How carriers can improve customer responsiveness
As phone calls and emails become less effective because of spam, texting provides another communication option.
Lack of responsiveness is a primary business problem today. Insurance companies have learned that phone calls and email have lost their effectiveness due to spam and overuse, making it a challenge to reach and hear back from customers. The impact ranges from insurance agents trying to retain existing customers to delays for claims adjusters trying to make contact or gather documentation. Phone tag and delays have become the norm at a cost of depreciating customer experience and a loss of customers.
Innovative insurance companies are addressing this problem by utilizing texting applications. The intent is to drive customer experience scores higher while also enhancing operations by lowering communication response times. According to recent Zipwhip research, both business drivers are attainable:
- Figure 1 – Customer Experience Benefits: 74% of consumers said they would like to receive more text messages from businesses (Generational Texting Preferences)
- Figure 2 – Operational Benefits: Only 41% of consumers respond to a business email within an hour, whereas 74% of consumers will respond to a text message within the same timeframe (2019 State of Texting report)
Changing communication strategies
Today’s texting services now allow employees to use their computers or mobile devices to quickly and easily send and receive texts, the preferred communication vehicle for insurance customers. This type of texting is sometimes called “two-way texting” or “long-code texting,” but is the texting that all of us have become accustomed to, allowing us to hold a conversation in real-time by exchanging messages between two individuals.
Long-code texting utilizes 10-digit landline, VoIP or toll-free numbers. These numbers have often been in use for years and have been published on business cards, collateral and websites. Implementing texting on these existing business numbers means that insurance companies do not need to update their communication materials.
Conversely, many insurance companies in the past tried to leverage texting technology by implementing bill payment reminders, customer alerts and renewal notifications through short codes, which are five-digit phone numbers that are only used for texting, not calls. A short code conversation only goes one way.
Although these alerts add some value, they leave many customers annoyed because of the inability to respond to the message. According to Zipwhip’s 2019 State of Texting report, 58% of consumers said they’ve tried to respond to a missed call with a text message and three out of four consumers said they feel frustrated when they can’t text back.
User productivity
Software enables powerful features for insurance companies such as autoreply or responses triggered by keywords. Scheduled texts are another key feature as text messages can be sent at a later date or before an appointment. Users will commonly setup templates with dynamic fields that can be customized to provide responses in a quick and personal manner
Speed of process
Whether it’s sending an MMS picture of a damaged vehicle or an image of a client’s insurance card, texting saves insurance companies and consumers time.
Compliance
A texting-for-business service allows insurance organizations to maintain a record of communications between customers and employees. These conversations can even be archived into the CRM platform. This level of security and administrative control is important when dealing with many employees across multiple locations or departments.
Text messaging improves communication
Resolving insurance claims, answering questions, navigating billing issues and so many other functions of business-to-consumer communication are dependent on real-time, back-and-forth exchanges.
Insurance companies should consider enabling employees to use their computers and mobile devices to quickly and easily send and receive texts with customers. Two-way texting is a holistic and effective way to improve customer experience immediately. It offers customers the choice to communicate in their preferred manner: texting a real phone number.
When a customer asks, “Can I call that number?” or “Can I text you that?” the answer should be the same: “Yes!”
Bill Higbee is the enterprise product marketing manager at Zipwhip. Contact him at bhigbee@zipwhip.com.
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