One of the most important parts of running your insurance agency is attracting and retaining clients. Retaining clients is crucial, as you already put in the time, effort, and money to attract them to your agency. Luckily, retaining clients can be easier than you may realize. The following tips will help you do just that.
Optimize Onboarding
For the best client retention, you want to start your relationships off on the right foot. While you will start making a first impression as you work to attract the client to your insurance agency, the onboarding process is your first chance to show them what it’s like to be your client. As such, you want to make this process as stress-free and intuitive as possible.
Make sure that the process is easy for your customers. You also want to focus on customer needs during the onboarding process. If you aren’t sure what struggles or gaps need to be addressed, ask current clients for feedback.
Listen to Your Customers’ Feedback
The onboarding process isn’t the only area of your agency that you should ask for feedback on. Make it a point to regularly ask clients about feedback about all types of experience. This will help you spot any potential issues that you hadn’t noticed.
Take this to the next level and use that feedback to personalize service. For example, when you onboard a new client, ask them about their preferred contact method. Then, primarily use that method in the future.
Stay in Touch with Customers
Throughout your entire business relationship, be sure to stay in touch with your clients. You hopefully already encourage them to contact you with any questions or concerns. Supplement this by occasionally contacting them to ensure they are still satisfied with your service or that they don’t have any problems.
Maybe they have a complaint or concern but simply haven’t gotten around to telling you or keep forgetting to do so. Or maybe they mistakenly believe you can’t correct their issue. Being proactive about contacting your clients helps you ensure that they always have a good experience.
As a bonus, the more frequently you contact your customers, the more you will remain in the front of their mind. This makes them more likely to stay with you and to recommend you. Of course, you need to strike a balance, so don’t overwhelm them with communications. Look for innovative ideas like holiday or birthday cards, handwritten thank-you cards, or offering webinars.
Personalize Your Service
One of the best ways to stand out from the competition and keep clients returning to you is to show them that you listen to and care about their needs. Personalizing your services is a great way to do just this. Essentially, you want to work with your clients to ensure that they understand how your services and products fit their needs.
Cross-Sell to Fit Their Needs
Part of personalizing your service will likely include cross-selling. If you cross-sell customers on products or services that fit their lifestyle, you will show them that you care about their needs and listen to what they say. It is even better if that cross-selling leads to a discount for them. Of course, this also gives you the benefit of boosting your income.
Manage Expectations Then Overdeliver
A recipe for success in any industry is to manage expectations and then overdeliver. This prevents you from falling short of expectations, which can lead to disappointment. Customers care more that you deliver on your promises than if those promises are excessive. Simply put, they want to be able to trust you. Managing expectations and overdelivering delivers that trust.
At the same time, it gives you a reputation of frequently going above and beyond. More importantly, it does so without the expectation that you will do so. This way, if you overdeliver, you truly impress the client. If you simply deliver, you still meet their expectations.
Be Proactive About Premium Increases
It is a fact of life that insurance premiums occasionally increase. You may not want to let your clients know ahead of time in fear that they will shop around and find someone else, but this is the opposite of what you should do.
If you let customers know that their premium is about to increase, they will appreciate your honesty. You can even include an offer to go over their options with them again to see if a different coverage would be better for their budget or needs, or if they qualify for a discount they didn’t previously qualify for.
Offer Automatic Payments
In many cases, whether or not a client will stay with your insurance agency comes down to the amount of effort they have to put in. If you can reduce the effort on their part, they are more likely to stay with you. Take advantage of this by offering automatic payments. At the very least, offer them the convenience of paying online, something which is something that our insurance agency management system can help with.