Why it Pays to Become BFFs With Your Customers: 4 Client Relationship Building Tactics for Insurance Agents

The insurance industry is increasingly competitive. In a saturated market, it pays to prioritize client relationship-building strategies in your business.

Differentiating yourself in a crowded market is not easy. With insurance rates in flux, leaving minimal negotiating space—you need something more than just numbers to distinguish your brand and stay competitive. And even if you can offer the lowest price, competing solely on price is a recipe for churn.

When it comes to insurance, you should strive to be a trustworthy advisor. A positive client experience centers on a prospect’s needs and life events, not a transactional haggle. The goal is to build relationships. Not only can relationship building boost sales and set you apart from your competition—you’ll gain loyal customers who stick with you long term.

In this article, you’ll discover how to stand out from your competitors by shifting your focus to a more customer-centric approach.

1. Improve Client Relationship Building With Technology

Technological developments are disrupting almost every industry—insurance is no exception. As most of our lives move toward digital convenience and instant solutions, consumer expectations have shifted in tandem. Customers expect high-tech solutions that meet their needs on-demand.

By leveraging new technology within your core processes—you can scale your business capabilities and sales efforts, streamline procedures, and fast-track administrative processes. Predictive analysis, chatbots, data collection, and artificial intelligence are indispensable emerging tools for insurance companies.

Chatbots

A chatbot is an automated communication tool that interacts with clients to resolve problems. Using chatbots to help address queries, process applications, and file claims saves a tremendous amount of time and resources. Which is essentially an easy and interactive way to answer FAQs for your clients. It frees insurance agents up to focus on client relationship building and handling complicated cases.

Data Collection

Social media is no longer a purely social tool. It has become an important channel for selling for many businesses. Social media provides a convenient way to educate clients and facilitates customer communication.

By looking at the engagement of your published content, you'll gain a better sense of what resonates with your audience. Then you can customize content that they will be interested in.

Automation

Automating tasks and processes removes mundane or repetitive tasks and allows you to do them consistently and systematically.  This results in fewer human errors, typos, and exceptions. Whether that is through your CRM, agency management system or other purpose-built tools—automation can be a tremendous value-add to your business and client experience.

Consider, for example, how Canopy Connect applies automation to import all prospective client data securely within a few seconds. With Canopy Connect insurance agents can send prospects a link via email, text, or QR code. By clicking the link, the prospect will authorize and securely share insurance data instantly. No more laborious forms to complete, or extended waiting times for documents.

Excellent operational efficiency sets you apart from the very first touch point. It lays the foundation for effective customer relationship building.

2. Personalize Client Engagement

To remain relevant and competitive in the industry, insurance providers need to tailor their solutions to clients' needs. A client who feels that you understand or can relate to their needs is more likely to trust you.

Personalizing your offerings ensures you can improve your customers' quality of life because you understand the driving force behind their quest for coverage. The reason is deeper than simply purchasing a new car, getting a license, getting married, buying a house, starting a business, or having a newborn. It satisfies the emotional need to make sure a family is safe, a major investment is secure, or that someone is there in case of an emergency.

The only way to know what insurance recommendations to make is to understand critical life events and gather client data. Besides demographic data such as age, occupation, gender, race, marital status, income, and education—behavioral data is essential to amplify personalization opportunities.

Behavioral data helps you gain insight into client habits, preferences, and interests. You can do this by tracking app or browser sessions, searched topics, clicks, and pages viewed, among other online behaviors. Data collection and analytics tools will then automatically collect, analyze, and interpret the data for you—which substantially simplifies the process. This information makes it much easier to create personalized customer recommendations and communication.

As important as it is to deliver relevant offers, it is also imperative that you avoid sending irrelevant communications. Excessive, unnecessary back-and-forth drives customers away since it's of little value to them. With limited time on their hands, they’ll rather engage with a company that meets their needs with every message.

3. Become a Trusted Advisor

Insurance documentation is full of complicated words and complex legalese, which can be frustrating and confusing for clients to understand the coverage included under a policy. Client relationship building is all about developing trust. By explaining the implications of the contract in simple, understandable terms—clients appreciate the transparency of your offering.

When customers need questions answered, the first place they generally turn to is the internet. Including educational content as part of your marketing strategy will establish you as a credible, expert source to turn to for insurance information. This fosters engagement and can win over new clients.

How do you include this educational content? You can do so on your website, blog, or Facebook, Instagram, Nextdoor, LinkedIn, Twitter, or TikTok. To grab your customers’ attention, try to include engaging and memorable interactive aspects such as short video clips, explainers, animations, or infographics. Aim to inform and enlighten customers, as opposed to focusing on selling tactics.

Check out our free on-demand webinar, where we do a deep dive into this topic: 3 Keys to Closing More Business with Social Media.

4. Connect With Customers Through Different Channels

For customers to learn about your service, you need to be visible where they are. When a prospect encounters your company’s content or marketing messages on a specific channel, they'll ideally want to engage right away. Make it easy for clients to communicate with you, whether via social media, live chat, email, or an app.

Ground your strategy in a streamlined multi-channel communication strategy. If you email a prospect and they respond with a query via live chat, you should integrate these interactions as one seamless encounter. You can do this with most CRMs or marketing platforms—which allow you to track your correspondence across channels in one central hub. With a well-rounded picture of each customer journey, you can interact with meaning, and drive future engagement and increase customer lifetime value.

When paired with analytics and reporting, this offers powerful insights to leverage personalized marketing. In the end, your customer has a high-quality experience with your brand.

Optimize Client Relationship Building With the Right Tech

Maintaining in-depth customer profiles, meeting prospects where they’re at, and pinpointing what drives their decisions is nearly impossible to manage manually these days. It is, however, the only way to set yourself apart in a very competitive industry. The right tools can help you automate these steps, relieving you from time-consuming research and administrative burdens—freeing you up to focus on what matters most: client satisfaction.

Canopy Connect partners with you to streamline data collection for instant and simplified quoting and information processing—resulting in ultimately closing more deals.

Collecting insurance information often takes multiple back-and-forth requests between various sources. This drags out sales cycles, results in inaccurate quotes, and gives competitors time to get their foot in the door. Canopy Connect removes these hurdles by helping agencies round up all the relevant data at the click of a button.

Are you ready to build more meaningful and lasting relationships with clients and boost satisfaction rates? Chat with one of our team members today and leverage technology for better client relationship building.

       

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