As we have already emphasized on other occasions, although the insurance market has not yet advanced as fast as other sectors, we are beginning to see very noticeable changes that lead us to determine that the digital transformation in the insurance sector has arrived. Increasingly, insurance agencies are being encouraged to bet on tools that help them sell more.
The importance of upgrading in the insurance industry
Widespread digitization, working and sharing data in the cloud, developments in other sectors… There are many factors that make our users’ behavior patterns change almost constantly and with it what they expect from our service, forcing us to adapt to their demands.
Main ways to improve your insurance agency
Not all improvements are positive in any company. Changes will not always be adapted to your business model or to what your clients are used to receiving.
Therefore, it is important that you have previously planned the objectives of insurance brokerages or agencies and reflected on whether these changes will be in line with the goals you have set.
Customer relationship
These will be all those strategies that determine how to acquire, retain and increase the portfolio. For a correct relationship with the client, it is essential to segment and personalize the messages that we are going to send through the channels, bringing out the value proposition.
Why is it important?
Having a correct relationship with the customer will not only help us to achieve the sales objectives set; it will also improve satisfaction, thus achieving customer loyalty and improving your renewal rate.
Tips to improve customer relations
Although they may seem obvious, sometimes we overlook simple actions such as:
- Listen to your customers. We often make the mistake of offering closed proposals, ignoring the needs and particularities of some clients.
- Know your customers and offer them adapted options. It is not enough to offer only what they are looking for, but to anticipate and cover future desires and needs.
- Be critical and always look for ways to improve. Listen to criticism and accompany it with your own judgment. Make a list of weaknesses in customer service and look for ways to solve them.
- Make a personalized follow-up. Whether you are a traditional or online insurance agency, it is essential to keep a record of which policies each client contracts so that they feel that the attention is personalized.
Consumer experience
It will be everything your customers feel towards your business during their interactions. For a correct consumer experience, it will be very important to try to reinforce the user’s ties with the product or service offered.
Why is it important?
A positive consumer experience will ensure the economic growth of your agencies. It will also help you to further strengthen customer loyalty.
Keys to improving the customer experience
- Convenient and easy-to-access customer service channels. An example could be a customer service via WhatsApp, where we will define the tone of the message, whether we will use chatbots… among other aspects to consider.
- Hyper-personalization. Prioritize that the user feels that he/she is receiving a personalized treatment. As we talked about in our post on Big Data in insurance, this will generate trust, engagement and satisfaction, guaranteeing better results. For this hyper-personalization work, you will have to get as much data as possible to analyze.
- Combine the human factor with Artificial Intelligence. This will allow you to scale the business without neglecting a correct consumer experience.
- Automation. With this you will avoid any possible human failure and achieve greater efficiency in your agents.
- Omnichannel. We have to be agile and join those channels where our customers expect to find us. It will be essential and work them in an interconnected way, continuing the conversation already started and maintained in other channels.
- Facilitate the contracting process. Relying on technological solutions, such as payment processes, will be one of the most differential points if you want to improve performance and the closing rate. Giving them the possibility of contracting and entering payment data autonomously will increase your sales.
Optimize your costs
Reducing and optimizing costs should be considered a necessity for any company looking for business continuity. To do this, it is essential that you stop and think about whether you already know how to make insurance brokerages or agencies profitable or, on the contrary, you are at the previous stage.
Why is it important?
Cost reduction is important because it can help make your business profitable and sustainable over time. It also helps you achieve higher profits and increase your EBITDA.
When we talk about reducing costs, we do not mean reducing the number of agents or reducing the quality of our service. We should focus on all types of expenses faced by our company.
How to improve the costs of an insurance agency
- Negotiate. Sometimes we get comfortable with the suppliers we already have and the agreed terms, without considering the possible changes that the market may experience, the volume of sales we produce… and that may give us an advantage when negotiating better conditions. This does not mean squeezing our suppliers, but looking for efficient alternatives that satisfy both parties.
- Look for other options. One of the easiest ways to save money is to look for cheaper alternatives to the tools you already work with.
- Reduce consumption. Evaluate your purchases and identify those that are really necessary for your business to function from others that you can afford to reduce.
- Insourcing vs Outsourcing vs Automation. In the case of your business, is insourcing profitable? Can you outsource certain services? Let’s go one step further: can you automate certain mechanical tasks that your agents do on a daily basis? Quotes, sending emails and Whatsapps?
Increase your profits
As is obvious, companies exist to make money, so they must always have their eyes on their bottom line and profit margin.
Why is this important?
It is the easiest way to check that the company is profitable and sustainable over time. In addition, it can help you establish monthly and annual forecasts… allowing you to make decisions with a better vision of the present and future situation.
How to increase the profits of an insurance agency
- Retain your clients. As you have heard ad nauseam, it is cheaper to keep a client than to attract a new one. And the fact is that acquiring a new client takes a long time to mature. Take advantage of your customers’ trust and boost your renewal rate.
- Boost cross-selling. Also known as cross-selling, it is a marketing strategy that aims to increase your company’s sales. The way to apply it correctly would be to offer extra insurance that complements the one they are already taking out. The client will be attracted by the idea of acquiring it and, instead of leaving your business with only one product, he will be able to leave with two or even three.
- Increase the average premium. Often, the customer tends to choose the cheapest insurance. This is usually because they don’t really know what they are getting, or the differences or advantages of taking out a slightly more expensive policy. Your job here would be to make sure that the user is clear about the coverages through messages, understandable information on your website…
Digitize your business
When we talk about digitizing we refer to the process by which you start using tools, technology and digital ecosystem that offer more value to customers, new experiences, solutions and business models.
Why is this important?
The reason is simple: digitalization is here to stay. What was once optional has now become essential. Those companies that do not adapt to change will not be able to survive.
In addition, going digital will allow you to optimize time and money, allowing you to focus your workforce on new ideas.
Tips to improve the digitalization of your agency
- Evaluate the situation of your insurance agency. Before starting digitization, it is essential to evaluate the context and situation of the company and the sector itself. Detect opportunities, analyze your competitors, determine the competitive advantage you want to achieve…
- Know your digital audience. It is essential to know your audience as much as possible before deciding what actions to take. Understand what moves them to take out one insurance policy or another, what are the most common objections…
- Find the best channels. You should detect the media and channels they usually use when they need to take out insurance and consider whether or not to be there. Not all channels need to be of interest to you. Always prioritize those that will help you reach your audience.
- Design a digital marketing strategy. The digitalization of your business will have effects in all fields. For this reason, we recommend including digital actions in your marketing strategies to sell insurance.
- Implement a CRM. To digitize your business you need a CRM for insurance that will help you get and store all your customer information in one place. This will offer you the possibility to segment customers and personalize the treatment, consult statistics, review which actions bring better results… Helping you to polish your marketing actions.
- Mobile experience. The arrival of smartphones has revolutionized consumer behavior. Currently, almost 70% of the time we surf the Internet we do it from mobile devices. This forces us to prioritize a user experience focused on the mobile versus the computer.
- Integrate new tools. With the aim of optimizing processes and offering the possibility for each customer to self-manage, betting on a platform to sell insurance can become a differential value for your company.
- Automate tasks. Hand in hand with the previous point, process automation has become the best ally to streamline processes and improve performance. Thanks to this, you will be able to focus on other really important tasks that are not so easy to tackle with technology.
Work your website
As we already said in our guide to launching an insurance website, the first step to make any company known in the online world is to create a website.
If you already have a website, we recommend you to work on it constantly to improve SEO for insurance, conversion rates, average time of navigation…
Why is it important?
- Your customers will be able to find you easily
- You will have control over the information you provide about your company
- You will strengthen your branding
- It will be a powerful support if you decide to work your social networks
How to improve your insurance website
Although there are many lines of improvement and each case is different, these are the most common ones:
- Design. The first step would be to have a site that transmits professionalism and is intuitive to use both on mobile and computer and tablet. For this, we recommend using WordPress templates for insurance websites.
- Loading speed. This will not only improve your SEO positioning, but also the experience of users who visit your site. If it is slow, it will trigger the abandonment rate.
- Appropriate colors. A balanced combination of colors will provoke in the user the sensations we are looking for and will reinforce your branding.
- SEO. Google algorithms change periodically, but it is worth working on SEO positioning constantly. Imagine how many visits and customers you could get at zero cost just because you have a correctly positioned website.
- Original content. Offer relevant and quality content for your users that will make them want to keep browsing. Copying content from other pages hurts your SEO positioning.
- Clear calls to action (Call to Action). If you are looking to sell insurance, it is highly recommended to add calls to action on each page that invite users to quote or leave their details.
Include an insurance management software
Today, any company operating in the insurance industry needs insurance software to streamline and automate customer and internal tasks.
Why is it important?
It can help you with common tasks such as quoting, sending quotes, sending notifications and messages, recalculating… as well as others that can help you differentiate yourself, such as creating quotes, launching marketing campaigns, improving customer relations, online contracting…
How to do it?
All brokerages or agencies have different needs, so we cannot give you a closed answer. For this reason, requesting a demo and letting our professionals advise you can be of great help.
