One of the chief complaints that unhappy insurance clients have against their providers and/or agency is inadequate or the lack of communication. Clients get frustrated when replies to their inquires take too long, especially if it’s concerning an urgent matter. Even if their rates are reasonable, poor communication can be grounds for seeking a new insurance agent or provider.
The key to being a better communicator comes down to finding the time to be more available to respond to your clients’ questions and even be proactive in reaching out to them. If improving communication is a priority for you, then you should start by examining how you spend your time and how you can eliminate some everyday processes and tasks that take up so much time.
Once you’re able to eliminate busywork, then you can start creating a system for yourself to be a better communicator.
Keep Organized
Whenever a customer contacts you, you want to be able to immediately be able to answer any question they may have. You need quick access to all your records related to the client and their concern. If you have physical records in a filing cabinet, it’s likely you’ll have to put them on hold or ask them to let you call them back. That’s definitely not what they want to hear. If you can’t find a particular document because it’s likely in a different folder or cabinet because it was misfiled, they could be on hold for a long time.
With the speed of digital documents, clients expect quick service. Even if your documents are contained in a digital space, are they organized in a manner that allows you to quickly search and pull them up? Typical file explorer interfaces only allow you to search for documents by file name. Meanwhile, document management systems like Rubex by eFileCabinet allows you to instantly find any file you’re looking for.
Conduct full-text searches with optical character recognition. This means you can search for documents using any search terms you know are contained in the text of the file, even if it’s a PDF or other image. Type in the client name, policy number, and the document type, and voila. Even if you don’t know the file name, as long as you know what’s in it, you can pull it up. Dates, claim amounts, vehicle make/model – it’s all up for grabs.
Other tools to make searching exponentially easier include a search within container option, allowing you to narrow down your searches. Besides file names and full-text, you can also search by several other qualifiers like dates, users, etc.
Customized File-Sharing Portal
Exchanging documents with clients should be a quick and simple process and not have to require multiple emails back and forth. Also, stop sharing documents over unsecure email attachments. When you send sensitive documents over an email, you’re trusting a third-party email server’s security. When your client is ready to send over a signed document, let them do so through a secure and welcoming channel.
Connect with your clients better by providing a customized branded portal for your clients to share and download documents within a secure environment. Rubex provides you with a specialized portal that you can add your own colors and branding too, making it a credible and welcoming feature for your clients to use. They’ll essentially be granted guest user status, which allows them to download and share documents whenever they want. You control their permissions, giving you control over what they can and can’t see.
The goal of becoming a better communicator for your clients begins with your own initiative to make yourself more available and provide intuitive avenues to reach you. Fortunately, there are tech tools that can help you accomplish this easily.
To see Rubex in action, click here to view a free, personalized demo.
