Utility, usability make the best insurance-agent user experiences
An excellent agent experience can be just as critical for carriers that rely on independent agents as the insured-customer experience.
Today’s consumers expect seamless, on-demand access to insurance services from their carriers and independent agents, particularly when disaster strikes.
Less talked about, however, is the online agent experience, or AX. For carriers that rely on independent agents to distribute small commercial lines, offering an excellent AX can be just as important as service to the insureds.
Ease of doing business has been a popular theme in insurance for years, and most carriers know that being easy to work with — from the products you offer to how you quote new business — is imperative for a solid long-term agent/carrier partnership. In fact, ease of doing business can have a direct effect on how much new business flows to the carrier.
But not every carrier is meeting agents’ needs in this area. According to JD Power’s U.S. Independent Insurance Agent Satisfaction Survey, commercial lines carriers received a 720 rating (out of 1000), the lowest among business relationships measured by JD Power.
Connecting with agents
For carriers, their agent portals are a focus when it comes to how they connect to agents. But when most were building these portals, easy interfaces were not the top priority at the time. Insurance is a regulated industry, and many carriers were focused on making sure they adhered to the regulations and satisfying their underwriting questions. Insurers now realize that improving the user experience can provide a competitive advantage. Agents will be more likely to use portals with a compelling user experience.
It may be helpful for carriers to think about agent experience the same way many consumer technology companies view the user experience. The two main elements of any great user experience are utility and usability. Most solutions and processes that carriers have for agents deliver on the utility element because they help expedite a task. But usability is sometimes overlooked, leading to complex processes and diminishing ease of doing business.
Here are three ways carriers can enhance the usability of their solutions, contributing to a better agent experience.
No. 1: Talk with your agents.
What is the ultimate problem agents need your solution to solve? While you might have ideas, it is important to get insight from those in the trenches. Engage with agents to get at the core of their frustrations. By knowing what is critical, you can devise a more impactful solution.
But speaking with agents should not be a once and done activity. Once you proposed a solution that you think addresses their key issues, get their feedback on how well the solution resolves their frustrations. If there is still room for improvement, make the necessary adjustments and ask them to evaluate again.
No. 2: Appreciate consumer application experiences.
Independent agents don’t exist in a bubble. They use many consumer applications, such as Apple’s iOS, Spotify and Waze. Digital applications are a prominent part of everyone’s daily experience, and they set the bar high for B2B applications.
Pay attention to and seek inspiration from design trends being used by consumer technology and look to upgrade any solutions you are using so that they offer a similar experience. For example, Apple is famous for simplifying everything to just the essential elements making it easy to navigate its interface. Carrier portals can be so overwhelming with information and could benefit from a simpler, cleaner design approach.
Try this. While it may seem better to only have a few pages an agent needs to navigate through to complete a task, it can actually make the task take longer because, with so much information at once, agents are unsure what to do. Increase the number of pages to allow agents to focus on very discrete tasks on each page.
For example, have them fill out customer contact information on one page and then move to the next page for inputting information about company size and number of employees. Requiring them to input less information on each page will enable them to get through the pages quicker and lead to a more satisfying experience.
No. 3: Think about the holistic agent experience.
Your agents’ experience is not just limited to your portal. It includes all touchpoints they have with your company, from quoting to managing customers in their agency management systems. Every interaction your agents have with you should be seamless and easy.
Partnering with InsurTechs can help you distribute your products with the ease agents are looking for. They enable you to have access to ready-built technology, so you don’t have to do everything in-house, allowing you to go to market faster. Partnerships also help ward off lost opportunities. If your appointed agents are using an InsurTech product that features your competitors but not you, you’re likely losing business.
But not all InsurTechs are created equal. You’ll want to select carefully. For example, if you are partnering with a quoting solution, ensure that the company has done its due diligence in its programming. The agent should feel confident in the quoting solution’s ability to deliver accurate quotes for their customers.
Also, make sure the partnership fits with your core brand values. For example, you might position yourself as an insurer who delivers comprehensive coverage at a reasonable rate — though it might not be the lowest. You want to make sure you don’t partner with an InsurTech that focuses on finding only the lowest rates possible. The partnership should allow you to highlight your strengths and features that set you apart from your competition.
Agents want to work with carriers that are easy to work with, which, in turn, makes it easier to better serve insureds. Insurers should be looking to offer their agents solutions that not only provide utility but are easy to use. By listening to what agents want, incorporating consumer design trends, and thinking beyond the portal, insurance carriers can deliver an excellent agent experience online.
Ed Bendy (ed@semsee.com) is vice president of product at Semsee, an InsurTech that provides automated small commercial quoting solutions for agents. These opinions are his own.
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