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Customer Service Focus Advice and expertise build lasting relationships CSRs can build loyalty by counseling clients about their individual insurance needs By Donna Glover, CIC, CISR A key element of excellent customer service is regular insurance reviews to help your customers understand: • What coverages they have According to a national survey conducted by independent agents’ Trusted Choice®, 32 million U.S. households own insurance policies that aren’t right for them. The survey explored a variety of home- and work-related events that had occurred in families over a three-year period. The findings provided insight into the shopping behavior of insurance customers, who sometimes would over-insure for specific events and often ignore or overlook major coverage gaps. The fact that these customers were underinsured for major life and work events emphasizes the importance of conducting regular insurance reviews with your customers. Customers should be encouraged to consider their insurance purchases as part of their lifelong risk and asset management program, just as businesses must view buying insurance as part of their broad financial management plan. Although customers like to be in control and believe they are making smart choices, they often delay or ignore purchasing insurance because of anxiety and/or uncertainty. An interview with the customer helps the CSR become more knowledgeable about the customer’s needs and fears. Personal attention is the key. Every telephone call can serve as an opportunity to reach out and get to know your customer better—and ultimately realize income potential. Customers who have a positive experience talking with the CSR will begin to engage in a deeper relationship, and this can lead to greater retention and revenue opportunities. Even if you send out only a newsletter or birthday card, contact with the customer will encourage interaction and will help develop loyal, quality customers. Customers demand that issues be resolved quickly and effectively, and they have high expectations that their CSR/agent will help manage their risk and be there for them when needed. They expect quality service in every transaction as well as excellent customer service. Account development and cross-selling CSRs can use account development and cross-selling to assist their clients. Developing accounts, which means writing two or more policies per account, can provide clients with the full insurance protection they need. Additional policies can be used to close coverage gaps. Cross-selling across different lines of business is another way to meet your clients’ insurance needs. Customers would probably prefer to place all their insurance with one agency, and CSRs can help make this happen through cross-selling. Plus, account development and cross-selling help to improve account retention, which is good for the agency. As a CSR, you can help your customers by asking about new major life events, such as a birth, illness, retirement, home purchase, car purchase, etc. Many successful agencies design their renewal process to respond to the customer’s needs rather than simply submitting the renewal and handling the paperwork process. Does your agency worry more about getting a renewal processed than the client’s perspective on what insurance he or she really needs? Do you have a system that can help you perform annual reviews for your customers? Coverage checklists can help with renewals. A comprehensive checklist, consistently used at renewal time, can reduce the risk of uncovered exposures. Clients appreciate getting the coverage they need, and agencies can minimize their E&O exposures. Preparation and education Since the customer’s experience is usually based on interaction with the CSR, it is in the agency’s best interest to make sure that employees are well prepared, knowledgeable and customer oriented. Insurance education is important for a CSR to gain knowledge and continue to stay current. Lack of product knowledge, limited ability to handle phone calls and high turnover can all threaten an agency’s success. Research done by Harvard Business Review found that increasing confidence in the ability to handle difficult customers and in responding to the daily questions and duties of a job contributed to a CSR’s job satisfaction and length of employment. Gaining the knowledge and skills to do the job will help the CSR become a top performer. CSRs need technical knowledge to understand the coverages, conditions, exclusions and other parts of insurance policies. Programs that lead to professional designations, such as CISR, can aid in obtaining this knowledge. CSRs also need to improve their business skills so they can better deal with stress, handle difficult clients, manage their time and delegate their responsibilities. These skills will enable CSRs to perform their jobs better and in turn provide better customer service. CSRs can assist in another area. Critical marketing information becomes available when customers cancel their policies. Contacting customers who want to cancel helps CSRs accomplish several things for the agency: • Provide information as to why customers want to leave. Every call from a customer presents opportunities for the CSR to strengthen the customer relationship. A successful customer contact results in a positive experience that generates sales, profits and loyalty. When buying options are so readily available to customers, what keeps a customer with an agency is quality service and positive relation-ships. The insurance industry has found that product quality is less challenging to customer loyalty than is service quality. Obviously, the people factor can determine whether a customer stays or leaves. Conducting regular insurance reviews is an excellent way to strengthen customer relationships and improve retention. * The author |
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