Insurance Agents: More than 60% of Customers Have Higher Service Expectations than Pre-Pandemic; WE Can Help You Keep Up

The pandemic transformed the way people think about their service needs. While more than 60 percent of customers now expect a higher-quality customer service experience, 54 percent feel like most businesses treat customer service as an afterthought.

That’s a problem for insurance agents. Poor customer service can impact customer retention and limit cross-selling opportunities. Agents need a way to ensure that customer expectations match reality.

The good news: you don’t have to meet customers’ high service expectations on your own.

Becoming a WE franchisee gives you access to our powerful back-end service team so you can spend more time focusing on building relationships with your customers. This added time to focus on your customers can boost your retention while also providing you more time to sell additional policies.

Here’s more on how WE can help you meet customer service needs to maximize your value.

WE Handle Customer Calls at Scale

Customer service calls are on the rise, up 24 percent since the start of the pandemic. But higher call volumes can negatively impact customers – and strain your revenue generation.

More inbound calls create several issues. Customers may experience long, frustrating wait times. Keep customers on hold too long, and you risk losing them. Also, the more time you invest in handling customer calls, the less time you have to sell additional policies, which you need to maximize your revenue.

As a WE franchisee, our strong customer service team gives you the best of both worlds. WE manage your calls for you, providing the exceptional service your customers expect. This allows you to focus on your customers in other ways – and frees up more time for you to spend on cross-selling and bringing in new customers.

Our service team includes more than 100 service associates – all licensed insurance professionals. We’ve spread them across 11 divisions, segmented into subject matter experts for each policy type.

They are expertly trained to answer questions about these topics and more:

• Deductibles
• Payments
• Renewals
• Cancellations

When WE handle customer calls, your customers receive fast, experienced, and customer-centric service. In 2021, WE handled over 132,000 inbound calls. What’s more, each call only averaged a 30-second wait time – a significant time-saver for customers.

With our customer service model, you’ll enjoy massive time savings. One agency owner noted that our call handling saves them one full working day per week. You can use the time you save to focus on the activities most likely to improve retention and generate revenue.

WE Service Policies from Day One

WE don’t just handle your calls. Quality customer service means ensuring policy updates (e.g., coverage limit increases, endorsement purchases) happen quickly. That’s difficult to do without a support team.

Many agents do the most policy servicing within 60 to 90 days of underwriting. On your own, you might struggle to quickly service every customer’s policy. But a triage person can lighten your load.

When you’re a WE franchisee, you can depend on us to service policies from day one. Our “submit it and forget it” (SIFI) team helps you maximize customer satisfaction and save time.

Here’s how this works:

1. You lock in a policy with a customer
2. You submit underwriting documents to the SIFI team
3. WE handle the rest

The SIFI team ensures that each customer’s policy receives the right attention. WE handle tasks such as:

• Updating coverages
• Pulling proof of prior insurance
• Pulling customer communications
• Uploading and emailing documents to carriers

In 2021, WE processed nearly 730,000 tasks – freeing up additional time for agents to boost policy sales. When you use our SIFI team, you can satisfy customers’ needs and your own.

WE Proactively Manage Renewals

Customers often have the most questions when it’s time for renewal. They ask:

• Do I have enough coverage?
• Will my premiums go up?
• Is now a good time to shop around?

To secure a renewal and keep customers happy, you have to deliver proactive support. Unfortunately, many agents don’t have time for more than one or two renewal conversations. But delayed or inconsistent service can lead to unwelcome surprises.

For example, picture a customer who’s up for renewal. They notice a 22 percent rate increase without warning. After three calls and two weeks, the customer finally gets in touch with their agent. The agent’s response? “I’m not really sure what caused this. Let me look into it and I’ll get back to you.”

Unexplained rate hikes and long agent response times can be deeply frustrating. Without proactive conversations, you’ll likely lock in fewer renewals – and retain fewer customers.

Here’s where WE can help. WE franchisees can use our retention team to manage renewals and preserve their customer base.

Each year, the retention team handles tens of thousands of renewal “touches” – roughly 167,000 in 2021. WE use a four-touch process to contact customers:

1. When rates go up by more than 14 percent, WE make sure customers have information as soon as we receive it.
2. 10 days before the renewal deadline, WE provide ample time for policy questions – and, if needed, connect them with you to shop for a new policy.
3. One day before the renewal deadline, WE give customers a chance to ask last-minute questions.
4. 10 days after the renewal deadline, WE check in with customers who don’t renew to understand why – and help them explore other policy options as needed.

WE implemented our retention team process in 2019. The result? An immediate 10 percent increase in renewals.

Our Back-End Support Helps You Create Customers for Life

Many agents spend up to 70 percent of their time handling back-end customer service tasks. In other words, they spend most of their time away from their best work: focusing on other customer needs and selling new policies.

WE provide the back-end support you need to focus on building relationships with your customers and selling policies. That way, you can invest more time into revenue-generating activities – and create customers for life.

Interested in joining the WE family? WE’d love to chat.

The information contained in this page is provided for general informational purposes only and may not be applicable to all situations. We Insure makes no guarantees of results from the use of this information.