In recent years, a seemingly endless number of software solutions designed to improve business operations have emerged, promising to make tasks easier for companies in all industries. As a result, agencies and brokerages have a prime opportunity to increase operational effectiveness and efficiency by making a few smart investments in the right software solutions.
With so many choices of software for your insurance agency on the market, it can be difficult to figure out where investments should be made. That’s why we’re here to help you narrow down your choices!
Let’s take a look at four different kinds of insurance agency software solutions that can help your business operate more efficiently – increasing profitability along the way.
The Top Insurance Agency Software To Reach Operational Excellence
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
In an age when customers expect personalized experiences in every interaction, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform is perhaps a salesperson’s best insurance agency software to integrate.
Simply put, a CRM system provides a central repository for all prospect and client-specific information. For example, you might have a client’s name, birthday, family information, medical history, location, job, hobbies, the preferred medium of communication, and more in their file.
Not only does this insurance agency management software make it easier to track important client data and personalize each interaction you have with them, but the technology also enables agents to increase operational efficiency considerably. That’s because leading CRM tools enable you to take advantage of many automated features, including email automation. Instead of manually keeping track of a client’s birthday or when they’re having their next appointment with you, a top CRM solution can take care of that for you by sending them a personalized email.
As a result, you don’t have to worry about missing any milestones – and you have more time on your hands to focus on other areas of operations.
2. Real-Time Quoting and Enrolling Engine
These days, customers expect instant gratification. In the world of insurance sales, this means that if clients want to buy insurance at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, they expect to be able to do precisely that with no challenges.
Of course, your agency can’t keep its doors open 24/7. With insurance agency software supported by a real-time quoting and enrollment engine, you don’t need to.
A quoting engine available around the clock can always generate leads throughout the day and week, regardless if your doors are open or not. As an added bonus, real-time quoting tools will help your agency stand out from your competitors because a good chunk of them will still be relying on outdated technologies that won’t meet these sudden needs of prospects and clients.
You can meet your clients’ and prospects’ needs for instant gratification and grow your business while you sleep. It’s a win-win situation for you and your clients.
3. Customer Service Software
Those visiting your website are bound to run into an issue or have a question not answered on your FAQ page. While you could manually respond to each one via email, this is immensely time-consuming.
To maximize enrollments and help your business reach its full potential, you need to be able to respond to these issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. You have to imagine that several other visitors have experienced the same issue – even if only one of them is reporting it.
An insurance agency software option that can help alleviate this burden is a customer service solution, such as Zendesk. Zendesk has a live chat tool that can help you connect with website visitors in real time, answering their questions and helping them find the information they’re looking for.
Having a customer service solution in place to assist you with handling customer support can accelerate your company’s incident response times considerably, providing the high-touch service your clients and prospects have grown to expect in recent years.
4. Communication Tools
In the past, insurance agencies could communicate in person, over the phone, through the mail, or through email. Technology has come a long way since then and now a number of new solutions can improve an agency’s communicative capabilities significantly.
For example, a collaboration platform such as Slack or Microsoft Teams can help keep your team on the same page through chat-based messaging. A video conferencing tool like Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet enables you to have “face-to-face” conversations with clients, prospects, and colleagues – no matter where you happen to be.
Additionally, if you regularly work on projects with colleagues, especially if they don’t work in the same building as you, a project management tool such as Trello or Asana can help everyone see where things stand at any point.
Your agency might not need all three kinds of communication/collaboration tools, but chances are that one of them, at the very least, will drive more efficiency for your operations.
Upgrade Your Tech Stack and Maximize Your Insurance Sales
If it has been a long time since you added new insurance agent software to your tech stack, it’s all but guaranteed that you are unable to move as efficiently and effectively as any forward-thinking competitors.
The good news is that making a few simple investments can go a long way toward transforming your company into a tech-driven agency that operates with agility – delighting customers more every day.
While the above options are a great starting point for understanding insurance software for agents, we have a guide that holds the most effective tips and techniques for understanding insurance software while maximizing it as a tool for your operations.
Get your copy of The Essential Guide to Insurance Broker Software today to take the next step toward operational excellence!
