December 4, 2018
39
InsuranceNewsNet By Sumeet Howe
If you’re an insurance
agent or broker, you face new threats to your business. Right now, the shift
towards online and direct insurance sales is increasing competition and making
it harder to win new customers.
According to a
recent EY survey of 530 insurance agents, the
emergence of direct-to-consumer and online channels is pushing insurance
professionals to embrace new technologies in order to win new business.
Furthermore, IDR’s 2018 Insurance Digital Transformation Survey reveals
that 95 percent of agents think digital technology is important to their
success. This is an increase from 58 percent in 2016.
While agents are increasingly adopting tools such as
e-signatures, web quoting and customer portals to improve the customer
experience, there’s still more to be done. These five digital must-haves will
keep you in touch with the times and in touch with customers’ needs, so you can
connect in the ways that matter.
1. A better way to price policies and process
claims. New technologies can
generate scaled, fully-measured and highly accurate 3D models of any property
based on ground-level imagery. This is a major innovation that can make pricing
a policy or adjusting a claim relatively painless compared to traditional
methods such as physical inspections, on-site adjuster visits, or even
cost-prohibitive drone imagery.
2. A streamlined solution for nurturing new
business. To grow your
business, you need to reliably generate and nurture new leads. So how do you
keep track of all of your prospects, leads and customers? A customer
relationship management system helps keep all that information organized in one
place so you can act on it. Need to make follow-up sales calls, check in on
renewals or generate more business? A good CRM system can help you see relevant
customer info at a glance, nurture leads and get you closer to making the sale.
3. A powerful channel for marketing yourself and
your services. If you’re doing
a good job nurturing leads and cultivating customer relationships, then you
probably need to stay in touch with several people – all of whom are at
different points in the sales cycle. Marketing automation platforms help you
streamline communication and automate emails. They also can help you create
marketing campaigns and extend your reach with social ads. If you’re still
communicating with leads and customers one email at a time, it may be worth
delegating much of that task to an automated email platform.
4. An online presence that attracts new clients. Because consumers prefer to do online
research before reaching out, a website is a must-have for insurance
professionals. Just remember that while your site can be simple, it must be
mobile-ready: the majority of online searches now
happen on mobile, and you risk losing out on leads if your site isn’t
responsive. Next, head over to Google My Business to make sure you
appear in map searches when people look for insurance in your area.
5. A social media strategy that works for you. Many agents are already using platforms
such LinkedIn to connect with potential customers or contribute their expertise
to group conversations. If you’re active across multiple social platforms, such
Facebook and Twitter, the additional exposure can help you generate fresh leads
and build up your business. Just be sure to make the most of your time with
streamlined tools for managing those accounts. You may want to use HootSuite or Hearsay
Social to post to multiple platforms at once and to automate
much of your social activity.
Sumeet Howe is the director of product
management at HOVER.
Sumeet may be contacted atsumeet.howe@innfeedback.com.
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