Are you intentional about your insurance agency marketing? If you’re sailing by on your current client base and waiting for the phone to ring, you’ll soon be left behind. As one of our clients recently said, the “order-taker” agencies are quickly becoming a thing of the past. With most potential customers searching for insurance online, you need to be thoughtful about your agency brand and how to get it found.
Becoming A Digital Insurance Agent: How to Do It and Why It Matters
Digital insurance matters. According to McKinsey & Company, agencies that “digitally transform stand to gain satisfied customers, lower operating costs, and achieve higher growth.” Going digital doesn’t mean moving all your operations to A.I. and forgoing a physical location; it simply means moving towards meeting customer needs, improving processes, and protecting your business.
What are the first steps to harnessing the digital insurance landscape? Below are the tools and training your agency needs to get started.
Learn more about customer demand for digital agencies on our blog
Your Top Digital Agency Tools
- Your agency website. J.D. Power found 74% of insurance shoppers used agency websites or aggregators to research and obtain quotes before purchasing insurance. You need to have a website that’s easy to find and navigate to stay in the game.
- Social media. You don’t have to post daily on all possible platforms, but you do need a presence. Social media gives you a way to connect with customers and prospects to hear what they need and give feedback on their concerns. And it boosts your visibility.
- Customer self-service options. This includes a Client Portal and mobile access. Self-service options increase customer satisfaction and reduce time and energy spent on assisting customers who can help themselves. Agency Nation found one agency that added a client portal, “…increased client retention to 93% and saved $70,000 in COI labor, printing and postage expenses per year.”
- CRM and marketing automation. Both tools are designed to streamline your agency’s operations and improve your ability to identify and convert leads and understand your customer’s needs.
- Paperless options. Digital lines download and digital document signing, sending, and storage not only get business done faster (downloads alone can save up to 60 minutes per employee per day), it can save hundreds annually in printing and postage as well.
Get more details on how to leverage digital tools to improve agency lead generation and conversion
Top Team Training for Digital Agencies
- Agency management system training. Your management system is your agency’s central processing tool and you and all your staff need to know how to use it in the most efficient, digitally-compatible way. Modern systems offer client portal, CRM, and marketing automation integration. You need to understand how each capability can best serve your customers and your agency.
- Website training. Your agency website is not a “one and done” situation – it should be dynamic. You need someone in-house who understands how to update information on your site to stay accurate and relevant.
- Social media training. This one may come as a surprise. Although social media is relatively easy to implement and understand, you should talk with your team about how their personal social media use reflects on your agency. Especially for independent, community-focused local agencies, when your team says something outside the office they could be construed as speaking for your agency. Be clear on what is appropriate.
- Cybersecurity training. With all the benefits of digital tools comes the threat of cyber-attacks. In an interview with Insurance Business Magazine, Ron Berg, executive director of Agents Council for Technology (ACT), part of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA), said insurance is the fourth most attacked economic sector. Educate your staff on what risks exist, how to spot and avoid attacks, and what to do should your agency experience a cyber-attack.
Get our full guide to Cybersecurity for the Digital Insurance Agency here
Get the Right Tools and Training in One Place
We work with our agency clients and industry experts, like our partners at Agents Council for Technology (ACT) and IVANS, every day to identify the most powerful digital insurance tools. Thanks to these collaborative efforts, we’re confident our Partner Platform agency management system suite offers the best and most effective capabilities to help agencies better serve their customers and grow their business.
And we don’t stop at the “what” of digital tools but go the extra mile with the “how.” With targeted agency trainings and always-accessible online videos and guides, our Partner Platform agencies stay informed and equipped. We also offer regular webinar trainings, focusing on topics like cybersecurity and customer self-service tools.
Get to know more about the Partner Platform system, including our service and training, at sispartnerplatform.com.
What the Global Pandemic Taught Us About Digital Insurance and the Industry
Industries worldwide have a lot to learn from the unprecedented global pandemic that first hit the U.S. in early Spring 2020. The virus’s impact will be widespread, and the insurance industry has been hit just as hard as any other market.
Below are a few findings that speak to what we know about the state of the digital insurance market almost six months into the pandemic hitting U.S. shores.
See how SIS and the Partner Platform community responded to the pandemic
The Global Pandemic’s Effects on the Insurance Industry
Since the U.S. shut-down in mid-March, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the insurance industry in the following ways:
- Increase in work-from-home: A recent Gartner survey showed almost 75% of CEOs said they plan to permanently shift at least 5% of employees to permanent remote work. Similarly, 59% of U.S. workers told Gallup they want to continue work-from-home after the pandemic ends.
- Loss of capital: In mid-March, Accenture found the average insurer lost 35% of their market capitalization, in large part due to falling premiums.
- Demand for digital automation: Software provider Sapiens and Lightico found almost 50% of businesses plan to increase digitization and automation of customer interactions.
- Growth in cybercrimes: An FBI Press Release found over 1,200 COVID-19-related cybercrimes complaints were lodged in March alone.
Find out how to get your agency back up to speed when facing a sales slump
What do These Effects Mean for Your Agency?
Business owners know gathering information is only the first step. Once you see the problem, what do you do about it? We suggest insurance agencies consider the following.
- Get on the cloud. A rise in work from home means you need secure, anywhere access to your agency systems. When your data and systems are on the cloud, employees can access them wherever there is an internet connection.
- Provide mobile access. Both employees and clients need mobile access to your management system and agency website. State regulations are changing daily, and you must keep clients and employees alike informed. Mobile access means they can get the daily information they need instantly.
- Diversify your markets. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to widen your service sphere. One thing the pandemic taught us is life is unpredictable. You need to have multiple market sectors to keep a steady income flow. Agencies servicing primarily travel or other hard-hit industries are feeling the pain. Don’t let your agency experience the same.
- Leverage Artificial Intelligence. With more questions coming in due to the uncertainty of the pandemic’s impact, you’ll need more help prioritizing and addressing them. A.I. can provide answers to commonly asked questions, quickly decide who in your office should take a call, and provide an immediate response so the client or prospect feels heard.
- Invest in paperless processing. When agencies moved to work at home, printing, and mailing, or even scanning and faxing, forms became near impossible. Those that invested in paperless were set-up to continue business as usual.
- Bulk up cybersecurity. As more employees access systems at home, you need to increase your cybersecurity protection. Redundant back-ups, multi-character encrypted passwords, and regular staff training are all essential factors to keep your agency safe.
Hear from our cybersecurity partners on how to securely work from home and protect your agency
Be Ready with the Right Partner
The Partner Platform team has worked to prep client agencies and partners for the unexpected since the beginning. We strive to equip Partner agencies with the best tools and systems to stay ready for any change and provide the community and service they need to weather any storm.
Do you have the right partner to ready your agency? Find out how we can be that partner. Read what our Partner agencies have to say and get more details at sispartnerplatform.com.
Top Prospecting Stats You Need to Know for Insurance Retention
Insurance retention and prospecting, though similar to other industries, has its own nuances. As a highly personalized business, insurance agencies need to focus on each lead segment’s specific needs and, as the sales funnel narrows, the personal needs of each individual lead.
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These Blogs Tell You How to Get Insurance Clients
As your agency transitions back to “business as usual,” you’ll likely focus on how to gain new clients and serve current clients better. We hope this list of our recent posts on how to gain insurance clients can help.
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Intentional Insurance Agency Marketing in Four Steps
Digital Insurance Customer Service: Keeping it Personal
As we recently heard from one of our Partner Allies, one of the most significant challenges facing independent insurance in the next ten years is how to keep up with the progress of digital insurance technology while maintaining a personal connection with customers.
Studies show customers want agencies to use more tech and increase service personalization. A recent PWC survey found 41% of insurance customers said they’d switch to a new provider if that provider were more digitized than their current one. And the recent COVID-19 pandemic shutdown exposed more people to digital service speed, causing a lasting shift in expectations.
How can your agency harness digital insurance tech’s speed and efficiency without losing your signature personal touch?
The Key to Stepping into Insurance Sales Software
Identifying the right insurance sales software and systems requires understanding the balance of quality and quantity for valuable insurance leads. The concept of “living on renewals” is great – until it’s not. Intentional, proactive, professional insurance sales demand the right mindset, strategy, and systems to make the desired impact in an independent insurance agency.
Rethinking your insurance sales software and systems doesn’t have to be a major project. Start with knowing what you want, bringing that into your sales mindset, and finally acclimating to new tech. It only takes a step at a time.