ON THE RECORD
Jeff Piotrowski on connection, compliance, and the future of customer engagement
Jeff Piotrowski
Chief Customer Officer | Customer Solutions Group
Steve Rafferty
CEO & Founder | ActiveProspect
Jeff Piotrowski is a customer growth and insurance marketing leader who helps organizations solve complex acquisition and engagement challenges. He is currently Chief Customer Officer at Customer Solutions Group, where he leads sales and customer strategy to drive measurable business outcomes. Previously, Jeff held leadership roles at Verisk Marketing Solutions and Jornaya, working closely with top carriers and distributors across P&C, Life, and Health. With deep experience spanning sales, strategy, and client success, Jeff focuses on building high-performing teams, strengthening customer relationships, and designing data-driven programs that improve conversion, lower acquisition costs, and support compliant growth.
SR:
Jeff, you've spent years helping insurers connect with customers while navigating heavy regulation. How has that perspective shaped the way you think about balancing aggressive growth goals with the responsibility to protect consumer trust?
JP:
I've become a big believer in constraints driving innovation. Whether those constraints are compliance guardrails, strict cost-per-acquisition targets, or a lack of resources, having a forcing function to think outside the box is always healthy, as long as the end goal remains achievable.
I don't think business growth and consumer trust are mutually exclusive. Actually, trust is fertile soil for growth.
We've seen this play out repeatedly, whether we're talking about lead generators who quickly adopted 1-to-1 consent standards or brands who took the reasonable person opt-out standard seriously when it was introduced last year. What did those companies see after leaning into practices that, at the time, seemed like constraints to growth? Their contact rates got better. Their connection rates improved. Every downstream metric got healthier. Because those businesses took steps to reach people who actually wanted to hear from them.
Regulation, consumer trust... these aren't inhibitors to growth. They're the pathway to it.
SR:
Throughout your career, you've worked closely with carriers trying to improve acquisition while controlling costs. What's one misconception insurance leaders still have about modern customer engagement?
JP:
I still see too much focus on the top and bottom of the funnel, without much attention being paid to the middle.
Insurance providers rightfully spend enormous energy on their go-to-market strategy, distribution model, lead sources, and lifetime value prediction. A lot of energy also goes into pricing and product competitiveness. These things can be dealbreakers if you get them wrong, so that focus makes sense.
But here's the rub: organizations spend so much time getting people into the funnel and ensuring they have a good product to offer that they overlook what to do with prospects once their hands are raised.
Good leads get followed up with once and then abandoned. Calls, texts, and emails from the same company operate in complete isolation from one another. Inbound callers hang up in frustration after getting lost in an IVR loop. There's no consistency in what agents say to prospects.
The hard truth is: contacting someone is not the same as connecting with them. And remarkably, leaders often point to tactics at the top or bottom of the funnel to cure mid-funnel ailments. More leads, stricter filtration, and product enhancements cannot fix a connection problem.
The fix is easy to say and hard to maintain: discipline, consistency, adherence to best practices, and constant measurement and testing. This is the way. It's not new or exciting dogma, but it works. We recently saw Horace Mann achieve a 40% lift in sales conversion at a 75% lower acquisition cost, doing exactly this.
SR:
There's a lot of conversation right now about AI-driven outreach and automation in insurance marketing. Where does technology genuinely improve the customer experience, and where does the human element still make the biggest difference?
JP:
The improvements in 1-to-1 marketing driven by AI cannot be understated. Ingestion of information, real-time assessment of next-best-action, and hyper-personalized conversation at scale have never been more accessible. The potential to create efficiencies for insurance providers and improve the experience for policyholders is enormous. So where does that leave us, humans?
I believe the role of humans in insurance has already fundamentally changed. And one day soon, agents will no longer be required to be experts on the nuances of the policies they sell. Eligibility, coverage, benefits, and exclusions will be assessed faster and arguably more accurately by technology. So workers shouldn't focus on the traditional skills where AI is already outpacing them.
Differentiation lives in skills that are genuinely hard for the machines to replicate. Empathy. Human connection. We all still crave it. How many times have you called a company and immediately shouted "agent!" into the phone because you simply don't trust the phone tree to actually help you?
Human agents will thrive in the AI era by first learning to wield these tools effectively, having exactly the right information at their fingertips precisely when they need it. And second, by being experts in empathy and connection. Don't resist the technology. Harness it. Then use it to free yourself up to do the thing only you can do.
SR:
Many insurers are dealing with the tension between speed and precision in their outreach efforts. What separates the teams that convert leads efficiently from the ones that burn budget without building lasting relationships?
JP:
The winning teams I've seen, worked with, or been a part of are constantly tinkering and never settling. They have discipline in testing. They're not precious about existing programs. They use data to guide decisions and they're continually committed to improvement. There's a natural curiosity that the best leaders possess that drives a constant state of iteration. And the reason it works is obvious: the market changes. The competitive landscape evolves. Macroeconomic factors shift consumer sentiment. The communities we serve are constantly changing, so why shouldn’t we change with them?
Building lasting relationships comes down to trust. Establishing it from the first touch through permissions-based marketing, respectful outreach, and making good use of that person’s time once you reach them. Once that foundation is built, maintain it through consistent, unobtrusive connection so your customers know you're there whenever they need you.
This is where technology has genuinely leveled us up. Historically, maintaining trusted customer relationships either required enormous human resources or rang hollow with one-size-fits-all messaging. With AI, agents can now regularly reach customers with specific and relevant information that also offers a real conversation when the customer decides they need it. The best of both worlds: human connection with the efficiency and scale of technology.
SR:
Last question. You're a Steelers fan, a youth sports coach, and someone who clearly values teamwork. What lessons from sports or coaching kids have shaped how you think about building and motivating high-performing teams in business?
JP:
There's a term I learned early in coaching that has always stuck with me: "joystick coaching." It's the sports equivalent of backseat driving. Instructing a player on exactly what to do in a scenario instead of giving them the foundational knowledge, a clear objective, and the space to figure it out. "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day..." and all of that. So I learned early the power of providing clear objectives, not instructions.
That must be paired with giving people the space to try new things, fail, and learn, all the while cheering them on, especially when things don't go as planned. Confidence is a powerful infrastructure for success; I’ve learned that firsthand from some of the great leaders I’ve worked for in my career.
Beyond that, the job is pretty simple: establish clarity, remove obstacles, drive accountability, and support like mad. It works for 8-year-olds, and it works for those of us who are 8-at-heart.
Last but certainly not least, have fun. Maintain balance. Life is too short to take anything too seriously. Dream big, then show up, do your best, and be easy on yourself, regardless of the outcome.
