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By FBNews.net
Although Insurenewmedia had pioneered online sales for insurance, Fred felt inefficiencies still plagued them. Their original online system asked the prospect up front to do a great deal of work and to share a lot of confidential information in exchange, for nothing.
"There was no immediate gratification. They were presented with a form, and at the end we tell them that they´ll hear back from us in two days."
"I figured there had to be a better way. Looking back, it was still pretty manual and pretty paper-intensive. Pretty soon, our system was obsolete. We figured we were losing a lot of people because we were asking for an overbearing commitment of their time – too early in the contact. So we changed all that."
Two summers ago, Fred set out to refine that system. The result was The Coverage Coach.
"The objective of The Coverage Coach is to ask for a little information up front, nothing more than an email, address in exchange for a free online analysis of their exposures and some customized recommendations based on these exposures."
More than just a beneficial tool for the prospect, it also serves as an up-front qualification mechanism used to determine, quickly and easily, if the prospect is a good fit for Insurenewmedia. It has also allowed them to see, quite clearly, the demographics of their customers.
"We´ve figured out their insurance buying patterns based on the 3 years of experience we´ve had. We profiled the types of products they bought and why they bought them and how long they kept them. We can compare and profile their customers, for example, the more aggressive expanding firm versus a public company: They use the site differently, they shop differently, the types of recommendations they want are different."
"We developed The Coverage Coach product to do a lot of this profiling. Now we´ve got this great system that´s doing all the things WE need it to do, and on the customer´s side, it´s doing what the customer needs it to do. And those are goals that are sometimes conflicting!"
By automating this profiling process and using artificial intelligence combined with traditional insurance agents, both the company and the client enjoy greater efficiency, and the automation keeps workflow in check so that nothing falls through the cracks.
It also allows the agents to optimize their time in the office: "Instead of having to do the grunt work like key punching and maintaining manual files, they get to do the thinking part and interact with the customers, which is where I want them focused."
We asked Fred what he thought about his contemporaries- were any of them coming his way?
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