We at SIS are proud to serve agencies with our specialized independent agency insurance system, Partner Platform. Our decision to serve local, independent agencies was intentional and continues to be a defining factor in who we are today. Our Partner Platform system...
5 Steps to Leveraging Agency Workflows to Improve Service
For most independent insurance agencies, superior customer service is their bread and butter. Beyond serving your local community and providing a quality service to those in need, good customer service is also tied to better business. One survey recently found over 80% of respondents would pay more for a better customer service experience. There is value in bettering your customers’ experience, and you already have the means in your agency workflows.
These five steps can help you gain insight into customer needs and put them into practice.
Step 1: Identify Interaction Points
Take a look at the where you interact with customers: online, over the phone, in person – all of these are opportunities to gain information on what your customers want and care about. Once you know what matters to them, you can start putting them into practice in these existing interactions.
Get more insights on how to improve customer relationships on our blog
Step 2: Document Customer Interactions
Once you know where you’re interacting with customers, come up with a method to document each encounter. The more in-depth info you collect, the better. Management system mobile apps come in handy here as they allow agents to immediately document meetings and their details. Email and texting integration are also beneficial as each instantly captures an entire exchange and syncs to the customer’s record.
Step 3: Determine Where Interaction Documentation Lives
Once you have a way to record information on customer interactions, you need to have a place to put that information. Too often, agents and CSRs are keeping customer interaction data in siloed spaces. You need to find a spot to bring it all together. Ideally, your agency management system is built to address the needs of your service and sales teams.
Step 4: Establish Process to Follow Up on Interactions
Tracking customer interactions is only a piece of what you’re trying to accomplish. To truly improve these interactions, you need to follow up on conversations. In most cases, follow up comes from a CSR providing service to conclude a suspense, but not all conversations have such defined follow-up needs. Some interactions need a simple check-in to see how things are going and to get a feel of whether a customer was satisfied with the service they received. This can be via automated or manual methods or a combination of both.
Never forget to follow up – get reminders through Partner Platform’s Marketing Automation Manager
Step 5: Ensure You Have the Right Tools to Get the Job Done
For any customer interaction to happen, you need to provide ways for customers to connect with your agency. The essential customer connection tools are 1) an easy to use and understand website, 2) customer-facing mobile app, and 3) branded client portal. Each of these tools face out to the customer and give them an opportunity to connect with you.
We’ve brought all three together in our latest Partner Platform addition, Partner Connect. Partner Connect is a multi-faced customer experience for users to enhance customer communication with agency-branded tools. With multiple offer levels to fit your agency, Partner Connect provides all the tools you need at the right price.
Find out more about Partner Connect and the Partner Platform agency management system – contact us at [email protected] or 800.747.7005, Option 6.
Syncing Your Sales: Integrated Systems for Insurance Prospecting
Insurance prospecting can be intimidating, even for the most seasoned professionals in the industry. Finding prospects can seem a daunting task, much less making the sale and moving them to customer. But, with the right tools and perseverance, insurance prospecting is not as impossible as it seems.
Tool #1: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
You’ve heard CRM thrown around a lot – but what exactly is it? A CRM is a tool that allows you to track leads, prospects, and current customers, reviewing and adding information to see where they are in your sales cycle. Think of it as the modern day little black notebook full of relevant data to help you nurture leads, keep track of customer needs, and stay organized in your sales process.
CRMs are essential information hubs. They store contact information, meeting details, follow-up attempts, and even website visits and interactions for each constituent. All that data in one place gives you an accurate picture of where you stand not only with each customer or prospect but overall as an agency.
Tool #2: Integrated Communication Tools
What you say and how often you interact with prospects and customers is a critical piece of the sales cycle, yet it’s almost impossible to remember to note each interaction. That’s where integrated texting and email come into play. These synched up communication tools make it easy to feed your customer and prospect interactions right into your CRM, so you never miss an entry.
Find out more about Partner Platform’s email integration and integrated texting offerings
Tool #3: Social Media Scheduler
Regular action on social media is now a required part of your insurance prospecting. Customers and prospects alike will look to your social presence to get a feel for your agency and to see what others think of you. You need to post regularly to steer the conversation. Frequent posting also shows you’re active and engaged and brings you top of mind to those searching for a provider.
A social media scheduler can help you keep up with regular posts by allowing you to simultaneously post to multiple platforms at once. And, true to its name, a social scheduler lets you plan ahead and schedule posts for weeks and months in the future. That means you won’t need to take time every day to remember to post but can dedicate a time to schedule ahead and avoid the interruptions.
Tool #4: Marketing Automation
Marketing automation brings social and other communication scheduling together in one system. With its email features, you can schedule regular e-newsletters, birthday and holiday greetings, and renewal reminders to customers. You can also set up customized prospect outreach messaging to send at different intervals, including an automated first message sent to those requesting a quote or filling out other forms.
For social media, marketing automation tools can schedule messaging and track data like shares, likes, and comments. Plus, messaging can be tailored by audience and synched up with your email communications for an all-in-one outreach messaging and tracking hub.
See how Partner Platform’s Marketing Automation Manager can help your agency improve prospect outreach and customer retention
Tool #5: An Integrated Insurance Management Platform Experience
While each of the insurance prospecting tools above can boost your sales, together they can exponentially improve your outreach and client retention. That’s why we created an all-in-one integrated prospecting experience with our Partner Platform.
The cloud-based comprehensive system includes our Marketing Automation Manager, which creates customizable, automated workflows and mass campaigns for client and prospect communication, and our Producer Results Manager for a complete customer relationship management solution to convert prospects into lasting clients. That’s a winning combination you can’t beat, and just part of what the Partner Platform has to offer your agency. See more Partner Platform capabilities and view a demo to see how the Partner Platform can change the direction of your agency.
Hiring for the Future: Adapting Strategies to Gain New Talent
The insurance industry has changed over the past 20 years. Paper files and phone calls have given way to digital processes, email, texting, and more. Your insurance support team’s needs have changed, too – or so we hope.
The average insurance agent is 59 years old and only a few years off from retirement. To keep your team fresh, you need to bring in younger agents. Soon enough you’ll have no choice – Millennials and Generation Z will account for 58 percent of the workforce by 2029. You need to “get with the program” to attract and keep young talent – but how?
How to Attract Young Hires….
Technology usage is the first thing new hires will notice. Members of the young workforce are used to using tech for business and leisure. They’ll expect you to provide more than a laptop and cell phone; they’ll look for paperless processes, modern communication and collaboration tools, and opportunities to get work done virtually.
Read more on going paperless – why your customers want it and how to get started
Young hires expect information to be found and shared easily through a centralized location. Leverage your agency management system to bridge the processing gap. Tap into your system’s ability to store files, capture emails, and add tasks among other capabilities. And, make texting part of your communication strategy, both internally and externally. This is an area where young hires will be savvy – they’ll expect to use texting for communicating with their team, lead generation, and closing deals.
The best thing you can do to attract and keep young talent is to embrace virtual work systems. Sales hinges on creating and growing relationships, so a virtual sales team may seem counterintuitive. However, as a virtual team your agents can connect more efficiently. Virtual work allows them to connect from anywhere, making it easier to bring meetings to clients and get work done while they wait. In less than ten years, it’s estimated 73 percent of businesses teams will have remote workers. Offering virtual work opportunities is not just smart; it’s inevitable.
Get more resources on how to make your agency virtual, yet personal
…And How to Keep Them
Getting Millennials and Gen Z to apply is only the first hurdle. Once you have a quality candidate in the door, how do you get them to say yes for years to come?
Start by updating your interview process. The work has changed, the workforce has changed, so how you interview needs to change, too. Focus more on how candidates work in a team and their ability to understand and leverage technology. Be sure to talk about how you’re team-focus and tech-adaptive, too. And, focus more on culture. One author found millennials were willing to take an over $7K pay cut to gain a better workplace culture. Now that’s leverage.
You’ll also need to update your onboarding. The first few months in any new position are challenging, so the smoother you can make the ride, the better. Culture again plays a key role. Be intentional about introducing new hires to team members, setting aside time to outline the processes and tools used within each environment.
Provide training + mentorship. Pair new hires up with someone to walk with them through training, serving as a guide to answer questions along the way. This pairing provides a double benefit to you: new hires feel connected, and veterans get a refresher on your tools and processes. Assuming they have a positive experience, new hires can later pay-it-forward to the next fresh team member.
Don’t forget about your long-term employees – help them transition to new tech and processes, too
Helping Your Team Grow
Growing your team is about more than adding new people to your staff contact list, it’s about listening and providing people what they need to improve. Meet up regularly with old and new team members, both individually and as a group. This simple act shows you care – and that goes a long way.
We know how important it is to listen and connect because that’s what we do at SIS: listen and learn to mutually grow. Through our workgroups, Regional Learnings, and forums, we focus on staying in touch with our Partner Platform community. Like any community, when our clients grow, we do, too.
Find out more about the Partner community– read our client stories and connect with us at 800.747.7005, Option 6 or
How to Get Insurance Clients to Stay
As an agency owner, one problem often encountered is how to get insurance clients to stay. Many times, a customer signs up, stays for a year or two, then jumps ship for a lower rate. You could counter by bringing your rates down, but you know that’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem. What are you to do to improve your retention?
Lucky for you, we have the answers. Over the years we’ve worked with numerous independent agency owners and gotten an inside look at what it takes to get insurance clients to stay. Their expertise is throughout our blog – here are a few posts to get you started on the road to retention.
Recent Articles
Why Partner Platform is the Independent Agency Insurance System
Top Agency Management System Customer Service Tools: Mobile App
Mobile apps are quickly becoming the latest “must-have” for top agency management systems. And it’s no surprise – mobile has taken over everywhere. Smartphone users check their mobile phones an average of 63 times a day. More than 60% of U.S. consumers prefer mobile...
Insurance Retention How-To: Retaining and Gaining Referrals
Insurance retention or renewals are likely the top goal for most agencies. Client retention and referrals are the dream. You can have both. With the right tools and a solid marketing plan, your agency can retain and gain a client base at a predictable, comfortable...