Why old-school, low-tech insurance business methods still matter
While technology is transforming customer service, even the best of tools cannot replace the human touch.
You pick up the phone. On the other end is a potential new customer. Ask the person why they’re ready to switch to your agency, and you’ll likely hear, “It’s because I wasn’t happy with the service my former agent provided.” Similarly, as an insurance company, we hear this a lot from insureds who have returned to us from a different carrier.
Each one of these calls reminds us that customer service remains the most critical differentiator in insurance. In the insurance industry, we sell a product that cannot be touched, seen, felt or heard (other than the black-and-white type on a policy document). Instead, our true “product” is a promise, and excellent service is the way we fulfill that commitment to our policyholders.
As the oldest carrier dedicated to the lumber industry, we at Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Company know the value of the classic approach to customer service. While AI and other emerging innovations bring the promise of revolutionizing customer service, they are not a replacement for low-tech, tried-and-true relationship-building strategies. Instead, they’re an enhancement.
We have found success as a carrier by blending these old-school approaches with new-school technologies. Let’s take a look at a few tactics agents and brokers can implement to do the same.
Remember the fundamentals
What are the basics that policyholders seek when they call your agency? For one, they expect timely service. Customers want their issues resolved quickly, whether they’re making a policy inquiry, seeking claims assistance or updating their policy. They also want it to be as easy as possible to reach you.
These expectations are not much different than they were five, 10 or even 15 years ago. However, the ways your customers can contact you today have changed significantly, and one size does not fit all. Some of your customers will appreciate online self-service options for bill pay and issue resolution. Others will contact you by email first, while another set of policyholders will want to pick up the phone and talk to a human.
To deliver an optimal experience amid this explosion of customer service channels, agents and brokers must first make sure they have mastered the most basic of service skills. Answer the phones during business hours and return any phone messages promptly.
Set an agency standard for email replies, such as responding to all emails within an hour during business hours and responding to overnight inquiries by 10 a.m. the next day. These simple steps may seem obvious, but they often get missed, especially during renewal periods and other busy times.
Solicit customer feedback
In the age of AI, there is no shortage of digital tools agencies can use to improve their customer service, including AI-powered assistants, chatbots and live agents. While the best technology for your agency will depend on your clients’ unique needs and challenges, I strongly recommend seeking digital solutions that can enable you to receive and act upon customer feedback.
At Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Company (PLM), we keep our fingers on the pulse of our customers with a net promoter score (NPS) solution. At its heart, an NPS program measures how likely customers are to recommend your business on a scale of 1 to 10, then calculates a score you can use to measure the effectiveness of your customer service.
The NPS program we use at PLM also allows us to create personalized questions that measure specific aspects of customer service, such as the effectiveness of our communications, the timeliness of our replies, and the efficiency of our processes. We then use the responses to identify improvement opportunities, make negative interactions more positive, and reward our employees when they deliver exceptional experiences.
Best of all, our NPS empowers us to make tangible changes that our policyholders appreciate. For example, thanks to NPS feedback, we created a more streamlined and user-friendly invoice, ensuring we can continue to provide a world-class carrier experience for our clients and create a better process overall while also strengthening our relationship with our customers.
Start from within
No matter which type of customer service solutions you choose to implement, it’s important to set a foundation for success. Agencies should create internal policies that will govern the use of NPS, AI, or other digital tools. Then, they should test these new solutions internally and resolve any glitches before rolling them out to policyholders. By taking these steps, agencies can make the implementation process as smooth as possible without disrupting existing workflows.
In addition, brokers and agents should follow a few low-tech, proven best practices to give their customer service a distinctive touch:
- Listen actively so you understand the extent of your clients’ concerns fully.
- Strive for flexibility so you can connect with your clients on the channels they prefer, not the ones you find most convenient for your business.
- Act promptly, especially when there’s a dissatisfied customer on the other end of the phone or email chain.
Don’t go at it alone
Sometimes, agents may not be able to answer every question or inquiry from a customer and in this case, having the right business partners can help keep customers satisfied. A carrier partner that specializes in the niches that an agency works in can be incredibly valuable.
For example, at PLM we have a triangular relationship with our producers and lumber policyholders, enabling us to work together with the agent and broker in support of the policyholder. Agents present their clients directly to us, the carrier.
This simplifies the process, as agents can submit business to the carrier and we take on the heavy lift, including the underwriting and risk mitigation. Our specialty expertise provides us with insights that the average agent may not have, so we can address more in-depth customer concerns and share that expertise with our producer partners.
Consider partnering with reliable carriers that know your niche and the exposures your clients face to limit the chance of any customer experience vulnerabilities. Customer service is a team effort and the right team can keep clients happy and protected from risk.
Deliver on the promise
While technology is transforming customer service, even the best of tools cannot replace the human touch.
By training your agency’s service staff to be attentive and responsive and by partnering with best-in-class carriers, you’ll build stronger relationships with your customers, earn their loyalty, and deliver on our industry’s commitment of being there for people in their greatest moments of need.
Erin Keyser is a customer service supervisor with Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Company, the oldest and largest mutual insurance company dedicated to the wood products and materials industry. She can be reached at 267-825-9180 or by email at ekeyser@plmins.com. To learn more about Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance Company, visit www.plmins.com.
Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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