Providing an Outstanding Customer Experience

In today’s complex marketing age, “customer service” no longer exists. Yes, you heard me right. Customer service is out the window. There’s a good reason for that. It’s because the “customer experience” has now fully taken over the playing field. Companies used to compete to see who had the best customer service, but there’s so much more to taking care of your customers than just providing them in-person service.

Now it’s about the full experience and the one key element that brings it all together is trust. Trust takes hard work to earn over time and it requires a high level of care and consistency to build and maintain.

How can you earn your customers’ trust in such a way that you generate more word-of-mouth referrals, retain clients longer, and give customers the experience they deserve? Several ideas come to mind.

Email & Social Media Marketing

Email and social media make it very easy to connect with current and potential customers. Did you know your customers actually want to connect with you via social media? Data tells me they do. For example, from 2012 to 2014, the percentage of people following companies via social media went from 16% to 33%. That number continues to rise.

Communicating via social media and email are great ways to demonstrate your company’s service and product offerings, highlight your staff, and show the world your brand. Plus, it’s a personable way to connect. Remember, people truly enjoy social media, and as I mentioned, your customers want to stay connected with you. You just have to give them a good reason to do so, by incorporating eye-friendly visuals and sharing messages that people will want to engage with.

We use social media and email to extend holiday wishes to our customers, congratulate them on their accomplishments, share blogs that pertain to their interests, and more. The possibilities are endless. Importantly, these forms of marketing will remind your customers that your insurance agency is full of real people who want to help them with their insurance experience. It’s all about delivery, so make sure you deliver your message in a way that you’d want to read about yourself.

There are many, many social media platforms you can incorporate into your digital marketing strategy and plan. The five crucial networks our company focuses on are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+. Each social network has its own special features and strengths. Let’s take a basic look at each.

• Facebook is great for connecting with people on both an individual and corporate basis. This platform is excellent for promoting your website in your posts and sharing visuals, videos, and written messages. It’s essentially the “all-in-one” social network. Facebook is your one-stop solution to sharing multiple types of content, whether written or visual.

• Pinterest and Instagram both focus on visuals and image sharing. They are powerful because you can list your location–and insurance agency phone number, address and website URL–on both. With Pinterest, you can upload your own original content or search for other members’ pictures or graphics. What’s especially great about Pinterest is you can “re-pin” content from others’ profiles that is relevant to your brand’s message and the insurance services or products you offer.

• Instagram is more often used by the younger generation, including millennials. It can still be a powerful marketing resource if you upload visuals that correspond with your brand and include well thought-out #hashtags. Instagram is great for connecting with your audience on a more personable level and is the ideal place to display branded visuals, pictures of your staff, and photos of other happy customers who are satisfied with your service.

• Google+ is a social network that isn’t used often. It really should be, because there is a huge user count on Google+ since they own a lot of space online. The great thing about Google+ is that it has communities designed around specific interests. For example, if I’d like to connect with people who love classic cars (since I write classic car insurance), I can just search for “classic car lovers” and join and post to the relevant communities I find.

• Twitter is your one-stop network for frequent updates. Your tweets may only survive seconds, so posting frequently on Twitter is crucial. Twitter is a great place for displaying your content in a rapid-fire environment. A tweet only lives for seconds or minutes, so it makes perfect sense to post multiple times a day, sharing content with your customers and prospects that is relevant to their needs. Stand out on Twitter and have your tweets found more easily by using creative and thoughtful hashtags.

“Traditional” Marketing

Besides digital marketing, there are also some more traditional methods to connect with customers and prospects to work on building their trust. I use the term “traditional” loosely, because as we enter 2016, digital marketing has become the staple for connecting in today’s digital age and should, itself, be considered a traditional form of marketing.

Right now, let’s focus on some old-fashioned forms of marketing that we still practice regularly at our agency. One thing we do is send post cards, using our branded visuals, staff photos and info, and friendly messages as features to focus on. You can send other forms of print, such as thank you or holiday cards as well. If you have a professionally designed piece of mail delivered to your customers’ mailboxes, you provide a tangible and attractive reminder that you care. They will certainly remember it.

Agency App

So what about those customers who won’t trust you unless you deliver an immediate service? These are the folks who were ready for the digital age before it ever hit and they will trust you if you’re there for them 24/7. The good news is it’s totally possible to do this. By creating and integrating into our social marketing strategy an agency app, we’ve been there for our customers around the clock. Our app can help clients pay bills, file claims, keep a home inventory, obtain digital ID cards, and even get immediate help in case of an emergency.

There’s so much power behind our app that it’s ridiculous. We can even send all of our app users a push notification. Would you believe they have a 100% open rate? Believe it.

If you don’t already have an app in place at your agency, get one and use it to earn your customers’ trust more effectively. Again, if you need help getting started, just reach out to me and I’ll gladly point you in the right direction.

In conclusion, you need to go beyond service and earn your customers’ trust in whatever way possible. That’s truly what the customer experience boils down to.

Of course, you still must provide excellent in-person service. Go beyond that and connect with them in the digital world and even tap into some “traditional” forms of marketing when you get the chance. No matter what you decide, keep it personable, and remind them that you’re there to help.