The Three Eras of Agency Operations
From spreadsheets to workflows to AI. Understanding where your agency is—and where it's going.
Every agency owner I talk to is in one of three places. Some are still running operations manually—spreadsheets, sticky notes, memory. Others have built automation—workflows that fire when conditions are met. And a few are starting to experiment with AI.
Here's what most people miss: these aren't competing approaches. They're eras. And understanding which era you're in—and why the next one matters—changes how you think about your agency's operations.
Let me walk you through all three.
The Manual Era
Everything runs on memory, spreadsheets, and individual effort
What It Looks Like
- CSRs remember to follow up because they wrote it on a sticky note
- Lead routing happens via forwarded emails or Slack messages
- Pipeline reviews are done manually—someone opens every deal and checks the dates
- New hires take months to ramp because "the process" lives in someone's head
What Works
- •Flexible—you can change anything instantly
- •Low upfront cost—no software to learn
- •Personal—every interaction is custom
What Breaks
- •Doesn't scale—your ceiling is how many people you can hire
- •Things fall through the cracks constantly
- •When someone leaves, their knowledge walks out the door
The honest truth: Manual operations work great until about $3M in revenue. Then you start losing deals because someone forgot to follow up. Or a CSR quits and you realize half your process only existed in their head.
The Automation Era
Systems that execute predefined rules when conditions are met
What It Looks Like
- When a lead comes in after hours, a workflow assigns it to the next available producer
- When a deal sits in "Quoted" for 7 days, a follow-up email sends automatically
- When a service ticket is created, it tags the right CSR based on the client's assigned team
- Renewal reminders fire 90/60/30 days out—no one has to remember
What Works
- •Reliable—systems don't forget or get distracted
- •Scalable—automations run whether you have 10 leads or 100
- •Documented—your process is now codified in the system
- •Transferable—new hires can see exactly how things work
What Breaks
- •Brittle—if the condition isn't exactly right, nothing happens
- •Takes time to build—someone has to map every scenario
- •Maintenance burden—every edge case needs a new rule
- •Can't adapt—when the lead says "my boyfriend needs insurance," the workflow doesn't know what to do
The Real Problem with Automation
It's not that automation doesn't work. It's that it only works for the scenarios you anticipated. When a lead submits a form with their boyfriend's name in the notes field, your "assign to producer" automation doesn't know to create a second contact. It just... routes the lead. And six months later, you find out you never quoted the boyfriend.
The honest truth: Automation is a massive upgrade from manual operations. But it's still rigid. You're trading "things fall through the cracks" for "things fall through the cracks unless you've written a rule for every possible scenario." Which, spoiler: you haven't.
The AI Era
Systems that understand goals and make decisions to achieve them
What It Looks Like
- A lead form mentions "my boyfriend also needs coverage"—the AI creates a second contact, links them as household members, and generates separate opportunities for both
- A service ticket comes in at 2 AM asking if a claim is covered—the AI reads the policy, determines coverage, drafts a response, and closes the ticket before the client wakes up
- A deal sits in "Quoted" for 38 days—the AI audits the pipeline, finds it, reads the notes, determines it's stalled, and flags it with a suggested next action
- A lead submits the wrong license number—the AI notices the format doesn't match state requirements and flags it before anyone wastes time on a quote
The Core Difference
Automation asks: "Did the condition I'm watching for happen?"
AI asks: "What am I trying to accomplish, and what's the best way to get there given what I'm seeing?"
What Works
- •Adaptive—handles scenarios you didn't anticipate
- •Reads context—understands notes, emails, policy docs
- •Makes judgment calls—not just "if/then," but "given this situation, what makes sense?"
- •Learns your voice—can draft responses that sound like you, not a robot
What to Watch
- •Won't be perfect day one—needs to learn your agency's patterns
- •Requires oversight initially—you're teaching it what "good" looks like
- •Not magic—it's a very good pattern recognizer, not a mind reader
- •Most valuable for judgment-heavy tasks, not simple repetitive ones
The honest truth: AI isn't replacing automation—it's handling the gaps automation can't reach. The "my boyfriend needs insurance" scenarios. The "this deal's been sitting here for 38 days and no one noticed" moments. The 2 AM service tickets. That's where AI lives.
So, Where Are You?
Most agencies are somewhere between Era 1 and Era 2. You've built some workflows, but a lot still runs manually. And that's fine—as long as you know what you're trading.
If you're mostly in Era 1 (Manual)
Your next move is automation. Get your high-volume, repetitive tasks into workflows. Lead routing. Follow-up sequences. Renewal reminders. This buys you reliability and scale.
The Architect can build these for you in 8-10 minutes per workflow. No coding required.
If you're in Era 2 (Automation)
Your next move is identifying the gaps. What's still falling through the cracks? Where are you building new rules every week because edge cases keep showing up? Those are AI opportunities.
Run a Board audit to see exactly what's slipping through. Then decide if you want digital employees to catch them.
If you're experimenting with Era 3 (AI)
Your next move is focused deployment. Don't try to AI-ify everything at once. Pick one high-judgment, high-variance task—lead association, service ticket triage, stalled deal recovery—and let AI prove itself there first.
That's how we do it: run it in Justin's agency first. If it works there, then we ship it.
The Punch Line
You don't have to be in Era 3 to run a successful agency. Plenty of agencies are crushing it with solid Era 2 automation.
But here's what's true: carriers are in Era 3 right now. They're using AI to underwrite faster, price more accurately, and identify risks you can't see. The gap between what carriers can do and what agencies can do is widening.
The question isn't whether you should adopt AI. It's when do you want to start closing that gap?
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