The Missing Piece in the Agency Tech Stack

As customers of Insurtech, let’s take a look at the overwhelming asks of agencies WITHIN the IA channel.  It is easy to see based on the companies gaining traction in the space that agencies are asking for faster, easier, more efficient ways to get things done. Faster ways to quote, easier ways to bind, better tools to drive new business into your agency. 

Two main reasons for this in my opinion:

1. It makes the agency/agents' life easier…that’s a simple one. Who doesn’t want to make their day-to-day work just a bit more convenient?
2. A younger, more tech-savvy generation are taking control of the insurance agencies, and they EXPECT it.

This is fantastic and I’m all for it, go sell more insurance. Sell way more insurance and do it in less time. For the most part, this benefits you, your agency, the policyholder, and the carrier.

But we need to pause for a second and think about what your clients, your policyholders, are asking for. Are they much different than you? Don’t they deserve to find what they are looking for quickly, to handle their serving easier and with less confusion, and ultimately to get in and get out when trying to service? What is their current customer experience level with your agency? Are they stuck having to only pick up the phone or email your agency…that is if they can find your contact info?

Service is the missing piece in almost all agency tech stacks, and it’s not being talked about nearly enough. Retention is why agencies get into insurance and the service work is by far the biggest piece in retention. 

Bringing in new front-end tech to sell more business faster is fantastic, but not if business is walking out the back door just as fast as you are able to bring it in. Don’t be really great on the front end and let your clients walk in and find a sub-par experience. Make sure you are carving space out for what ultimately makes you the most money…service, and retention.

Agencies adopting tech to make servicing easier and facilitate the client self-servicing are the ones over the next 1, 5, and 10 years who will own the IA channel.

Think about your personal life and how you do almost everything. From sending money to friends, trading stocks, getting a mortgage, booking flights and hotels, handling your taxes, You can typically do all of this from the palm of your hand while sitting on the couch, or at a BBQ.  We have all come to expect this on-demand simple way of doing things. 

Managing your insurance does not stack up. Clients are confused. Confused, if and when, they call their agency, who their agency even is, when they should call the carrier, what carrier they are even with, how to pay a bill, how to grab documents, how to buy more insurance...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. None of this is easy and straightforward in the IA channel.-

The stats are in, and the trend is going towards self-service. The beautiful part about this is that you don’t need to staff up and train your team to service better, we just need to make it faster and easier for clients to self-service… because that is what they want. And GloveBox is the very first Customer Experience Platform doing just this.

Take a look at these stats and see which ones you identify with for your own life and also think about if you are giving your clients what they are asking for:

• 88% of customers expect a dedicated online self-service portal.
• 67% of customers prefer self-service over speaking to a company representative.
• Over 70% of Americans try to resolve their issue before contacting customer service.
• 76% of consumers prefer to interact with businesses via different channels depending on the context. (Think preferring to call when buying a new large policy versus wanting to use live chat to ask a question, or just logging into a portal to grab a doc.)
• Millennials are more likely to turn to digital channels first when looking for service on their policy.
• Millennials are using multiple devices and channels and have begun using their mobile devices for insurance purposes. 
• 90% of Gen Y customers expect all the services and information available from the website to also be available on the company’s mobile app
• 48% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after a poor experience. 
• Only 1 in 26 unhappy customers actually complain. The rest, they just leave

Here is the end result of your agency adopting a Customer Experience Platform:

• You retain more business
• You spend less time servicing the small items and requests
• You spend more time on the income-generating activities and higher-level conversations your clients want to have
• The best part of having a client self-servicing strategy is you can embed the front-end sales tools you are using, right inside of it…but that is an article for another time.