The majority of independent insurance agents describe their early careers as being filled with long hours and lean periods as they establish their book of business. Finding new clients for independent agents, especially for those with expertise, can be difficult. In fact, 49% of agents say that finding new business possibilities is their agency’s biggest issue.
You’ll need to bring in new business to improve revenue and replace clients who have dropped their policies, whether you’ve been selling insurance for years or just began your agency. Here are five effective strategies for attracting new customers and generating insurance leads.
How do you attract life insurance clients?
Insurance agents typically try to be everything to everyone, but specialty marketing may be a better way to boost your insurance sales. Concentrating your marketing efforts on a single business class can benefit you in the following ways:
- Develop a thorough understanding of an industry’s hazards. The dangers are sometimes evident. However, when you gain experience in a particular field, your ability to assess hazards improves.
- Obtain a competitive advantage. Clients are more inclined to select an insurance agent who is knowledgeable in their field.
- Raise your profile. Getting clients the correct insurance coverage at a reasonable price is a good strategy to establish yourself as the industry’s go-to agent.
- Make money by referring others. More clients may send you new leads as your reputation grows.
To pick a niche, start by looking into the different types of businesses that exist in your area. Joining trade organisations, reading industry periodicals to remain up to date on significant problems, and concentrating your networking efforts on people in that field may be beneficial.
How can I promote my life insurance company?
There are a variety of techniques to increase awareness of your insurance company and position yourself as the best alternative, from search engine optimization (SEO) to email lists. We’ll look at six excellent life insurance marketing techniques you can utilize right now in this article.
Invest in local SEO
SEO has always been crucial, and it continues to evolve. Due to recent modifications that prioritize quality over quantity, you’ll need to update your existing SEO efforts and/or develop fresh material.
Because your insurance company is most likely focused on a single state or locality within that state, you’ll want to put a lot of effort into local SEO. When someone conducts a Google search for “near me,” you want to be at the top of the list.
Optimizing your directory listings is an easy way to do this. Fill out a company profile on every social media platform that allows it. Don’t limit yourself to Google; create profiles for Bing and Yellow Pages as well.
Having said that, it’s likely that your Google Business profile (GBP) will bring you the most local consumers. It can help you rank for both local text and voice searches if you optimize it. Fill in as many fields as possible, including:
We’ll discuss how reviews on platforms like GBP can be a great business driver in and of itself later in this piece.
Revamp your website
This may seem out of place on a list of life insurance marketing ideas, but updating your website every six months or so is a reasonable rule of thumb. If you haven’t made any adjustments in a long time, you may be missing out on possibilities to communicate with others.
Examine your design and content. Is it simple to understand? Is it simple to navigate? Does a visitor to your website know who you are and what you do as soon as they arrive? If not, make a change.
Make your website mobile-friendly. On a smartphone or tablet, it should be just as easy to read and navigate as on a desktop or laptop. Reduce load times so that people may rapidly acquire the information they need and don’t leave.
- Breaking up the formatting into small sections and leaving white space around the text
- Navigation and call-to-action buttons should be prominent and clearly identified (CTAs)
Here, too, SEO plays a role. Keywords that are industry-appropriate should be included where they organically fit in the text on your website.
Backlinks to other pages on your site and to reputable sources should be used wherever possible. Just be careful not to go overboard no one wants to scroll through paragraphs of hyperlinked information.
It doesn’t take much to make your website look clean and professional. Without substantial coding skills, the right website builder will provide templates that you may tweak to create something unique.
Create an email marketing strategy
This is one of the top life insurance marketing ideas available. Today, the easiest strategy to get noticed is to send emails to people’s inboxes. They give clients a direct line of communication, and if you write an engaging email, they’re likely to open it.
You should start building an email list if you don’t already have one. It’s not as tough as it sounds, and if you provide enough motivation and transparency, people will give you their email.
Let’s say they come to your website to get a quote on a policy. Gather their email address so you may give it to them when it’s finished. After you’ve provided that quote, you can add that email to your list and utilize it for future correspondence with the opportunity to opt-out.
Let’s imagine you want to conduct a virtual event where you address frequent questions about life insurance that people are afraid to ask. Send out a quick email to let people know about it, and add a CTA button for them to register.
After it’s finished, send an automated follow-up thanking them for coming and asking for feedback. All of these messages may be easily personalized, which more than a third of people prefer.
Manage your online reviews
What’s the first thing you do when you want to buy something online? If you’re like the vast majority of people, you read customer reviews. It’s the same for people looking for a local company.
Encourage others to give reviews once your GBP profile is completed and looks amazing. The more positive reviews you have, the better it will appear to Google, and the higher your listing will be prioritized in local search.
Engage with people who leave reviews, whether they’re positive or negative. You can express gratitude to those who submitted positive evaluations, and the negative reviews may contain reasonable criticisms that you can address. People, especially in the insurance industry, are seeking for business owners who engage with them.
Referral marketing is also a possibility for people who submit positive evaluations. Thank them and tell them you’d be pleased to help anyone they know who might need life insurance if they submit a good review on your Google page.
Consider PPC ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements allow you to skip the line and appear at the top of relevant search results. PPC advertising are available on both Google and Facebook. Each has advantages and disadvantages, but both can dramatically increase your reach.
PPC advertisements charge you a predetermined fee each time someone clicks on your ad. Rates vary by industry and keyword, so if you go this route, make sure you’re willing to pay the price and that the return on investment is worth it.
Market yourself on social media
This is where you may contribute valuable content to folks who are looking for answers about life insurance. The possibilities are endless: blog entries, explanatory videos, quizzes, and infographics.
It’s a smart idea to use social media to build your brand voice and meet people where they are. Speak to them like people, not marketing numbers. Answer their questions as though they were a buddy seeking information.
Another way to engage with clients regarding their experience is through social media. If they’re unhappy, you can talk to them to figure out what’s bothering them. You can also use polls to find out what they want to know from you.
Consider creating landing pages for customers who find your company through social media. It might be as basic as a page that states who you are and what you do, then asks the visitor for personal information so they can receive a quote. Data from that page’s analytics can show you what percentage of visitors come from your social media networks.
How do I promote my life insurance on Facebook?
Expand your reach by targeting new audiences that resemble your ideal consumers who have called you in the past once you’ve identified a targeting approach that works. In the Facebook realm, these are known as lookalike audiences. You can take it a step further by incorporating the following targeting choices to aid in the conversion of insurance leads:
Target local users
Nearly half of smartphone users anticipate finding an insurance agent within 5 miles of their location. Geo-target people near your agents or branch locations, and include a local address and phone number in your ad content to make it hyper-local. A simple and successful strategy for driving calls to agents straight from your advertisements is to include a “Call Now” button in your Local Awareness Ads.
Personalize your Facebook insurance ads by targeting for life events
Set several types of insurance purchasing triggers. Show specific messages to capitalize on current events in your audience’s lives. For example, advertise to married couples with first-time home buyer advertisements or to those who have recently had a kid with life insurance updates.
Use interests and behaviors to target your ads
People who have expressed interest in or liked pages about insurance, or who have purchase habits comparable to individuals who are likely to respond to insurance offers, should be targeted.
Use the contact center data to refine your retargetingÂ
Not only does the appropriate conversation intelligence solution identify which Facebook advertisements are driving calls, but it also employs artificial intelligence to extract information from phone conversations. These details are being used by insurance marketers to retarget past calls with relevant adverts. For example, if a caller purchased auto insurance over the phone and stated they were closing on a house, you might target them with ads over the next 60 days offering an auto and homes insurance bundle as the closing process advanced. ‘ ‘
Target lookalike audiences based on online and phone conversions
The lookalike audience function on Facebook lets you expand on your success by identifying potential consumers who have similar characteristics to those who have already converted as a result of your ads. Call tracking data is used by some insurance marketers to create lookalike audiences based on callers who converted over the phone. Because 72 percent of insurance shoppers purchase offline by speaking with a call center or a local agent, this is an excellent strategy to drive new policyholders.
How do you generate leads?
Having a business lead generating strategy in place will help you convert strangers into paying clients, whether you plan to buy leads or construct your own lead generation marketing plan.
With these 26 lead generation tactics, you can boost your sales and expand your business now. Now is the time to get your free eBook!
Take a look at the 12 strategies to generate leads for your organization before you start planning your approach.
Direct Engagement
Directly connecting with a potential customer is a terrific way to generate new revenue if your company sells a high-value product or a service that is billed on a monthly retainer basis. It’s preferable to rule out this choice if your income model is based on low-value, high-volume sales.
After determining that a prospect is a suitable fit for your company, you can contact them directly by social media, email, phone, or even in person.
For example, if you own a lawn care business in Houston and a major commercial building is being built nearby, contact the property manager to inquire about servicing the finished facility. This is an excellent example of how to generate leads in Houston or any other city that your local business serves.
Generate Leads on LinkedIn
Did you realize that the LinkedIn audience has 2x the purchasing power of the ordinary web audience? LinkedIn B2B marketing is particularly successful and can produce very profitable outcomes.
Making business contacts with relevant industry leaders is a smart strategy to open doors. Potential connections who seek for referrals for a service you provide could become your next paying customer.
Connecting with people of your target audience on LinkedIn, engaging with their posts, and messaging them personally to offer your product or service is another strategy to generate business leads. Take aware that this strategy will only work if their profile and postings imply that your services will assist them meet a need they haven’t yet identified. If this isn’t the case, your outreach may be misconstrued as spam, resulting in a loss of confidence.
Advertise and Retarget
Advertising isn’t limited to social media! To promote to search engine users, utilize targeted pay-per-click advertising on Google or Bing. This allows you to show advertising for queries that are already highly relevant to your organization.
Assume you’re a BMW dealer in Houston looking to increase your auto dealership marketing. You may target terms like “top BMW dealer in Houston” or “new BMW in Houston,” and even use a geo-filter to target people searching in the Houston area.
On their initial visit to your website, just a small percentage of visitors convert. When someone clicks on one of your PPC adverts, you may utilize display retargeting to show visual ads for your products on other popular websites.
It takes effort to master digital advertising, but it may be one of the most successful ways to produce leads for your company.
Ask for Referrals from Current Customers
One of the oldest lead generation marketing tactics is customer referrals. If your product or service has pleased a current customer, ask them to tell their friends about it so they can benefit as well.
Customers may do this for free if the quality of your business’s offerings is excellent enough, or you might build up an incentive scheme. Give your customers a percentage off their next monthly retainer price for each client they recommend, for example.
Because it’s profitable and your current customers are doing the most of the effort, client referrals are a terrific approach to generate additional leads for your firm.
Write Guest Blogs
Guest blogging is a terrific strategy to earn referral business through content marketing while also improving your SEO.
Guest writing for sites that are relevant to your industry but do not directly compete with you can help you generate leads for your business. If you’re a marketing firm, for example, you can guest write for local sign firms. You understand that the audience of sign manufacturers is interested in marketing themselves, and your services are a good fit.
Local SEO best practices align with guest blogging for local influencers. Writing a guest blog and obtaining backlinks from a popular podcaster in your field, for example, will help your site rank higher in that area.
Make sure the site you’re guest writing for is relevant to your industry and location for best results.
Rank in search engines to generate leads
Make sure your target audience can simply find you when searching for your product or service online. Learn how to use SEO and SEM for your website to produce more leads for your company.
Begin by conducting keyword research to understand what terms your target audience uses to search for your product or service before making a purchase. To find search data, use programs like SEMrush or the Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Optimize your page content once you’ve found the proper keywords. It may be challenging to rank organically if you’re selling a highly competitive product or service. If you’re ready to invest, hiring an SEO firm can be a terrific approach to produce consistent leads.
Before you make any financial decisions, learn how to hire an SEO provider. Because not every agency produces the same results, it’s critical to understand how to pick the ideal one for your company.
Answer Forum Questions
Answering forum inquiries is a terrific method to demonstrate your subject matter expertise while also establishing a mutually beneficial relationship. This method, if done correctly, can help you find leads in a couple of minutes.
“… Being the first to offer and ensuring that what you provide is customized and unexpected are the keys to implementing the Principle of Reciprocity.” Being the first to give something can help you receive something of equal or higher worth, according to this quotation from Influence at Work.
Answer forum questions on sites like Reddit or Quora to put this persuasion technique into practice. Start answering user inquiries in a category that is relevant to your business. Make sure to include a call-to-action at the end of your response encouraging the customer to utilize your product or service to assist solve their problem.
Consider the case of a law practice that specializes in family law. You can join a legal subreddit where consumers ask specific questions regarding your company’s services. Take a few minutes each day to look for any questions about which you have answers.
If a user has a query about child support, respond with a helpful answer and a link to your website, as well as a suggestion that the user contact you for a consultation. By providing free advice, the person who raised the inquiry may feel more compelled to repay you in the future by paying for legal services.
Answering forum questions is a fantastic way to get new company leads, and it can also help with SEO. In the case of our Reddit example, if your child support answer receives enough upvotes, your link can help your law firm’s SEO. This kind of synergy can help your lead generation efforts compound.
Offer a Free Tool or Lead Generation Magnet
Offering a free tool is an excellent method to develop B2B sales leads. What type of issue is addressed by your product or service? Can you provide a free tool that will assist users without requiring them to make a purchase from your company?
Assume you’re a Houston-based plastic surgeon in this scenario. You conclude that users are interested in learning about procedure prices and recuperation durations after polling your Twitter audience and conducting keyword research.
As a result, you decide to put up an eBook with price ranges, recovery times, and before and after photo examples for all of the operations you provide. You publish a teaser blog post and then ask them to give you their name, phone number, and email address in exchange for the information.
Your blog post can start generating contact information with the correct topic, targeting, and call to action. A higher conversion rate will be achieved if the blog topic, CTA, and offer are all aligned. According to Databox’s blog lead conversion data, below are the average visit-to-lead conversion rates you should expect.
Because the teaser blog post is so useful, users are linking to your site and signing up for the free eBook. Your guide will assist you in generating leads for your company while also improving your Houston plastic surgery SEO.
What opportunities do you see in your field? Building calculators, accumulating original research, providing free guidelines, and even providing free consultations are all popular ways to generate leads for your firm.
Influencer Interviews
Interviewing industry leaders can open a lot of doors for you and your company. Not only will you be able to network and learn from professionals in your field, but you will also be able to leverage these interviews to generate compelling content.
Video Make a podcast out of your interview, or convert it into a Q&A blog article. By presenting your interview in these different formats, you can better leverage the information and attract more visitors to your website or social media pages. To boost your business lead generation, consider limiting the interviews and requesting contact information.
Influencers frequently promote the resulting interview throughout various marketing channels, extending your reach and increasing your ROI.
Start Networking
Although networking rarely generates direct cash, it is an excellent way to cultivate career chances. Make an effort to attend a networking event that is both nearby and relevant to your field. This can help you keep your travel expenditures low while also ensuring that you take advantage of easy business opportunities.
What benefits may you expect from networking? If you go in expecting a certain amount of money back, you’ll virtually always be disappointed. Instead, strive for indirect victories.
Perhaps you’ll meet a complementary company with whom you might collaborate to share leads and extend your reach. Perhaps you meet an influencer who agrees to do an interview with you so that you can create fantastic content while also expanding your marketing reach. Your company may be able to benefit from guest blogging possibilities as a result of networking.
Networking is one of the best strategies to generate leads for your business because it almost always yields double returns.
Create an Email Offer
Exposure to a new audience isn’t always required for lead generation. Your email lists may have untapped commercial opportunity.
Consider putting together a special offer if you’ve created your own list of email subscribers. A special offer or limited-time discount can easily convert a spectator into your next paying customer.
You can also send customized email offers to the email lists of others. You can negotiate an agreement that allows you to advertise yourself to their audience if you’re actively networking or partnering with related businesses in your sector.
Remember our previous example of a marketing agency and a sign-maker collaborating on a guest blog? The marketing agency may advise a business promotion in the sign company’s next email blast and offer the sign company 5% of any sales made as a result of the promotion. For the marketing firm, the sign company, and the delighted new clients, this is a win-win-win situation.
Create Helpful Blog Comments
As a heads up, I didn’t keep the best lead generation strategy until last.
Make it a point to subscribe to industry magazines and even competitor blogs as a business owner or marketing executive. This can assist you in keeping your finger on the pulse of your competition and provide possibilities to assist.
If you discover that multiple blog comments on a certain post have gone unanswered, respond with your own personal insights. It’s not a terrible idea to attach a link to some relevant content on your website that will answer the reader’s inquiry in further detail.
When it comes to generating company leads from blog comments, tread carefully. Because of their vulnerability to spam, it’s difficult to leave legitimate comments on blogs. Furthermore, headhunting your competitors’ audience may be frowned upon by your competition.
What are life insurance leads?
Life insurance can be difficult to sell since it forces people to consider their own mortality. This is not just an unpleasant thought, but it is also something that most people hope and absolutely expect will not happen for a long time. As a result, they may dismiss any advice that they require life insurance.
So, what are the options for an insurance agent? The short answer is yes “Purchase leads.” Buying life insurance leads has a number of benefits for your sales staff.
People who have called a toll-free number or visited a website to request information about life insurance are known as leads. They are, unlike many others, willing to recognize their own mortality and consider how their deaths may effect their loved ones. To put it another way, your sales force is solely in charge of selling the product, not the concept behind it.
To generate your own leads, you may need to update your website to accommodate information requests, write ad text, cold call, or attend face-to-face networking events. All of these actions consume time and money that could be better spent pursuing leads who are already engaged.
The majority of lead generation firms provide accurate and complete contact information. You can request a refund if the information your sales staff receives is incomplete or incorrect.
Perhaps you only want to sell life insurance to those who live in a specific zip code, or you’d rather work with a specific demographic, such as new parents or older citizens. Your lead generation firm can filter the leads they sell you so that you only get the ones you want to pursue. This saves time for both your employees and your customers.
The majority of lead generation businesses offer a real-time lead function that transmits life insurance leads to you the moment someone indicates interest in receiving more information about life insurance. This allows your salespeople plenty of time to follow up on leads “The “golden hour,” or the first hour after a request for information, is when leads are most likely to convert.
Don’t make it any more difficult than it needs to be to obtain life insurance prospects. Allow lead generating businesses to handle the heavy lifting so that your salespeople may focus on closing deals and managing customer relationships.
Job Boards
Job postings might help you figure out what your prospects want. For example, if you notice a company recruiting an HR benefits analyst and you offer compensation services, this is a fantastic company to contact. They’re probably having trouble getting benefits and would appreciate hearing from someone who can assist them (read: you).
Furthermore, new positions are frequently used as catalysts for purchasing new goods or services. Keep an eye on when the listing goes down if you observe a company employing an executive or senior employee in the function you sell into. Then look for the freshly hired decision maker and give them your idea.
To get the most out of Twitter, make a list of the top three or four terms that your target prospects are interested in. Then use Twitter to look for people who are talking about those issues using variations of those keywords.
It’s possible that some people will raise questions. Others may be expressing their dissatisfaction with how tough something is. In any case, you can jump in and provide value to the conversation, as well as possibly pick up some leads.
Once you’ve identified a few leads, keep an eye on them, as well as other relevant people, using private Twitter lists.
- Bloggers and journalists who cover businesses in your area so you may learn about new businesses
- VCs in the area to see what they’re investing in and what stage of development companies are at.
Business Journals
Local business journals report on major developments at local businesses, whether it’s a lawsuit, a new site, or increased funding. You can learn about firms you might not have heard of and locate appropriate trigger events on which to build your outreach by keeping a watch on these occurrences.
These trigger events can be utilized as a guide when sending your first email or making your first phone call to a new prospect.
Industry Blogs and Forums
Even if you don’t locate a new prospect through blogs and forums, the knowledge you gather will point you in the right direction. For example, you might find that everyone in your target industry is having trouble complying with a new compliance legislation.
You may then use Google or LinkedIn to look for the name of the law and see what active conversations your prospects are having. Participate in the discussion and gain access to some useful leads.
In addition to job postings, LinkedIn groups are brimming with people asking for assistance. To find new industry-related groups to join, go to the “Discover” area of your group’s homepage.
Join relevant groups, contribute to the discussion, and assist the community. While it’s not a smart idea to go in and sell right away, keep these people and companies on your radar as people to watch and communicate with.
If you know who your target buyer persona is, you may use advanced search to identify people who fit that profile. It’s simple to identify specific groups of individuals whether you search by area, firm they work for, industry they work in, or language they speak. If you’ve already located a company you’d like to contact, you can look for people to contact within that company.
Follow the organization’s profile for changes and trigger events that will help you customize and personalize your messaging once you’ve found companies you’d like to pursue.
CrunchBase
CrunchBase is a database that tracks investment, company exits, and technology events. Note that this site only relates to public firms; if you sell to private corporations, you won’t find any help here (outside of gathering competitive intel).
When a corporation receives funds, it must spend them. Do you follow where I’m heading with this?
Find out which companies have recently received money, and then see if any of them would be a good fit for your product or service.
We may also utilize the advanced search function to limit the results to organizations that are located in our jurisdiction or fall into a specific category.
Local Chamber of Commerce Website
Your local Chamber of Commerce website provides a directory of local businesses, albeit it may not be the most entertaining website to browse and the entries may not be completely comprehensive.
Businesses are organized by industry in the Boston Chamber of Commerce business directory. If you know your target customer persona, this is ideal.
HubSpot CRM
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could find new leads right from your CRM? This is exactly what HubSpot’s free CRM product can do. Salespeople can browse a database of firms and filter results by geography, industry, and staff count by choosing the “Companies” tab.
How would your idea make insurance more interesting?
Today’s most successful businesses are built entirely around the customer. And for the customer, the single most significant aspect deciding loyalty is the experience. According to the State of Connected Customer survey, 84 percent of customers believe a company’s experience is just as important as its products or servicesyet there is a huge gap between what customers want and what most companies actually offer.
This holds true for modern insurance businesses as well. Customers considered insurance as a commodity product that they had to buy based on what was offered for decades. However, the market has gotten saturated with more insurance products and possibilities over the last decade, resulting in a more intelligent buyer with a wide variety of needs and preferences. Insurers must be nimbler, work faster, and prioritize providing a superior customer experience (CX) to fulfill these evolving needs.
Insurance industry begins the move to a customer centric model
The insurance sector has begun to change to a customer-centric strategy that emphasizes customer experience. 85% of insurers deploy CX initiatives throughout the customer journey, and 90% have a C-suite post dedicated to the customer experience, such as a Chief CX or Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
- In order to connect with clients about policy questions and claims, new channels are being added.
- Lessening the usage of insurance jargon in papers and conversations.
- Providing a mix of experiences (human and artificial intelligence, physical and virtual, direct and agent-based).
- Instead of merely engaging with clients during renewal time, do so every day or throughout the year.
However, according to a recent survey from the IBM Institute of Business Value (IBV), 42% of customers don’t fully trust their insurer, and 60% of insurers acknowledge that their company needs a CX strategy. This means there’s a lot of space for improvement in the sector.
Demonstrate the value of customer-shared data
To adequately address needs and difficulties, improving insurance CX through technology relies heavily on having reliable data (as near to real-time as feasible). Insurers should focus on acquiring data throughout all client-related operations, including purchase, renewals, and claims, as the backbone of their CX initiatives. Insurers may build more personalized insurance policies and experiences even when the encounter is digital if they have access to the right data at the right time. As a result, customers are more likely to give personal information voluntarily in the future.
Insurers should actively ask customers to contribute data across all interactions and make it as easy as possible for them to do so, in addition to articulating the benefits of sharing both consumer and insurance-related data and giving transparency for how the data is utilized. Customers, for example, are more inclined to contribute additional information if they are not compelled to repeat information they previously provided. You can focus on increasing your understanding of your customer by asking for net new data by pre-filling information already collected.
Open data platforms and customer-centric analytics can be used to mine and enrich in-house data to develop insights, evaluate trends and behaviors, and identify buyer values and triggers, among other things.
Finally, using research methodology as part of an experience design, as well as creating feedback choices to collect real-time sentiment at key decision points throughout the insurance journey, is critical to gathering data and developing the most accurate knowledge of a consumer.
Increase the use of AI throughout the process end-to-end
According to the IBV research, incorporating AI throughout the insurance customer journey can considerably improve customer happiness and retention. Companies will benefit from enhanced speed, accuracy, and efficiency by starting with strong industry understanding and AI-based technologies. Furthermore, higher productivity allows insurers to devote more time to developing the human relationships that clients seek when making insurance selections.
The IFFCO Tokio General Insurance Company, for example, wanted to enhance its claim processes after learning that up to 30% of its clients were unhappy with the way their claims were handled. The insurer built an AI-based Claim Damage Assessment Tool (CDAT) that assesses car damage from photographs uploaded via an app using advanced computer vision and deep neural network-based algorithms. Customer claims at IFFCO Tokio General were settled in 15 minutes instead of 3 to 4 hours thanks to artificial intelligence, and processing expenses were reduced by 30%.
Create intelligent workflows for both the agent and the policyholder
Insurers are beginning to see the potential in rethinking their systems and processes, as well as creating intelligent workflows that combine data with AI, straight through processing, automation, and other methods to incorporate exponential technologies at every stage of the process. Integrating services across organizational boundaries empowers personnel while also allowing clients to feel recognized, receive speedier service, and receive immediate policy refunds or claim settlements. Furthermore, automating and combining processes might lead to creative ideas that can be turned into revenue.
Touchless claims processing is an innovative means of handling a claim from the first notice of loss (FNOL) to settlement with little to no human intervention. In commercial auto insurance, the bottom-line potential of fully automated claims is very attractive. Because claims and losses are so high in this industry, increasing operational efficiency and connecting businesses (repair shops, rental cars, tow trucks, and so on) from end to end is one of the most viable methods to increase revenue and improve the customer experience.
Use an omnichannel approach to interact with customers
Insurers should focus on connecting their systems and platforms so that agents can have smooth dialogues with customers across numerous channels. A customer service agent on the phone, for example, would be notified that the customer they’re speaking with just requested a quote on a life insurance policy directly through the website a few minutes ago, and could seamlessly modify that quote, send it back to the customer via text with personalized options for the customer to finalize on their mobile while getting the best advice from the live agent.
In addition, according to the IBV survey, insurers should focus individualized digital communications, which are considered as a high priority by 50% of clients but only used by 17% of insurers. Insurers currently connect with clients largely via telephone (51%) and traditional mail (50%) methods. These strategies are costly and result in jumbled interactions. Customers are increasingly expecting to communicate with businesses through digital channels, such as a company’s website.
Insurers can enhance client engagement and save money by focusing on digitally modernizing the front office and adopting an omnichannel approach. Adding new communication channels, however, can have unforeseen consequences. For instance, OP Financial, one of Finland’s leading financial services organizations, has included an online chat component to its new insurance advising website. Within months of implementing this new service, the number of users had climbed by 1,000 percent, resulting in long wait times for customers, particularly during winter storms. OP Financial was able to cut customer wait times while also meeting demand for their new online chat feature by expanding their omnichannel strategy to incorporate an AI-based chat bot that enhances live human engagement. Adding new channels necessitates careful testing, piloting, and orchestration with existing channels.
The CX advantage for insurance
Insurance companies can move beyond a transactional relationship with their policyholders by using data to create personalized experiences, embedding AI throughout the customer journey, introducing intelligent workflows, and meeting customers at the right time on the right channels with a personalized message or content. Insurers may become trusted advisors by designing products and services around the customer experience, which will increase client loyalty and, eventually, purchase decisions.
Can life insurance agents advertise?
There are additional rules governing how insurance agents promote themselves and the corporations whose products they sell. Insurers are required to exercise strict supervision over advertisements bearing their name, including those placed by their agents. Regardless of the type of insurance involved, most require agents to obtain formal clearance from the insurer before using any ads or fliers. For example, if a life insurance broker is hosting a seminar on “Women and Wealth” to discuss annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning, the insurance company must approve the flier promoting the event.
In some states, even the information on an agent’s business card is regulated. In California, for example, an insurance agent’s license number must be printed in the same size as his address or phone number on his business card.