The internet changed a lot about how we buy and manage personal insurance.
That being said, there’s something about having that personal touch when you have questions about your policy; that’s why our cities and towns are still dotted with local insurance agents for insurance providers—there may be a corporate office hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away, but Steve down the road knows about your specific needs and is always thinking of ways to help you get the best policy for them.
In the past, communicating with your insurance agent required a visit to the office or picking up the phone and calling. In both cases, you either had to schedule an appointment, or hope they weren’t with another client and could take some time for you. In our busy lives of the new millennium, that’s not always ideal.
That’s why text messaging makes so much sense for the insurance industry. For both your local agent and the corporate office, investing in SMS technology is the path forward to a superior customer experience.
Headquarters
Let’s start big, and look at how text messaging, and especially newer text messaging options, are useful for the big office.
Big announcements
There are times when an announcement is so big that it needs to go out from the corporate office. This can be information about a storm that’s going to impact a large portion of your customers, or even a change that’s going to impact everyone’s policy.
Traditionally, messages like that have been sent out through short codes, mostly because they’re really good for it. Unfortunately, they can also be pricey, and present a serious problem for your insurance company—what if your customers need to call and ask a question?
Toll-Free SMS allows you to send those same big messages from the toll-free number your customers already have, allowing the to call back into your contact center if they have a question without having to look up the number.
Filing Claims
Nobody ever wants the worst to happen, but that’s also the point of having insurance. Filing a claim is still often best served through either a phone call, or through many of the apps that have popped up from the bigger insurers that allow customers to take photos and share them with claims agents.
That’s great for filing a claim, but getting updates on a claim can require that same app (which may have notifications turned off), calling in, or logging into a website. That’s not always convenient.
Texting claims updates not only allows for an easy way to update customers on the status of their claim, it increases the likelihood of them seeing the update—text messages have a 98% open rate, much higher than email or phone calls.
The local agent
Your local agents are your feet on the ground. They work with customers on a regular basis—they know their names, what their concerns are, and what life choices they’re making that could have an impact on their insurance needs.
Keeping in touch
The importance of keeping the lines of communication open between an agent and their clients can’t be overstated. By maintaining these relationships, the agent is able to better tailor the policy to the client and their specific needs.
While a phone call or in-person visit are great for big events, being able to shoot off a text message to check in, update a client on a change, or just wish them well, helps maintain that relationship, and allows for the agent to manage multiple communications at once.
With a Local A2P messaging integration in your CRM, the agent can send large volumes of messages from a local number that their clients can recognize and respond to, allowing for personal, one-on-one communications (“Congrats on closing on your new house. Let’s schedule some time to chat and get your policy up to date.”) to wider communications that impact all of their clients (“Quick update—the coming storm means I can no longer make changes to policies. If you have questions about your coverage, reach out and I can walk you through it.”)
Ready to chat?
Ready to learn more about new ways to integrate text messaging into how your insurance agency communicates with customers at all levels? Get in touch and let our experts show you how new text messaging solutions can change how you communicate with customers.
