Long gone are the days of printing paper policies and mailing them to policyholders. Nowadays, insurance carriers and agents use technology tools to digitize policy documents, automate tasks, and communicate with customers. As the market hardens, business owners in the insurance industry need the best technology to stay ahead of the competition.
Insurance revolves around customers. If insurance companies want to make the most out of their technology, they need to focus on creating positive customer experiences. As the number one customer relationship management (CRM) platform in the world, Salesforce is the top tool for increasing customer satisfaction. Whether you’re an insurance carrier, independent agent, or broker, Salesforce can give you an advantage over other businesses in the industry.
These are the top three benefits of using Salesforce CRM for insurance companies.
1. Salesforce Helps Build Trusting Relationships With Customers
Customer trust is important in many industries, but it is absolutely integral for insurance companies. If your customers don’t trust your products or services, they can easily get a new policy with a competitor. Policyholders want to ensure that they receive the best benefits for their money while getting personalized service from their insurer.
If you feel that your customer satisfaction is lower than it should be, Salesforce can help you regain trust and improve service. Using Salesforce’s tailor-made platform for the insurance industry, you can:
- Create personalized marketing experiences: Salesforce collects and analyzes data to give you critical information about a customer’s needs. Using the Salesforce marketing cloud, you can group customers by demographic, preference, or policy type and send personalized marketing materials to each group. If you think a particular customer type could benefit from a new life insurance policy or auto insurance endorsement, Salesforce can help you reach the right people. Young consumers want personalized customer experiences from their insurers, and Salesforce helps meet the changing needs of these consumers.
- Get a comprehensive overview of each policyholder: Salesforce collects and compiles information about each policyholder in a central location. If a customer calls looking for information about their policy, you won’t have to go digging in different places for relevant information; you’ll be able to use the customer overview page on Salesforce to find information about them, their policy, and their past requests.
- Improve customer service using artificial intelligence (AI): Salesforce uses innovative technology like AI to optimize its functionality. When your customer service employees communicate with policyholders, Salesforce AI suggests potential solutions, relevant data from past calls, and action steps to resolve the issue. Additionally, AI can reach out to customers during specified time periods, such as a few months before policy renewal, to facilitate interaction and suggest new products they might want.
- Reach customers through multiple channels: Salesforce consolidates different communication platforms, including voice calls, video calls, chats, emails, and social media messages, into one location. Because Salesforce is a cloud-based platform, employees can access these communication channels from any location using smartphones, laptops, or any other devices with internet capabilities. When customers reach out through any medium, employees can immediately respond from one convenient application and use customer data to influence their service.
- Deliver quotes, policy documents, and endorsements in real time: In the past, creating quotes, policy changes, and renewal documents took anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Now, employees can use Salesforce to automate document creation and deploy files in real time after a customer submits a service request.
- Quickly manage and resolve claims: Submitting an insurance claim is a stressful process for policyholders, but Salesforce makes it as easy as possible. Policyholders can use Salesforce to upload claim information and photos before communicating with a claims representative.
With help from the Salesforce platform, you can significantly improve customer satisfaction, save your employees time, and increase your competitive edge over other insurance
2. Salesforce Streamlines Policy Management
Insurance companies and agents manage thousands of policies, many of which require consistent changes throughout the policy year. It’s easy for items to slip through the cracks when you have to manage hundreds of tasks at once using multiple software systems. Salesforce ensures that you handle every customer request by automating each step of the policy lifecycle and tracking outstanding tasks.
Salesforce is a fully customizable CRM, which means that you can choose specific business processes to include on your platform. From the initial quote to the final policy payment, Salesforce brings every step of the policy issuance process to a single platform. Because every step is consolidated and tracked in one place, employees can easily see where each policy stands and what outstanding tasks are most urgent.
Regardless of the types of policies you sell, Salesforce is an incredibly useful tool. Your CRM can assist with creating standard coverages like renters insurance, auto insurance, and health insurance, as well as more complicated coverages like professional liability and employer-sponsored group benefits.
3. Salesforce Boosts Efficiency and Scales To Fit Your Business
Efficiency is vital in the insurance industry. The longer it takes you to create a quote, issue an auto ID card, or increase a coverage limit, the more likely you are to lose customers and revenue. It’s challenging to reach peak efficiency when using multiple disjointed software systems for different tasks. By consolidating your essential functions into one CRM, you can enhance efficiency and set your business up for future growth.
To help you manage even the most complicated tasks quickly and efficiently, the Salesforce CRM:
- Creates a list of service requests from every channel: When customers reach out via social media, chat, email, or phone, Salesforce documents the service request and adds it to a list. Your employees don’t have to type out details or manually create a task each time they receive a service request. As a result, you can reduce human error, immediately address requests after customers submit them, and view a complete overview of outstanding tasks.
- Sorts tasks based on priority: Certain tasks are more urgent than others. Some customers request policy changes ahead of time; others ask for a new auto ID card 10 minutes before a DMV visit. To ensure that employees take care of the most urgent tasks first, Salesforce sorts them based on priority and allows administrators to flag tasks as most important.
- Allows administrators to assign tasks to specific employees: A task list is useless until each item has a home. With Salesforce, you can go through your request list and assign tasks to employees with the most knowledge about that policy type or account. Additionally, you can view each employees’ schedule and create equal workloads by moving projects from one user to another.
- Tracks progress and completion: Some policy changes take months to complete. After a policyholder submits the request, you might have to collect additional information on a property or vehicle, go through underwriting to determine new rates and premiums, and push the change through on a specified date. With so many moving parts, it’s easy to forget a step. However, using Salesforce, you can view each project’s status and create tasks for each policy change or renewal stage. When it’s time to finally push through a policy change, Salesforce will notify the right person, who will then mark the project as completed after finishing the last step.
- Reduces time spent on simple tasks: Simple tasks should only take a few minutes to complete, but sometimes that’s not the reality. When employees have to search for documents, ask around for instructions, and follow up for information, a simple certificate of insurance can turn into an hours-long task. Because Salesforce stores large amounts of data in one easy-to-use platform, employees can easily access every piece of information they need. You can include process instructions and messaging capabilities on Salesforce so that your employees can access help when needed.
In addition to increasing efficiency, Salesforce also scales to fit your growing business. You may start out only offering property and casualty insurance to small businesses, but in a few years, you might want to branch out and start offering employee benefits policies to large companies. As your business grows and adapts to changing customer needs, Salesforce can grow and change with you. You can add and remove Salesforce capabilities when needed.
Advantages of Using a Salesforce Consultant
You understand that Salesforce is an invaluable tool, and you’re ready to implement it into your insurance business—but how? If you’re not a Salesforce implementation expert, you probably need outside help to get the most out of your new CRM.
Abstrakt Cloud Solutions is a registered Salesforce partner offering Salesforce consulting services for businesses in the insurance industry. We leveraged Salesforce technology to turn our small marketing agency into a nationally recognized company, and we use our experience to help other companies do the same. Our experts make the Salesforce integration process seamless.
As your Salesforce consulting partner, we provide the following services:
- Guidance on Salesforce product selection: We can identify your business needs and help you determine which Salesforce products are right for you. Our team members are highly knowledgeable about various advanced Salesforce products, including their Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, Experience Cloud, and Sales Cloud.
- Salesforce customization: Salesforce integrates with many other software systems, including LinkedIn, DocuSign, Dropbox, and more. We help our clients integrate existing applications into their new Salesforce strategy for an effortless transition. Additionally, we create custom application environments in your Salesforce system that house the programs you need to succeed.
- Implementation services: Moving from your current strategy to Salesforce is a daunting task. We guide you through the transition and address any issues you encounter.
- Hands-on assistance: A dedicated team of Salesforce experts is available for every client. When you need support, we’re always available to help.
You don’t have to navigate a Salesforce transition alone—Abstrakt Cloud Solutions is here to help your insurance business make the most out of its CRM.
Need Help From a Salesforce Development Expert?
Abstrakt Cloud Solutions understands that every insurance business is unique. Insurance agents and carriers have different needs, and every company has its own goals for growth. With Salesforce development tools and consulting services from Abstrakt, you can implement a completely customized Salesforce solution into your insurance business and streamline every part of your process.
If you want your insurance company to stand out from the crowd, you need the best tools in your arsenal. Contact Abstrakt Cloud Solutions today to learn more about Salesforce and take the first step in transforming your customer service strategy.
