At an industry conference, an independent agency owner in upstate New York relayed how he expanded his business among existing personal lines accounts by one-third over the course of several years. A part-time customer service rep would come into the office for several hours on Fridays and call accounts who had one or two policies with the agency, talking about the importance of personal umbrella policies and offering free quotes. Of course, she left a lot of voicemail messages. The owner told me, "In the first year or two, nothing really happened. We didn't sell very much. But suddenly, people started asking for quotes and started buying umbrellas."
To what did he attribute the change in reception? "With this young lady leaving friendly messages year after year maybe they felt if it was important to her to call, it should be important to them, too."
What strikes me most about this success? The agency owner had the smarts to stay with what initially appeared to be a failed effort.
There are four related brand categories in which customers find value in an agency:
1. Trust
Every interaction with customers should build trust. Everyone shoots for no surprises, but delivering an unpleasant surprise in a proactive way could result in testimonials.
You also can build trust by showing your people. That means highlighting photos, bios, hobbies and successes of your valued service and sales employees in every interaction, as well as on your website and social media outposts.
2. Quality
Every interaction should be of high quality — although in the insurance industry, sometimes quantity trumps quality. Ask your staff, friends and some good customers to rate your key brand touch points on a scale of 0 (appallingly bad) to 10 (rock solid):
- Vision: What is the better world you envision if you're successful with your mission, which is what you do as a firm?
- Core values: How your employees behave on the job.
- Consistency of workflows.
- Business name and brand identity.
- Carrier partners.
- Website and online social media outposts.
- Advertising, PR and marketing materials.
3. Education
If you treat them well, your customers will be your best allies in renewing business and telling others about you. First and foremost, your customers expect to be educated about what coverages they absolutely must have in place, what coverages they don't have that they should consider, and the impact of life events (for example, new baby, marriage, business expansion, youthful driver or moving) on risk and insurance.
4. Time
Think about time in new ways. Many agents believe that one way to save customers time is to answer the phone on one or two rings. While admirable, this is not being proactive; it's just reacting very quickly. Getting ahead of customer needs well before renewal is being proactive.
Another way to save customers time is by providing self-service options for electronic payments, e-signature, mobile apps and responsive websites. Funny how today's customer service essentially is no service — at least not from a live person. But the customer perceives he or she is saving time.
By the way, your customers absolutely despise phone trees. There, I said it.
In the independent agent and broker business, the right thing to do isn't always obvious. But the right thing is proactively educating customers about important coverage gaps. routine customer discussions lead to quotes. Quotes lead to sales. And sales lead to stronger retention levels and greater profit.
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