
As a result, Insurance Agencies are increasingly asking themselves a few strategic questions as they build a greater digital ecosystem and overcome Customer Experience /Employee Experience (CX/EX) challenges. For instance: should they invest in self-service technologies, and trust customers to handle business themselves with less interaction from staff? Should they develop and provide more digital products and service communications? Or should they double down on technology and policies that encourage more virtual face-to-face interactions?
In short, the answer is: yes, yes, and yes. And the more integrated and accommodating your digital ecosystem becomes for both the customer and the Sales Agents that service them, the better.

Strategies to Overcome Trending Customer and Employee Challenges
1. Self-Service Technologies
Examples use case for self-service that can lead to a sale:
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- Chat-bots – enable customer to talk a chat-bot to provide simple insurance information and in turn you gain customer insights with the ability train your staff on how to tailor the next conversation with a prospect or customer
- Support Portals – customers that have access their latest policy information online, also draws an opprtunity for the customer to review other insurance coverage they may need.
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Additionally, thanks to data and behavioral insights, Insurance Agencies can see what content and queries customers are demanding the most – and then produce and personalize the information they need and identify information or process gaps that may exist along the customer journey. Therefore, self-service confinement is critical, opening your Insurance Agencies to new levels of trust, transparency and an overall better digital experience. That said, the customer experience must be synchronized across multi-channel communications and multidiscipline interaction to proactively meet the customer where they are.

2. Omni-Channel Digital Insurance Updates and Communications
Insurance Agencies should build more future-ready digital products and services and provide a clear picture of those offerings through the new age of digital experience. This means building cross-discipline communications, accessible service demonstrations, and clear information touchpoints. By doing so, customers receive benefits like instant service delivery, real-time response to multidiscipline requests, and timely updates on your services tailored to their particular situation. In addition, your Insurance Agency will have the proper back-end infrastructure to handle customer demands in a timely fashion and you can focus on other pressing business matters. This helps deliver total customer experiences and equips your team to generate, test and deploy the next-best solutions.
After all, if customers find they can’t effectively interact with you how they want, they will take their business to another Insurance provider that’s a better fit. It’s no longer cost or time-prohibitive to do so, especially when alternatives are a click, or two away and quick comparison tools are available. Thus, if your Insurance Agency is behind the new digital era, your customers will find out and quickly find the convenience they desire elsewhere.
3. Remote, Personalized Interactions
Insurance Agencies can continue to deliver quality personalized service by investing in Sales Agents with great skills in that area and utilizing intuitive technology that supports and accommodates remote work. That includes technology with better digital communication channels that enable you to still tailor conversations around insurance and policy information, automate low-value admin tasks and provide complete transparency of every sales opportunity to ensure a prospect or existing customer gets the insurance coverage they need. After all, it still means something to a customer who feels an Insurance Agency is empathetic and looks out for their best interest.
Another vital reason to go digital is the current challenge of customers shifting locations as a result of the pandemic, meaning retention let alone a new sale just got harder, therefore maintaining a relationship via digital means will allow Agents to still remain close to their customers no matter how remote. According to the Nationwide Agency Forward survey – in the next 5 years:
- 34% of consumers plan to move away from their current location in the next five years and about a quarter say the pandemic impacted this decision
- At least 1-in-5 business owners intend to reduce, move, or eliminate offices in the next five years with middle-market owners (77%) being three times more likely than small business owners to say the pandemic influenced their plans
Customers still want a great service and support experience, especially when they need to solve urgent or complex issues. By focusing on that as part of the total experience, customers will feel glad they chose your Insurance Agency and become loyal.

Enabling Deeper Consumer Experiences
As an example, AGENCYMATE’s all-in-one Insurance AMS platform supports Agents across all aspects of their business, providing full customer lifecycle lead-to-sale-to-service excellence every. single. Day. We also understand that every Agency is unique, and that is why we enable you to customize your core business processes from lead nurture workflows, individual team member action lists, communication workflow and that’s just to name a few! This allows your Insurance Agency to focus on core business actions to respond quickly to leads and every step of the sales cycle, to convert and win!
Insurance Agencies would be wise to quickly explore and transform their customer and employee experience to utilize applications like this that optimize consumer interactions, create efficiencies, drive revenue and loyalty, minimize risk and save time and money. Doing so will help ensure they deliver on what their customers want – and stay ahead of their competition in the years to come.
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