Does Improving the Customer Experience Matter to Your Bottom Line?

There are many traditional and non-traditional practices related to giving a great customer experience. Insurance companies are spending millions of dollars on studying what is working and what is not, but the million dollar question is this: how many independent insurance agencies are actually investing in a rewarding customer experience? My guess is not enough, because every agency needs to have both a traditional and non-traditional customer experience.

What is a customer experience?

That is one of the most asked questions I get when I’m on the road speaking at different events and workshops in the insurance industry. My answer is that we should start with a digital customer experience; your agency needs to have a CRM tool to be able to push out a series of emails to help with onboarding new clients, along with a thank you video and surveys to find out how well the agency did with managing expectations and following through.

This is absolutely critical in today’s times, but it doesn’t stop there. Let’s look at the traditional portion of the customer experience of onboarding a new client. There needs to be a handwritten thank you card with each and every new client, along with other mailings within the first 30 days that they become a client. For example, our second mailing is a postcard about our agency’s mobile app, and our third piece of mail is a marketing piece all about our agency’s 12 promises that we make to you, our client.

But with all this being said, there are three key questions that each agency must ask themselves in order to figure out how to give a great experience. Question one: do you understand who your clients are, and are they the clients you want and are marketing to? Question two: what are the influences that create a great experience (and without an agency survey you will never have this answer)? Question 3: are you tracking the results and making changes when needed? A great example of making a change is that in our digital customer experience we track open ratios; when we see numbers fall, we adjust the header and visuals in our emails, along with the time the email is going out. Tracking is key, and making the necessary changes to improve the open ratio is critical to your success.

Let’s take a step back to question number one: Who are the agency’s clients? It sounds easy to answer, right? Hold on a minute—have you mapped out the ideal client to your insurance team? The answer I usually get is that any client who pays the bills is a great client, and that is not the right answer. You need to figure out who your ideal client is. Is it a 30-year-old single male, a 25-year-old single female, or is it a married couple in their mid-30s? The only right answer is who you are looking to write. For example, here at Paradiso Insurance, we are looking for married couples with families with a $125k combined income who own a home and some toys, such as snowmobile/motorcycle, etc.

Question two, which asks about what influences a great experience, is interesting because we have learned a lot from our clients. For example, within our survey we ask why our clients started looking for an insurance quote, and one of the most common answers is “my agent hasn’t returned my call for the past two days.” So, within our promises, we explain that we will set a timeline with each and every prospect/client for the next call, because we want to make sure we set expectations. Without these, you can’t give a great client experience. Another interesting fact that we have learned is that our clients wanted Saturday hours, and so we added them over a year ago, and it has been key to our agency’s success. I guess what I am saying is that you should ask your clients what they want and listen to them.

Question three is all about tracking, and I can tell you I have given many workshops and even more speaking engagements around this. When I ask the question of how many of you are tracking your lost business, or how many are tracking where their business is coming from, most people shy away because they realize that they should be doing it, but aren’t! Tracking is absolutely critical to your agency’s future.

So, does improving the customer experience really matter to your agency’s bottom line? Yes, yes and YES, it absolutely does. I’ve talked about only two ways—digitally and traditionally—that we can capitalize on the client’s experience, but I would like to add that it shouldn’t stop there. Do you practice the way your team answers the phones, and does your agency record the phone calls? If your answer is no, then I would tell you to invest in the technology of recording the calls, and bring in a sales coach to work with your team on answering the phones. It matters, and it matters in a big way. One last step I would recommend is that when you have walk-ins, do you have a director of first impressions? Remember, you only have seven seconds to make a great first impression, so make sure you have it planned out and practiced. People who walk into your agency should have a great first experience every time.

So, why all this talk about the client’s experience? It truly matters because they are the ones who write your checks, and they are the shareholders of your agency. Without your clients, what would you have? Not much! Invest in their experience, and it will pay your agency back tenfold, and it will allow you to remain open in a very competitive industry.