O.K, I’m old. I admit it. I was born at the beginning of the Baby Boomers. Many of us were considered progressive and visionary because we started, invited and have enjoyed automation as the vehicle (not as the replacement) for effective and excellent customer service and for marketing our services as insurance agents. We grew up with our predecessors making “house calls” and inviting clients into their offices to review their insurance programs annually. When we came into the business automation was new, exciting and progressive. When we adopted our first agency management systems and automated raters we were considered trend setters. I actually remember a client in a rural southern community housed in a former bank building on the town square that retained the wooden desks and teller’s cages to reflect their commitment to their town’s heritage but had a full automated system set up in their back room to expedite processing. That was then and this is now.
Agencies crowded with desks filled with papers and files are now seen by our clients as dinosaurs, and they question our ability to proficiently help them with their insurance if we can’t even use our systems to efficiently administer our businesses. To Millennials we might as well have carbon paper, erasers to correct mistakes and visors to shade our eyes. They expect us to be automated as the NORM, not as the exception.
We have seen the second and third generation of automation changing our universe through the “internet of things” and social networking but most of us have fallen behind and are counting on the next generation of Millennials to utilize these advances to the advantage of our businesses.
That’s not bad and it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are worn out and should retire. After all, I don’t quite know how our new internet gives me video security, controls the locks, appliances, thermostats, etc in my home. But that doesn’t mean I don’t use these tools.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACKNOWLEDGING AND SUPPORTING AND SPONSORING WEBSITES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
Many agency owners in their fifties, sixties and beyond can understand that the insurance buyers in their 30’s and 40’s and business owners of the generations after ours feel comfortable on social networks as a supplement to the personal relationships that their parents and grandparents desired for complex issues like health or insurance.
Progressive agency owners recognize the importance of their website as the vehicle for primary or secondary contact between their business and their customers and social networks as a serious vehicle for building new relationships with their future customers. Yet very few pay more than tangential attention to either in their agency operations.
We talk a good game but don’t believe in the concept sufficiently to actually commit financial assets and (more importantly) personnel to either our websites or to active social networking. The Gen X or Millennials who are taking over our agencies as our next generation certainly DO understand the impact of both tools to supplement the personal relationships that marked the success of Baby Boomer agency owners.
On the other hand, the pendulum has shifted far too much for some of the young owners. Many consider website presence and social networking a REPLACEMENT for personal relationships with their clients. Our value is not limited to our vast pool of knowledge transmitted to our clients. The difference between independent agents and our competitors is the trust relationship created between the customer and the agent. This acts like the relationship between you and your family doctor. The information may be on the internet to explain your ailments and possible treatments but you want the individual attention to your health provided by more than a 15 minute timed visit. Similarly, there are so many choices facing our clients about their insurance protection devices that they seek more advice than information. So there must be a balance between using the internet of things and establishing face-to-face personal relationships in order to keep independent insurance agents vibrant and an important asset for insurance buyers in the future.
When we analyze an agency one of the things we ask and review is their website and their use, if any, of social networking. And we find the results relatively abysmal.
WHAT A WEBSITE NEEDS TO BE – AND WHAT IT SHOULD NOT BE
Both your personal and commercial customers want to be able to contact you and see the data they consider important 24/7. You are open 9 to 5. See the problem?
Your website IS YOUR PORTAL FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS!!
The best sites allow for customers to access their own personal insurance information including payment history. After all, over 70% of customer calls regard payment issues and current coverage. Making that information available to your clients through their own portal gives you 24/7 service capability for most of the common questions.
The next best features of websites are chat boards available for clients to ask questions and get responses without a personal visit or telephone inquiry. Of course these boards have to be manned through the day in order to get proper use from them.
WEBSITES MAKE POOR GENERATORS OF NEW BUSINESS
By the way, if your site features a section for ‘Get A Quote’ let me ask you a comparable question – Does your doctor’s website have a section titled ‘Get A Diagnosis’ that asks a series of questions about a patient’s ailments and delivers a diagnosis, treatment and price?
Why not? (“Well, Al, it’s much harder to diagnose a cold or the flu than giving a personal or commercial lines quote!”)
Really? Yes, we can ask some basic questions that will allow us to PRICE simple insurance products, both personal and commercial lines. But your doctor would quickly be out of business (and sued for malpractice) if they responded to the Auto-Diagnosis questions with an estimate of the cost of medical treatment. Yet there are millions of people who self-diagnose using WebMD and similar sites. Similarly we can and do offer quoting opportunities on our websites. But how much insurance is actually sold that way? And how long do customers stay with your agency if their only exposure is on line?
Medical sites and insurance sites CAN provide good information (and bad) but when independent agents offer a quote mechanism on their websites it is promoting and reinforcing the direct writers’ claims that all insurance is alike and the only difference is price. Of course we know differently but we’re certainly sending a mixed message by claiming that we can provide our customers a tailor-made insurance program that fits their specific needs and then offer a quote machine that gives them a standardized quote based on geography, vehicles and drivers’ records.
WEBSITES ARE FOR RETAINING CUSTOMERS THROUGH INFORMATION SHARING AND PERSONALIZED SERVICE.
SOCIAL NETWORKING IS FOR BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH NEW, POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS.
Your current customers (if you’re doing it right) already know and trust you. But how do we get new folks to realize how much more valuable your agency is than the insurance provider they are currently using? Most people who don’t know you find it difficult to build a trust relationship with an insurance agent. However, if they communicate with you on line they build that trust relationship that makes them much more comfortable meeting you and actually getting to know you and your agency. The vehicle for that communications should be social networking.
Social networking is not intrusive, responds to inquiries and provides information in a non-threatening manner. In order for it to be effective it must be done at least once each day. Most youngsters who are networking are constantly networking on-demand. When a message arrives that piques their interest, they interrupt their current activities to respond. While we don’t have to answer every question immediately, we should be prepared to respond within the same day to any inquiry.
The best business use for social networking is to provide regular content that will interest your audience – and lead them to further contact with you. This implies that you are networking on a channel that is open and devoted to issues like insurance and problem solving for people who have questions regarding their asset protection needs. You don’t promote insurance matters on a dating site even though everyone there needs your products. That’s the classic definition of SPAM and you won’t be appreciated for the intrusion.
On the other hand, whether the reader is your client or not, if you are there to lend a hand and provide useful information to them without seeming to reach into their pockets every time you have a conversation, the regular contacts will make you more “familiar” to the prospect and will cause them to gravitate to you instead of other providers when they are ready to take the next step.
DEVOTE TIME, MONEY AND STAFF TO WEBSITE AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
In order to commit to the concept of website participation and social networking you must devote some part of your staff to manage both tools in as dedicated fashion as the processing of transactions or the immediate response to customer inquiries. You must budget for both and require reports from each to keep in touch with the results of your on-going web development and social networking and to show your staff your level of commitment to this new technology that will impact your agency for generations.
This article was not meant to specify HOW to enhance your website and social networking. It was meant to jog your consciousness to react to these tools as important as your agency management system in the progress of your agency into the future. Call us if you would like a consultation specifically to build these tools into your business model (856-779-2430).