Customers’ experiences across other industries has informed their expectations regarding insurance. Customers expect to access and manage their policies using the same channels that they use when shopping for other goods and services.
Delivering seamless, multichannel advice is key to building long-term client relationships and expanding business. Here are some strategies brokers can employ in meeting client expectations:
1. Ensure Your Website Is Easy to Navigate
As any good website navigation expert will tell you, navigation plays a significant role in whether visitors stay around and engage with your content. Easy-to-navigate sites can increase accessibility for users as well as conversion rates for sales or conversion rates.
Unnecessary website complexity will frustrate shoppers. Instead of exploring its content, visitors will leave because they cannot locate what they require. Furthermore, disorganized navigation could potentially lead to search engines becoming confused.
Clear and intuitive navigation menus are essential in today’s mobile-first world, which is why it is crucial to ensure that the navigation bar and links remain consistent in location, font style and color across your site pages. Also be sure to implement breadcrumbs so visitors have a trail back home should they get lost; using breadcrumbs will allow visitors to easily return back home!
To make website navigation simpler, keep menu items to a minimum while remaining consistent in their naming across pages. Incorporate one serif and one sans-serif font (one serif and one sans-serif should suffice), and avoid Flash as this cannot be viewed on mobile devices.
As another means of making sure your website is easy for visitors to navigate, test it across various browsers and platforms – mobile included – including multiple mobile phones so you can gain insight into its performance with visitors of differing ages, genders and demographics. For instance, if your business provides wholesale services as well as more traditional retail customers, consider splitting up your navigation menu so each audience can view content specifically targeted to them.
2. Make Your Agents Easy to Reach
Insurance carriers that want to increase sales and retention must prioritize superior customer experience. To do so successfully requires having a deep knowledge of customer expectations, creating a plan and strategy for meeting them, as well as developing processes and technology to create meaningful engagement between customer and insurer. Only then will insurers make meaningful dent in the $12 trillion coverage deficit and protect millions of households financially from risk.
Customers seeking information on an existing policy or exploring potential new ones want a convenient and efficient experience when interacting with insurers, from accessing quotes online, policy management tools and mobile apps around the clock without unnecessary paperwork and hassle, to easily switching channels or communicating with agents as often as desired.
Insurance providers need to create seamless omnichannel experiences that mirror other industries if they wish for customers’ expectations to be met. After all, expectations have been formed by experiences in other sectors and customers now expect personalized advice, omnichannel journeys and digital end-to-end journeys from their insurance providers as well.
As part of a customer-centric approach, this can be accomplished by clearly communicating the value of sharing data, offering transparency into how it’s being used, and making it simple for consumers to share it – such as pre-filling information already collected or making sharing new data more straightforward for customers. This allows agents to build an accurate picture of customers so that they can offer tailored recommendations and product offerings, increasing speed, accuracy and efficiency with every interaction while freeing them up to focus on building trusted relationships with each one.
3. Ensure Your Customer Service Is Easy to Access
Experiences with other industries have informed customers’ expectations of insurers, with them expecting access to policies online 24-7 just like with banks or retail accounts. As such, insurers must offer 24-hour customer support through multiple channels like web, social, phone calls and mobile applications if customers expect this kind of access from insurers.
Satisfied insurance customers are more likely to renew their policies, refer friends and family to the company, and remain loyal. That’s why customer experience (CX) leaders consistently outperform their peers across various business metrics – our Insurance CX Leaders report explores what sets them apart and how you can follow in their footsteps.
4. Make Your Policy Documents Easy to Read
Customers of insurance brokers now expect the same high level of customer service they’ve come to expect from Amazon and Netflix, so meeting and exceeding customers’ rising expectations requires them to focus on policies and procedures.
Integrating the right language is integral to creating clear and comprehensive policy documents. Avoid using jargon and complex terms that could confuse readers; write simply in active voice using simple sentences that clearly identify responsibilities, timelines and decision-making authorities. If using acronyms, make sure they’re explained the first time they appear; provide links so your customers have easy access to any resources or websites referenced; provide references in the form of hyperlinks for easy reference by customers.
Plain language makes your policy documents more easily understandable for everyone in your audience – be they employees, customers, or service users. Deloitte recently conducted research which indicated that using plain language could increase reader comprehension up to 90%!
For optimal policy and procedure implementation, the best place to begin is with reviewing existing documentation. Verify that it is up-to-date, accurate and helpful by seeking feedback from employees or customers and comparing existing guidelines and policies against what has been produced in writing.
At the same time, it’s also essential to remember that today’s customers still appreciate receiving personalized service – sending emails or calling using clients by name and offering tailored advice are great ways of creating an unrivalled value proposition and differentiating your business from competitors.
5. Make Your Customer Service Representatives Easy to Reach
Customers appreciate it when their issues are taken seriously, whether that means talking directly with an employee, calling, emailing, or through social media. Make sure your team is trained in customer service inquiries by teaching them everything they need to know while encouraging an empathetic approach – this will ensure great customer experiences regardless of size issues that arise with customers.
Mistakes will happen, and it’s essential that your team members take ownership of their actions when something goes awry. By accepting responsibility and communicating openly with customers when something does go wrong, customers will quickly come to trust your brand as someone who cares for them as individuals rather than just their business needs. Showing humility while offering solutions will help your team build rapport with customers quickly.
Insurance carriers are beginning to recognize the significance of offering their customers an exceptional experience and are shifting towards more customer-centric models, including implementing customer experience initiatives throughout customer journey, expanding communication channels and even adding a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) position on their executive teams.
Insurance companies that prioritize superior customer experiences will outshone their peers across all financial metrics. By creating user-friendly shopping experiences for policyholders, such companies will attract and keep loyal policyholders that are likely to renew their policies as well as refer their friends and family to them.
What are some of your go-to solutions for making customer experiences easy to navigate? Share them in the comments below!