Client retention is difficult across all sectors but represents a uniquely major challenge to the insurance industry. Clients are likely to churn when they fail to get the convenience they expect from their providers, often at a time when they feel they need it most.

Siting at the nexus of finance, future well-being and potentially traumatic issues like physical injury, accidents or property damage, insurance is an extremely personal concern for most people. For this reason, when it comes to dealing with insurance providers, people can be in a heightened state, fickle and primed to find fault.

The more providers fail to meet a customer’s expectation of instant and thorough answers about their immediate and specific situation, the more likely a negative customer experience will ensue, pushing clients to find providers who can satisfy their needs.

But customer attrition is neither intractable nor inevitable. Here are 4 tips to help insurance companies improve customer experience and increase client retention.

Integrate digital channels of communication in your tech stack

The pandemic accelerated a trend that was years in the making, which has seen more and more people turn to digital solutions to conduct all manner of their personal and business lives, and who now expect seamless digital customer experiences.

Companies across all sectors are re-prioritizing their digital strategies to meet these shifting expectations, and insurance providers should pay heed: 41% of consumers say they are likely or more likely to switch providers due to a lack of digital capabilities, and 15% identify lack of digital capabilities as the topmost challenge while interacting with insurers.

Ignoring digital solutions amounts to ignoring customers and doing so will quickly see insurance companies falling well behind the pack. Integrating digital channels of communication into your technology stack is no longer on a wish list; it should be at the top of your to-do list.

Nurture clients with helpful resources and valuable information

How customer relationships are nurtured is a significant gap in the insurance industry. All too often, once a person signs on as a customer, the insurance provider very rarely interacts with them until it is either the time to renew their policy or there’s a claim issue.

Failing to build a relationship with a client – outside of a purely transactional one – hinders retention because clients often end up feeling like just a number in a database or a wallet to be opened. Again, with something as personal as insurance, people want to be acknowledged and know that their providers care.

Text messaging is an invaluable and convenient way to start building lifelong relationships with clients. Sending valuable information and additional resources, and occasionally touching base with them, will go a long way in improving the customer experience.

Regularly check in with clients via text messages

To the above end, reaching out to clients with regular check-ins is always great for customer service, reassuring them that their needs are being taken seriously by their providers.

And the ubiquity of text messaging for personal and business use presents an opportunity to enhance the customer experience, allowing insurance providers to meet customers on a digital channel where they already prefer to be.

When we consider that 95% of text messages are read and responded to within 3 minutes of being received, the power of text messaging as digital channel becomes clear: not only is it the easiest and the quickest channel to reach customers, but it leverages a medium that people are comfortable with, boosting engagement and giving them the digital customer experience they now expect.

Make it easier for clients to submit claims over the phone

Regardless of consumer journey or purchasing decision, today’s customers expect a seamlessness in all their digital transactions, and the insurance industry is not exempt from these shifting consumer trends.

Clients expect easy, quick, and convenient digital solutions, even when it comes to submitting claims, and the better an insurance company can provide this, the greater their client retention rate will be.

Everyone loathes being put on hold at an insurance call centre for what seems like an eternity, more so when they are already in the frustrating situation of having to submit claims.

Insurers need to simplify the process by allowing clients to submit claims over convenient channels like text messaging, which don’t just have ease and convenience baked in, but is already the channel where customers conduct a major portion of their lives. Thankfully, insurers can take advantage of robust text messaging platforms that allow clients to securely send their claims and submit documents directly through their phones.

Convenience is key

As one of the industry’s more distressing open secrets, client retention is known to be a major problem by almost all insurance companies, and yet very few know how to fix it.

Boosting their technology stack with digital solutions means that insurers can leverage new channels to let communication flourish. And by regularly communicating with customers and giving them digital options to follow through on insurance issues like claims, providers can start building the personalized relationships that improve the customer experience and ultimately lead to higher retention rates.

Text messaging hits all the markers, an easy and effective way to meet customers in channels they want to communicate in and provide the seamless customer experience they now expect, a fertile ground to nurture and grow lifelong relationships.

Learn more about how Statflo helps insurance companies engage, retain, and grow their customer base.