Fact or Friction: How to Streamline Insurance Sales

TL;DR:

• Long forms and phone interrogations create friction in insurance sales processes.
• Prefill solutions are unreliable and can hinder trust with clients.
• Canopy Connect offers a solution to streamline insurance sales by removing friction.
• Simplify the insurance data intake process for a more efficient and effective sales approach.

We're all consumers, and we often ask ourselves, "What's the easiest way for me to accomplish this?" This question applies to any journey we undertake, including purchasing insurance.

A key point of friction in the quote intake process is gathering all the information you need to understand your client's current insurance situation and generate a quote that's positioned to win.

Let's breakdown some commonly used methods for insurance intake that are no longer cutting it for the modern consumer:

Long Forms Are Bad

I went through a real agency's website and completed their intake form. It was 45 pages long.

I ended up taking 20 minutes just going through the process and entering in fake information, trying to get through this. Who's realistically going to sit through a quote intake form and complete 45 pages? And prospects still aren't putting in the right information because it's all based on what they think they have. 

Here's a few reasons long forms are only creating friction on your insurance agency's website:

• Long forms on websites can deter potential customers from completing a purchase or requesting a quote.
• High abandon rates are common due to the extensive information required in these forms.
• The more form fields there are, the higher the drop-off rate.
• Even if basic information is captured, customers may feel overwhelmed and abandon the process.
• Agencies then find themselves in a position of trying to regain the customer's interest, which isn't a strong position to be in.
• Some agencies use follow-on forms or intake forms to gather more information, as a separate step, but this can add more friction and frustration for the customer.
• Customers often don't know the answers to many of the questions asked in these forms.
• The information provided by customers in these forms may not be accurate as it's based on their own understanding.

Phone Interrogation

I've noticed that many people approach their prospects with a barrage of questions over the phone, often leading to a 30 to 45-minute conversation. This method often results in prospects making up answers because they don't want to feel ignorant. This is especially true when it comes to complex topics like claims histories. It's like the classic Batman and Joker interrogation scene—figuratively smashing your client's head into the table with question after question.

This approach isn't only ineffective but also counterproductive. They don't know the answers, and you're not getting the right information. It's a lose-lose situation. You're not building the rapport you think you're building and is likely to create more friction than connection.

That might work for you, but it's a bad experience. It'd be better to get the information and then have an intelligent conversation afterwards where you can be an advisor.  

Prefill Isn't Reliable

Anyone rely on a prefill solution? 

I'll quote Anchorman any chance I get, and when I think of prefill forms I think of "60 percent of the time it works every time." And that doesn't make any sense, right? The bottom line is that prefill isn't reliable—even the "good" ones.

You don't know where the data comes from. You don't know when it was last updated. And there comes a point where if you blindly trust it, you come across as untrustworthy because you just made a bunch of assumptions.

And the client doesn't necessarily know that you've come across and used prefill. They're just like, "Oh, you got my information from some, magical black box system." If the data is incorrect and if you can't trust the data, then you can't really be a trusted advisor to your client. Your credibility is shot.

If you don't have the trust with your client, how are you going to sell them a policy? How are you going to be a trusted advisor? It's not going to work. 

Scavenger Hunt for the Dec Page

So you want reliable information to work off of. A lot of that is on the declarations page—it outlines all the details of a policy and has most of the information you'll need to advise them and start a quote. 

The friction point here is that your prospect likely doesn't know where to find this document. It was likely mailed to them five or 11 months ago and tossed in the trash or tucked away somewhere. 

They could access it online, but insurance portals are notoriously difficult to navigate and find the right documents. And with so many carriers out there, an agent can't help guide them through this.

If you're lucky, and they have the dec page on hand, it might be a nice PDF. But you might also end up with a dozen blurry photos. The key information might be redacted with a marker (I call this the dec page eclipse). But most likely, you end up with the wrong document, like an insurance card or a bill, which is worthless.

A Solution that Removes Friction From Your Insurance Process: Canopy Connect

Our solution is simple. Agents text clients a link to share policy information, clients log in to their carrier portal to share details, and agents get dec pages, documents, and data in 30 seconds. No more friction.

Would you rather have an accurate and easy process like Canopy Connect, or keep using processes that aren't fully serving the needs of your agency?

Get facts and reduce friction with our insurance data intake platform.