“Metrics Aren’t Magic”—A Q&A With Insurance Customer Success Lead, Tanya Rivera

Tanya Rivera has spent six years guiding new customer-success reps at OptiWealth, an insurance-focused wealth management platform. Her team specializes in onboarding high-net-worth individuals while balancing strict privacy rules like CCPA. We asked Tanya to walk us through the basics: what engagement metric frameworks look like when you’re just getting started, how to avoid the classic pitfalls, and how to turn metrics into practical actions—without getting lost in jargon or data overload.

Q1: Everybody says “track engagement.” What does that actually mean for a new customer success rep in insurance?

Tanya: For us, engagement is about whether clients are actually interacting with what we offer—policy reviews, financial planning sessions, even just opening our monthly emails. But when you’re new to customer success, it’s easy to get overwhelmed thinking you need to track everything all at once. I always tell new reps: start simple. Pick two or three things you can actually influence.

For example, we measure:

• Policy Review Completion Rate: What percentage of clients actually finish their yearly policy review with us?
• First 30-Day Portal Logins: After onboarding, how many clients log in at least once in the first month?
• Response Time to First Outreach: How quickly do clients respond when we reach out for the first time? Under 24 hours, 2–3 days, or not at all?

These are numbers you can grab from your CRM or insurance management system—no fancy analytics needed at first.

Q2: What frameworks or models are easiest for a beginner team to use?

Tanya: The “AARRR” framework is a favorite, but I simplify it for insurance. AARRR stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue. For us, those turn into:

I’d say focus on Activation and Retention first. If you get those right, everything else is easier.

Q3: What’s a common mistake for entry-level teams with engagement metrics?

Tanya: Chasing too many numbers. Early on, one of my teams tried to track 22 different metrics. We spent hours arguing about what qualified as “active” and forgot to actually talk to clients. Our conversion rates for scheduled policy reviews dropped from 7% to 3% in a single quarter.

Instead, we switched to tracking just three: portal logins, policy review attendance, and NPS survey completion. Within two months, our policy review scheduling bounced up to 11%. The fewer the metrics, the more you can actually do something with them.

Q4: How do you choose which engagement metric matters most when you’re new?

Tanya: I ask: “What’s the one client action we need more of this month?” If it’s more policy reviews, focus there. If it’s digital self-service—like clients uploading their documents—track that.

Also, talk to one or two senior reps. Ask what metric they check every week. Usually, it’s some variation of client touchpoints. Don’t be afraid to start with a metric that’s just a count—like “number of clients who opened our onboarding email”—and refine as you go.

Q5: What tools make getting started easier—especially if we have compliance concerns like CCPA?

Tanya: Privacy is huge. In California, under CCPA you can’t just export customer data to random survey sites. At OptiWealth, we use:

• Zigpoll or Delighted: Both let us keep response data anonymized. Zigpoll, especially, integrates easily and has a setting to avoid storing personally identifiable info.
• Salesforce Service Cloud: We use custom fields to track engagement (like “Last Portal Login”), and we flag records so only certain reps see sensitive info.
• Power BI or Tableau: If your system supports it, basic dashboards can show trends over time—just be sure all charts use aggregated data, not client-level identifiers.

Watch out: Don’t copy-paste raw client lists to Excel or email. Even internal emails can become a compliance headache under CCPA if you’re not careful. If you ever download data, make sure it’s permissioned and delete it as soon as you’re done.

Q6: What’s an example of a metric framework in action—something with real results?

Tanya: Last year, our team noticed that clients who completed an onboarding survey within 72 hours were 3x more likely to join our annual financial planning webinar. We set up an automated survey through Zigpoll, with a reminder after 48 hours.

Before, only 2% of new clients joined the webinar. Once we started tracking and nudging onboarding survey completion, that jumped to 11%. We didn’t change the webinar itself—just the engagement tracking and follow-up.

The lesson? Pick a metric you can influence, make it visible to your team, and tie it to a specific action (like sending a reminder).

Q7: With privacy laws like CCPA, where do entry-level teams slip up?

Tanya: The biggest mistake is saving or sharing more data than you need. For example, we once exported a full list of client birthdays for a “birthday outreach” campaign. That created a CCPA compliance review, because even something as simple as a birthdate is protected info.

Always ask: “Do I need this exact data, or just a count or percentage?” For engagement metrics, aggregate whenever possible—“17 of 25 new clients responded,” not “here are the 17 names.”

If you’re using tools like Zigpoll, turn on their CCPA compliance settings, which anonymize responses and avoid IP logging by default.

Q8: How do you turn metric insights into practical improvements?

Tanya: Start with a micro-change. If “policy review attendance” is low, look at the process: is the invite email clear? Is it getting buried? Maybe text reminders work better. Test one change for a week.

At OptiWealth, we once found that sending a text reminder two days before a review bumped attendance from 42% to 61%—but only for clients under 50. For older clients, a phone call was twice as effective. Metrics showed us where to nudge, but follow-up calls and tweaks made the difference.

Share results in your next team huddle—don’t wait for a quarterly report. Entry-level teams move faster when they can try, learn, and adjust every 2-3 weeks.

Q9: What are the limits of these frameworks for new reps?

Tanya: Engagement metrics only tell you part of the story. Some high-net-worth clients just won’t log in to a portal or fill out a survey—but that doesn’t mean they’re unhappy. They might prefer a quarterly phone call or in-person meeting.

Also, if you focus too much on the numbers, you risk treating clients more like “users” than real people. I’d say, metrics are a good tool—but always combine them with one-on-one client feedback.

Finally, be careful about comparing your metrics to companies with different clients or products. A 2024 Forrester report found that insurance clients aged 60+ engage digitally 65% less often than those under 45. What’s “good engagement” for a fintech startup may look completely different in wealth management insurance.

Q10: For a new customer-success rep, what’s the first thing you’d do on day one?

Tanya: Ask your manager which engagement metric matters most right now. Then, log into your system and see how it’s tracked. Can you pull that number yourself? If not, ask someone to show you.

Take one current client, and trace their journey: Did they complete onboarding? Where did they drop off? What could you have done differently? Start small and build your confidence.

Also, set a calendar reminder every two weeks to check your chosen metric. Look for patterns—are numbers going up or down? If you see a change, ask why. Sometimes it’s just a holiday or a system issue, but sometimes it’s a real trend.

Bonus: Tanya’s Cheat Sheet for Entry-Level Engagement Metrics

The Quick Win Mindset

New customer-success reps in insurance don’t need to boil the ocean. Start with one metric you can influence, make it visible, and connect it to a specific client action. Use privacy-friendly tools, keep the data simple, and learn from every result—good or bad. And remember: engagement frameworks are there to spark conversations, not just fill dashboards.