The Client Experience with Patrick McBride

In the latest episode of The Agency Playbook, Joe Ems sits down with Patrick McBride for a wide-ranging conversation about what it really takes to build a modern insurance agency.

Patrick’s path into insurance started with a personal experience. After seeing how much care and clarity a producer brought to a difficult family insurance situation, he knew he wanted to build a career around helping people understand risk. That perspective still shapes how he thinks about agency ownership today: the best agencies are not just selling policies, they are creating trust.

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From Producer to Agency Owner

Patrick started in the captive world before eventually launching his own independent agency. Today, his agency has grown into multiple locations with a larger team, acquisitions, and revenue milestones that came faster than he originally expected.

But that growth brought one of the hardest transitions in agency ownership: moving from being the person who sells and solves everything to becoming the leader who builds the system.

Patrick talked openly about how difficult that shift can be. Early on, every lead matters because every lead feels connected to your family’s income, your mortgage, and your future. As the agency grows and inbound opportunities become more consistent, it becomes harder to transfer that same appreciation and urgency to the team.

His reminder for agency leaders: do not let growth make you casual about opportunities that were difficult to earn.

Why Clients Shop

One of the strongest parts of the conversation centered on a simple question Patrick’s team asks early in the process:

Why are you shopping?

Not just “how did you hear about us?” and not just “what coverage do you need?” Patrick wants his team to understand what disrupted the client’s status quo enough for them to pick up the phone.

Was it a rate increase? A claim experience? A new driver? A friend who had a bad outcome? A coverage concern they do not fully understand yet?

That “why” changes the entire conversation. It moves the agency from order taking into advising. It also gives producers a clearer path to build trust, explain coverage, and connect recommendations to the client’s actual concern.

Building Trust Through Education

Patrick also talked about how client expectations have changed, especially in personal lines. Deductibles, roof schedules, replacement cost, actual cash value, and risk tolerance are no longer abstract coverage details. They are now front-line conversations.

His view is that client expectations are not unreasonable. The agency’s job is to build a bridge between what the client expects and how the policy actually works.

That means taking time to explain:

• Why a higher deductible may make sense if the client would never file a smaller claim
• How roof coverage can change as a home ages
• Why every claim experience is different
• What optional endorsements solve for
• How the client’s own risk tolerance should shape the policy design

The goal is not just to quote coverage. The goal is to help the client understand what they are buying before a claim forces the conversation.

What Successful Agencies Do Differently

When Joe asked what successful agencies are doing differently, Patrick pointed to two consistent traits:

1. They are obsessed with the client experience.
2. They are obsessed with making things simpler.

That simplicity applies everywhere: intake, onboarding, training, quote presentation, tech stack, client logins, follow-up, and internal workflows.

Patrick’s point was not that agencies should make things shallow. It was that great agencies remove friction while still capturing the information, context, and coverage details they need to serve the client well.

The best process is not the most complicated one. It is the one that creates a consistent experience for every client, no matter who on the team handles the account.

Letting the Team Lead

Another theme throughout the episode was delegation.

Patrick shared that his first goal was to hire someone who could keep the office running while he was on vacation. Then the goal became hiring people who could keep selling policies while he was away. Now, as the agency continues to grow, the goal is having enough depth in each role that one person rotating out does not cause the client experience to break.

That requires empowering team members both internally and externally.

Internally, the team needs to know they are trusted to help the client. Externally, clients need to hear the agency owner say, in effect, “This person is excellent, and they are the right person to help you.”

That is how an agency moves beyond the owner being the bottleneck.

Where Technology Fits

Patrick’s approach to technology is practical: tech should go everywhere a person cannot.

It should support the process, not force the agency to become something it is not. It should reduce duplicate entry, improve consistency, make data easier to collect, and give the team more time for the relationship-driven work that actually builds trust.

That came up directly in the discussion about ACORD forms and commercial submissions. Patrick explained that agencies need tools that help them get data into the right places faster, keep information consistent from form to form, and reduce the chances of small manual mistakes creating larger downstream problems.

His warning was just as important: do not buy technology just because it is new. Understand your process first. Know the problem you are trying to solve. Then evaluate whether the tool actually fits.

The Future of the Agency

Looking ahead, Patrick expects the modern agency to become more focused on managing output, interpreting risk, and being accountable for the work that technology helps produce.

That does not mean replacing the agent. It means giving agents better data, better workflows, and better triggers so they can have more timely, relevant conversations with clients.

He also emphasized that data security will shape how fast the industry can modernize. Agencies, carriers, AMS platforms, and technology vendors all handle information that ultimately belongs to the client. The agencies that move forward responsibly will be the ones that treat that data with the seriousness it deserves.

Key Takeaways

1. Start with the client’s why. Understanding why someone is shopping gives the agency a better path to build trust.
2. Stop being an order taker. The best producers act as advisors, not quote processors.
3. Make the experience consistent. Growth requires processes that work no matter who handles the account.
4. Empower your team publicly. Clients need to trust the people around the agency owner, not just the name on the door.
5. Use technology to support the relationship. The right tools make people more effective. They do not replace the need for human connection.

Patrick summed up the episode well near the end of the conversation:

Technology only matters as far as a relationship can be handled.

That is the heart of this episode. The modern agency needs better systems, better data, and better tools, but the agencies that win will still be the ones that build trust one conversation at a time.