customer service representative

FINAL EXPENSE DIRECT

Worked w them several months no longer working w them now. 

Preface: I had previously experienced decent success w both final expense and Medicare via phone working my own (very costly) leads and was hoping for more balance ie:  willing to accept reduced commission in exchange for greater volume and lower expenses …(and inbound calls!) 

They paint the rosy picture when initially recruiting…, please keep in mind that as the saying goes, anything that looks too good to be true usually is.

The people were mostly great to work with, my direct manager was awesome! (probably also on the verge of a stroke himself trying to meet production goals lol)

Typical leads were poverty-level folks without 2 cents to rub together.  (By nature, final expense is geared toward lower income demographics, but this was absolute bottom of the barrel)… It quickly became obvious the top tier leads were filtered to the existing core group of agents. 

This outfit is nothing but an agent mill. Spent hours on calls trying to convince ppl who couldn’t afford 50$ light bill to spend 70$ month on overpriced life insurance.  Complete waste of time. 

Cold calls were made to prospects by pushy 3rd party call centers, prospect is railroaded onto the line and transferred over.  People on the other line were broke, confused, angry or all of the above. (I made a few sales that actually stuck, which surprised me.) 

Was ‘let go’ due to lack of production after maybe 2 months, told I didn’t have what it takes lol… 

Dawned on me later,  only ones making money (at least on paper) were the ‘core’ group, most of whom had been with them many years. (They were by no means telesales pros, but there was one distinctly prominent commonality which I found most intriguing :)

I was the only left from my training group of 4 or 5, everyone else had either quit or been let go. There had been another group brought in after ours, most of whom had been fired or left before I did as well. 

You’ll spend quite some time learning a lengthy script - not bad, but over the top with emotionally infused nonsense and quite lengthy.  Anytime you’re not
meeting their expectations they’ll tell you it’s because you have not been following the script. (This is great if someone is a beginner and needs to learn the basics of telephonic sales which I’m assuming a lot of these folks were.)

The idea with phone sales is to quickly engage and build trust and rapport with the client… easy to do if you actually have an interested lead! 

The problem? 
98% of leads are garbage, in spite of the pretty picture they paint.
 If you don’t have an interested prospect, who has a need / desire to purchase life insurance it’s next to impossible to convince otherwise, especially from an outbound call out of the ether. 
(I'd already known this but their recruitment folks are the real sales pros)

Spend the time and money-  invest in yourself for your own prospecting / marketing efforts. It’ll pay off much better than being run through an agent mill. 



A typical day at work would be to log in at 9am Est. and have a quick sales meeting and then jump into your team meeting right after. The agents that have been with the company can be very unprofessional in the meetings; cursing, etc. The managers are okay but I feel (in my opinion) that the owners of the company think very little of the agents. My position was commission only, you are paid 45%+ for Simplified Issue plans. The carriers for the SI plans, pay you directly and Final Expense Direct pays a flat $75 for all Guarantee Issue policies with no chargebacks on GI policies. If you are thinking about working for this company, please take this note into consideration: This is from one of the owners/co-owners after asking for my commission from the GI policies that went in-force a month ago from writing this review: "When an agent leaves, the possibility of chargebacks coming in is a guarantee.  If an agent wasn’t selling for at least a year to build up earned income to cover any chargebacks, then policies going negative will result in a chargeback.  We hold any GI App fees or other bonuses to pay down debt that rolls to us. If after one year, we have not received any chargebacks from either carrier, then we will release the GI app fees and pay them to you." This is information that should be explained before the agent takes the position. If you are use to making a 6 figure income, this is not the company for you. 

same thing every day, same script, same process. they want you to make sales everyday and if you don't then they make you go to training but its not real training or relative training. basically wasn't fun and repetitive and they fire people for not immediately bringing a profit to the company or getting it right away. the clients are worth talking to but if you don't have a sell or bust perspective or hustlers drive then you won't last. and they blame you for not making sales, it can't possibly be the system or the leads or anything accept you. you also have to pay the company 300$ a month for "IT and leads and to use their office and computer and headset and system"... you have to be there everyday for the morning meeting which is mandatory and then be talking for so many hours saying the same thing and then reverse psychology people into buying and pay 300$ to barely make any money in the beginning and then if you can't do that then its all your fault and they fire you. but then again, the insurance business in general is a hard business to be in.

The management team doesn't care about your health sick and all you need to be at work. If you have issues with you children the management team considers you a liable. It's best not to have family like parents or young children working for this company.  They want you to think about them and only them. They dont give e raises. I was there for 2 yrs and working fulltime and never recieved a raise. When speaking with HR inregards to issues they force you to quit or will fire you because they consider it a complaint and they dont want to resolve the issue. They dont acknowledge the work you've done to help the company's growth. They treat their employees like animals. The work environment feels like a prison.

The flexibility and professionalism here is awesome. The management staff are very knowledgeable and professional. The people here are easy to get along with and generally have a great heart. Furthermore, we get to help families EVERYDAY and give them a sense of satisfaction on knowing that their family is protected. That feeling alone is gratification enough for me. The compensation as an agent was uncapped and to take home at least $1,500 check home weekly is very rewarding. I love what I do and I love the fact that I was given an opportunity to grow here. I like that fact that they promote from within and I am a walking testimony of this. This is like my second family and I am proud to be apart of it.

This company will take 60% of your commission simply because they provide regurgitated leads. They also charge you $300 a month to work there on top of getting the bigger piece of pie from commission! Most leads they use are not exclusive. They use offshore cold calling companies, use robo dialers and they use an actual robot machine that sounds real to trick people into talking to you! The exclusive leads they use are from tv ads during the time no one is even watching. The training they say they do is just a week and they force you to parrot a script that's usually hit or miss. There is better opportunities out there. Don't waste your time!

This is a good opportunity, but you can't do it part time you have to take at least 10-15 calls a day because some of the people calling in aren't qualified however, the majority of callers are strong leads who want what you're offering. They've got a great customer service team  to help with back office stuff that I hate doing. They also help with bad debt and collecting on charge-offs which takes a lot off my plate. There is a learning curve to the technology but once you get it down it's easy to use. The quoting tool is nice. Good management team available for support at all times. Overall, once you get used to the calls and how to handle them, you're making good money.

They don't care about the employees.  Only the pockets of themselves.   It's a family run company so they only matter.  Everyone else is their slaves to make them money.  They give no raises.  You can't be sick or have family emergency anything or they will fire you. They put a single mother and child on the streets knowing that's money that will go in their pockets instead of paying the mother to help keep a home over her kids head.  They only care about themselves.  Stay away!!  You will have no life working there while they enjoy free vacations !! You get nothing!

What is the best part of working at the company?
My last day was the best part of working at final expense direct.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Not getting my pay raise in a timely fashion.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Working there wasn’t bad except the emphasis was on getting sales numbers pushed through instead of agents taking personal responsibility for the quality of their work.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Stay busy and the day goes by at a fairly rapid pace.

Final Expense Direct has taken my sales career to a higher level with it's top level training and high intent leads. No longer having callers being transferred by operators outside of the United States. Good products, daily training available, free inbound leads, good commissions. Back office handles service work for me so I just focus on new sales. Six-figures on track this year without all the hassles I experienced with all my previous IMO's. 

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