"Hello, you have reached our insurance agency."
If automated customer service suggests endlessly looping phone messages, think again. Automation can be a great help to your business, making it more efficient and making you better at delivering exceptional service to your customers. At its worst, automation frustrates your customers, inserting a computer into a place where humans should be there to help. How do you know what elements of your customer service should be automated and which ones you need to keep in a live human's hands?
Automate Information Collection
Can you give the responsibility for information collection to a computer? Not entirely, but you can set up programs to collect peoples' email addresses and add them to a list, update their address information, and even renew their insurance online with forms using digital signatures. Online and automated information accumulation allow you to focus on the knottier problems that clients have or the individual questions that they need to ask. It's also very convenient for your clients, allowing them to update their information or request information at any time of the day or night and from anywhere.
Automate Information Transfer
If you are working in sales and marketing, automation allows you to put more of your energy into what's going out of your office, ensuring that you can provide high-quality information to your clients. If you are involved in social marketing, add blog and email writer to your insurance agent's job description. When your customers sign up for your email list, you can keep them apprised of the latest developments in the insurance industry or send them handy tips on making their home safer. Use the information you have collected about your clients to target your blogs and emails to specific audiences, and automate what information each client receives depending on their specific needs and preferences.
Keep Your Human Voice
While automation works well a lot of the time, sometimes your clients will have a question they cannot answer using your FAQ or a problem that requires immediate, urgent assistance. Even if you are automating parts of your customer service, it is important to provide a human voice on the end of the computer or phone line and in the office. This person should be easy to reach, so customers who are worried or frustrated need not navigate a maze online or on the phone to get to your business. The combination of efficient, online processes and targeted automation and a human face will help your business soar.
Continue to Think About Your Marketing
Once you have set up your social media posts or automated your email sales funnel, that does not mean you can sit back and expect new clients to beat a path to your door. As the human behind the machine, your job is to think. You need to consider how your business can be involved in your local and online community, how you can appeal to new markets or strengthen links with existing ones, and how you can continue to build your business through repeat customers and referrals. Your brain is essential to your business: use it to improve both in-person and automated customer service.
Many people in the insurance industry worry that their insurance agents job description will change due to automation or that they will become obsolete. Stay ahead of the times and learn how others are using automation in a strategic way to benefit their small insurance business. Join American Agents Alliance today and learn and share at our annual Alliance Convention & Expo.
