that they hadn’t even expected.

“The built-in SMS text messaging was gravy,” says Jason. “Our claims department likes to communicate with claimants via text, largely because it’s a way of creating and keeping a record of those communications. With RingCentral, we now have that texting capability built right into the platform with phone service and conferencing and everything else, which everyone can use from any device. That’s making things so much easier and more efficient for our employees.”

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