Focus on Customers to Drive Growth and Retention

By Agent for the Future

Insurance will always be a relationship business, but building and maintaining relationships with customers looks different today than it did in the past.

While face-to-face meetings and direct phone calls can be great connection points, they’re difficult to scale. It’s a tall order to meet individually with hundreds of customers, especially more than once a year. And connecting only when it’s time for renewal is no longer enough.

With policy prices increasing and catastrophic weather events bringing about more severe claims, it’s important for agents to proactively communicate with customers to reduce churn. Focusing on customer experience has become more important than ever before for insurance agencies.

Technology can help agents connect with customers more regularly at scale. Automated emails and texts can help agents create regular, personalized touchpoints with customers. Self-service tools can allow customers to easily access their policy information when they need to. Live online chat can help customers quickly and easily get the answers they need.

What’s more, 57% of customers (and 65% of millennial and Gen-Z customers) prefer to do business through digital channels, according to the Salesforce 2022 State of the Connected Customer report.

Robust, consistent and personalized customer experiences across different channels can help insurance agencies better attract new customers and retain current customers.

51% of agents are worried about retaining clients (Liberty Mutual and Safeco Insurance)

88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services (Salesforce)

60% of insurers say their organization lacks a customer experience strategy (IBM Institute of Business Value)

How to improve your insurance agency’s customer experience

Forward-thinking insurance agencies build and iterate on a holistic strategy for customer experience that encompasses the entire customer lifecycle – from the time a prospect first encounters the agency to ongoing relationships that turn customers into advocates and referral partners.

Here are just a few ideas to incorporate into that strategy:

• Take an omnichannel approach. Client relationships don’t have be all in-person or all online. According to Salesforce, 78% of customers have used multiple channels to start and complete a transaction. So, employ multiple channels to reach your clients. For example, perhaps a new customer starts a quote via the quoting tool on your agency’s website, then you follow up via email to get more information, and ask if you can text them updates.

• Use automations to enable frequent communication. Some agency management systems integrate with vendors that allow you to set up automatic emails for recurring events such as client birthdays and anniversaries, or create educational email journeys for certain events (onboarding, buying a home, adding a teen driver, etc.)

• Invest in customer self-service tools. Allowing customers to self-service for simple tasks can help meet customer expectations. It also saves staff time so they can focus on more meaningful activities that deepen customer relationships and drive revenue.

• Create an agency email newsletter. Use the newsletter to highlight stand-out staff members or clients, share how your agency is giving back in your community, and educate clients about how to proactively reduce common risks.

• Use anonymous surveys and tools to gather customer feedback.

Many marketing automation services offer capabilities to measure your net promoter score (NPS), which can help you benchmark customer satisfaction.

This article originally appeared on the Agent for the Future website at https://www.agentforthefuture.com/topics/ agency-operations/playbook/customer-experience-forinsurance-agencies/. For more information on Agent for the Future, go to www.agentforthefuture.com.