Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

Paid internship summer 2009 at Embrace Pet Insurance

We have one intern chosen so now I'm posting about another. Come join us for the summer - it's going to be a blast!

 

is looking for an intern to join our summer program in our Mayfield Village offices (781 Beta Drive, Mayfield Village, OH 44143). Embrace Pet Insurance

 

If you are a new high school grad who’s off to college in the autumn or a current college student who is:

·         a tech savvy data hound – someone who’s good at detective work on the web and is detail oriented

·         someone who can pick up the phone and talk to people (no sales involved)

·         someone who is flexible and doesn’t mind the changing environment of an early stage company

·         a pet lover who is not allergic to cats or dogs (we have a pet-friendly office with frequent 4-legged visitors)

·         a reliable person who works hard

Then we are looking for you.

 

Here’s what you would get out of it:

·         $8/hr for a 40 hour work week June - August

·         work experience in a venture-backed early stage company that would be very hard to come by otherwise

·         a great resume addition

·         a valuable reference (assuming one was deserved!)

 

Please email your resume and a cover email on why you think we should hire you over anyone else who is applying to Laura Bennett lb@embracepetinsurance.com.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you [or forward to your friends/family who might know someone!]

Job Opportunity: join us a Customer Care Embracer in sales

We've posted another job at Embrace Pet Insurance - a Customer Care Embracer. If you are applying,  please pay attention to the instructions at the bottom for best results.

DO YOU LOVE PETS & PEOPLE?

Can you sell on the phone while educating pet parents about pet insurance?

Do you like to use your intelligence on a daily basis?

Does the challenge of creating a pet insurance culture in the US excite you?

Embrace Pet Insurance -- a fast-growing, fun-loving pet insurer in Mayfield Village -- is looking for bright, innovative, and highly motivated individuals who are comfortable using technology and have strong communication and sales skills.

If you want to grow with us, then we want to hear from you. We offer a competitive salary ($25K - $35K), health benefits, pet insurance, and company ownership.

Skills & Experience:

• Must have prior experience as a successful sales representative in a call center environment and the results to prove it


• Strong customer service orientation – you’re not satisfied unless the customer is satisfied


• “Can do” attitude – no obstacles are too big and no tasks are too small


• Team oriented – pitching in to help get the job done


• Flexible - ability to work in a changing, dynamic, and sometimes chaotic early stage company environment


• Ability to take on more responsibility, including supervisory duties, as the company grows


• Pet lover who really cares about animals and their welfare

To apply, please send an email to hireme@embracepetinsurance.com with a well written cover letter including a paragraph on what pet insurance means to you and your resume. Be sure to include the words "CCE Blog" in the title.

Job posting at Embrace Pet Insurance: veterinary technician position

If any of you live in the Cleveland area and are a veterinary technician looking for a change or happen to know one, then this job posting is for you. Check it out:

Embrace Pet Insurance: Veterinary Technician Job Posting

www.embracepetinsurance.com

Do you love being a vet tech but would like to work outside the clinic setting?

Do you want to expand your veterinary medical knowledge while expanding into other opportunies?

Yes? Then Embrace Pet Insurance needs you!

We are a Mayfield Village OH based pet health insurance company looking for above-average veterinary technicians to train to become top quality claims adjusters (fondly called Claims Embracers.)

You will:

• use your veterinary savvy to interprete pet health histories,
• make judgements on how much to pay out for a claim process claims through our paperless workflow system,
• communicate with our pet parents, and work with all veterinarians involved and our underwriters (Lloyd’s of London)

You must be computer literate, have exceptional communication skills (both verbal and written), and work well under pressure.

We’ll teach you the rest.

Compensation: competitive plus benefits and small piece of ownership in Embrace. Flexible full-time work hours, a casual work environment where you can bring your dog to work, and lots of opportunity to develop within a small but growing company.

How to apply: Send Laura Bennett your resume and cover letter, plus your thoughts on how you see pet insurance benefiting pet owners and clinics via email to: lb@embracepetinsurance.com.

Make sure to include the words “CLMS” in the email title.

The importance of customer service for pet insurance

One of the issues we have to contend with at Embrace Pet Insurance is poor customer service. Not ours, but that of our competitors. 

Suppose someone gave you the most delicious chocolate in the world. You would be able to tell pretty quickly if you agree with that assessment or not. Just one bite would pretty well do it - it's immediate and obvious.

Contrast that with pet insurance. When presented with the choice of buying a pet insurance policy or not, you have to trust that when the time comes, your claims experience will be a positive one because that is really the essence of what pet insurance is all about isn't it?

And since you can't bite into it right then and there, all you can base that trust on is what you've heard about the pet insurance companies.

And that's not very comforting for a newer company like Embrace. We are building our reputation on the experience we give our customers but we are younger than the other companies and have fewer customers so we have to rely on pet parents getting over the hump of the poor reputation of pet insurance in the US.

We rely on our prospective customers having a good gut feel about Embrace, something we work hard on and I think we achieve pretty well, but we also have this bugaboo floating out there - the actions of our competitors. I have total faith in our Embracers but I see that I can't say the same about the service staff of our competitors. Relying on them doing good deeds does not help me sleep well at night.

I was perusing the Embrace Pet Insurance reviews on the Pet Insurance Review website today and I was struck by how so many of the comments refer to our staff and how helpful they are. Here are some excerpts:

...After many hours of researching the topic of pet insurance and pondering the cost vs. benefit, loopholes, etc. the Embrace staff answered every question and helped me to make this important decision... Emily Byrum-Hecht

...I had an 11 month labrador retriever that became very ill vomiting and with a fever. I had taken him to the Veterinary where they had a cat scan on him and found out they would have to do "Emergency Surgery". For the next 2 days I was on the telephone with Embrace staff and I have to say they were outstanding in customer service, compassionate with me throughout the entire time, especially "Christine"... Linda Pagan

...I asked a quote and got a fast answer. Sent them an email and got an email back within the hour. The lady I communicated with was really friendly and helpful... Christine S

I just filed my first claim, and it was incredibly easy. I was almost shocked when I found out that you CAN actually get a REAL PERSON on the phone. They even answer e-mails usually in the same day. Their communication is excellent. I think I pay maybe $5 to $10 more per month then I would at one of the other companies. To me it's worth it not to be trapped in voicemail hell, or have to talk an automated system. Angela

...I was most impressed by how much you all seemed to care about "Storm". As you know his injuries were terrible. I remember especially the e-mail from different people at Embrace with words of concern about him and of encouragement and care for how we(his Mom & Dad) were doing... Norma & Rich Kern

These comments bring joy to my heart. Our Embracers are the best, bar none.

The site also has other companies' reviews. I won't name names but this one is not atypical of many of the comments about many of the companies:

I do not recommend XXXX. They do not return my phone calls and half the time do not answer their phones. We recently sumbitted a claim that should have been covered by our plan, but they denied it for no reason. After we called to dispute, they completely changed our claim, from an injury to an illness. My dog was injured not sick! Shop around before using them!! Also, they were supposed to get back to us and they still haven't. We are canceling immediately and looking for other coverage.

The Embrace Difference is how we win over pet parents who are skeptical about pet insurance. This is how we change the fly-by-night reputation of pet insurance in the US.

It won't happen over night but by golly, it will happen. We are missionaries and we won't give up until it's done; you are seeing the birth of the pet insurance revolution.

Will you join the Embrace revolution today?

Selling Embrace Pet Insurance policies

Thank you everyone for your inquiries about selling Embrace Pet Insurance policies. We really appreciate your enthusiasm - it's nice to know that so many people are that excited about the future of pet insurance.

So just to let you know, we aren't selling pet insurance through other people for a while yet.

Here's a bit of background on selling pet insurance in the US.

The summary of it is that if you want to sell insurance, you have to be a licensed property and casualty insurance broker and have errors and ommissions insurance.

As well, if we had other people selling insurance on our behalf, we need a formalized contract between the producer (you) and the managing general agent (us), which needs tracking and managing.

Finally, our insurer (Lloyd's of London) has to agree that we can appoint other people to sell their insurance policies.

So, all of the above amounts to the fact that we don't sell through third parties right now. We're focusing on getting our website up for quoting and buying insurance up and running right now and unfortunately, signing up brokers is down the to-do list for now.

We do appreciate your interest though and I'll be sure to let you know though if we get to brokers on the list.

More job postings at Embrace Pet Insurance

Given the positive response from my previous post on positions at Embrace, I thought I'd let you what else we are currently hiring for. We are based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Of course, if you just think you'll be perfect for Embrace, no matter what the postings, we also want to hear from you. There's a lot of work to do!

Openings:

Director of Business Development: We want a highly resourceful individual to identify, build and implement channel relationships with companies and associations in the United States, probably pet-related but your imagination may lead you to unusual places to make some of these happen. This individual may have experience in a startup and will know how to prioritize efficiently, using limited resources for maximum gain.

Director of Operations: We need someone with the skills to implement, develop and run our operations, which includes our call center, back office systems, and an office location. Long term, your role as part of the exec team is to support the rapid growth of the company. This is not a technical IT role but requires a technically-oriented inquiring mind.

Web Programming: And while we are at it, if you are a clued-in web programmer, we have some contract work that's a sub project of our ongoing website development waiting for you. Here's a more techy posting for this position for those of you interested.

For all of these positions, email hireme@embracepetinsurance.com using the code WOOF0912BL and the title of the position in the email title.

Job opportunities - customer service with a twist

At Embrace Pet Insurance, we are looking for some good people to join us in our Embrace adventure. If you or anyone you know are based in the Cleveland area are interested in working for Embrace, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at hireme@embracepetinsurance.com.

Our first job posting is for Sales and Service Representatives - our Embracers.

Here's what we posted in the local newspaper:

CUSTOMER SALES & SERVICE REP:
ARE YOU AN EXPERIENCED CUSTOMER SALES & SERVICE REP WHO LOVES ANIMALS? Fast-growing, fun-loving pet insurer offering competitive salary ($25K - $35K), bonus, health benefits, and company ownership. Send resume to hireme@embracepetinsurance.com – use code WOOF01B

Do you like our code? And yes, we meant it when we said company ownership - "a piece of the pie" to be clearer.

Here's what Lea and Chris, two of our Embracers, say about their positions:

"While Embrace is still a company with a small staff, we’re headed for big things. We were attracted to Embrace for the opportunity to continue working with pets and the pet community. Having this goal in common has brought together a friendly and fun group of employees. But we’re also very professional and experienced in a range of pet care backgrounds.

Laura and Alex have worked hard over the past four years to build up a company that they want to succeed, and they’re set up their staff to succeed as well. We are always encouraged to think big, speak up, and pitch in. The training and support are thorough, and each staff member’s strong points are identified, in order to help them find the best position on the team. We are given encouragement and feedback daily, so that we can see the value of our contributions to Embrace. It’s good to know that we are recognized as an important asset to the company. On top of all of this, it’s nice to work for a technology based company that invests in progressive procedures, so that we can work efficiently.

We work hard along side of each other, and help our co-workers out when needed, so there’s flexibility in hours and there’s variety in the day to day projects. Our staff is treated well, and the benefits are very tangible. Each of us have a share in the company’s financial success, and we have both human and pet medical insurance available to us, as well as paid time off. It is clear that our company cares about us as staff, but also as real people.

Knowing that Embrace is going to be the trusted brand in pet insurance, and that we were there at the very beginning keeps our jobs exciting, and very fulfilling."

And they said all that without me standing right behind them :)

Seriously, send to your Cleveland-based friends if you think they'd be interested. The more, the merrier.