How do insurers need to innovate in order to remain competitive?

When you or your team follow up leads in the insurance industry, it’s important to stand out from the competition the best way you can.

One way to do this is to innovate aspects of your business.

From the services you provide to the technology you use to handle your enquiries, we look at key ways insurers should innovate in order to remain competitive.

Services

The services you provide are one area to think about innovating in order to remain competitive when working in the insurance sector. This includes the types of services you offer and how you present them to customers, in terms of their accessibility and the different ways they can get in touch with you.

For instance, if you currently only operate during the working day, such as 9am till 5pm, do you want your company to be a 24-hour operation? Or do you want to widen the ways potential customers can make enquires, such as adding SMS services, a social channel, and live chat?

You should also think about the different industries you target and whether you want to increase the sectors you handle. For instance, do you want to consider widening the specialisms you target, like expanding into other types of claims if you’re a claims service? Or do you want to make your insurance company stand out by becoming a specialist in a specific area? For example, if you deal with personal injury claims, you could focus on an area of this, such as injuries at work in relation to specific types of jobs.

Staff

Another key area where you can innovate to remain competitive are your employees. Things to consider include their skills, experience and team size, as well as training. For instance, you might want to consider hiring staff:

• Who have greater skills in sales and following up leads
• Who are highly experienced in the industries and specialisms you’re targeting
• To simply increase the size of your team

Or you might want to consider investing in training your current staff to upskill them to handle more customers, for instance.

Doing these things can make your staff stand out and gain a reputation in your industry for things like providing an excellent customer service.

Technology

The systems and software you use in your business can also be key to making you competitive. This includes technology to help:

• Bring in leads from different sources quickly and effectively
• Ensure staff respond to enquiries in good time so potential customers aren’t waiting long
• Provide salespeople with the right information, so they are armed with accurate facts when following up enquiries
• Collect and filter leads effectively, so staff prioritise the right ones and customers are put in touch with the employees who are best suited to help them

Promoting your innovations

When considering innovations across your services, staff and technology, it’s worth thinking about how you can promote them to stand out from your competitors and attract more customers.

For example, you could make them part of your marketing and include them in your company advertising, or you could include details in your enquiry process. This could involve including them in the dialogue of an automated voice message, which potential customers hear when they contact you by telephone. Or you could add some content about your innovations to the contact us page on your company website.

Providing you with innovative effective lead management

Technology is one way to innovate and stand out from the competition, if you’re in the insurance sector.