Showing Up for Your Customers Beyond Renewal
If you’re not getting personal with your customer service, you could risk client churn when it’s time for renewals.
A customer journey in the insurance industry starts when the customer decides they need a certain service—but once they sign a policy, don’t stop paying attention to them. It’s important to keep communicating and fostering customer relationships if you want them to stay.
According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is 5-25x more expensive than keeping an active customer. Constantly generating new business can take a lot of time and resources. It can also slow your company’s growth.
Acquiring a new customer is 5–25x more expensive than keeping an active customer.
You work hard to convert leads, so ensuring your active customers feel happy and connected is worth it. To do that, you must communicate with them throughout their journey—all the way through the insurance renewal process.
Customer Service Strategies in the Insurance Industry
Maintaining relationships and staying connected with existing customers is key for revenue generation. After all, just a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% increase in profits. If you wait until renewal to engage with a customer, you may lose them way before their policy ends. There are so many choices when it comes to insurance, so having customer retention strategies in the insurance sector can help ensure your customers stay loyal to you.
Just a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% increase in profits.
1. Personalize your customer communication.
A study from McKinsey found that 51% of customers want to be engaged and onboarded when they buy for the first time. Ensure your client understands who their customer success manager or representative is right away so they know who they should expect to receive communications from and who they can reach out to for support. Also, give your client easy access to all the necessary resources to understand their policy and the available services.
In the same study, 61% of customers wanted messaging centered around their personal milestones. When it comes to creating personalized communications, Hallmark Business Connections can help with greeting cards designed specifically for your business to send to your clients. Whether it is a birthday, Thanksgiving, or just reaching out to show appreciation, sending Hallmark cards can generate a 70% conversion rate compared to not sending cards. This also gives you another unique opportunity to connect with your clients and provide them with a positive touchpoint before renewal.
Sending Hallmark cards can generate a 70% conversion rate compared to not sending cards.
By communicating and supporting the customer at different moments throughout their journey, you can build trust and rapport for your business. In turn, this can minimize renewal risk and increase customer satisfaction.
2. Measure KPIs and customer satisfaction.
Deciding on KPIs, like satisfaction or churn rates, can help when it comes time for renewal. For example, setting aside money in your budget and deciding on an achievable Net Promoter Score (NPS) can provide better insight into how your customers are doing.
NPS or customer feedback data can also explain why customers are unsatisfied or may be on the verge of leaving. It’s important to pay attention to what you and your customers are doing that may contribute to this dissatisfaction. You can adjust your communication to overcome objections and provide support. These actions will help you stay one step ahead of competitors.
When it’s time to renew, you can leverage knowledge gained from NPS to help customers understand their current policy, upsell with a better plan and minimize churn.
3. Map and understand the customer journey.
Your customer relationship starts once the client makes a purchase. Make sure your team understands how and why the customer came to you and that their customer journey doesn’t just go from sales to marketing. Your team should also know how to connect with the customer at various touchpoints and be proactive about doing so. You can even automate data collection for certain touchpoints to help identify customers who may need extra support at a given time. This includes looking for customers who recently completed your onboarding process or haven’t used specific parts of their plan.
By mapping your customer’s journey, you can find ways to genuinely connect with them from purchase all the way through the renewal process. When you understand where customers are in their journey, you can reduce churn by ensuring they are continuously supported. Keeping the customer at the center and infusing communication across all touchpoints is key to ensuring renewal.
Looking for a way to stand out and enhance communication? Our Hallmark Business Connections Care solution can provide your team with easy-to-send greeting cards designed for insurance providers, which could help boost your performance by 10%.