Delivering Value and Individualized Customer Service
By: Ray Whitehouse, Co-Owner & Agent at Johnson-Pohlmann Insurance
When it comes to delivering the best customer service and value for your customers, you always want to put your best foot forward. Every interaction you have with a customer gives them an impression of your company. Are your customers happy with their decision to give you their business? Are they having some regrets? Check in from time to time to see how clients are doing and gauge how satisfied they are with your agency.
At Johnson Pohlmann, we try to ensure that our customer service representatives know as much information as possible about the customers that are calling to ask about their policy. Many of our local Kentucky residents will call in with questions about their policy. We believe that our CSRs should be able to answer any questions our clients may have regarding their Kentucky auto insurance, home owners, boat, life or any other policy that a customer may have.
If you are not already, you should be using these tactics to improve the service you are offering your customers.
Take the Temperature of Your Customers:
Say Ahh! When you have established a relationship with your customers ask them to fill out a customer survey to give you direct feedback on how they perceive their individual level of customer service. Take the information and find out where you can improve. As an independent insurance agency, your customers do business with you because you can offer them a better customer service experience than large carriers. Make sure you are delivering what your customers are looking for on your end. A short survey with numerical values rating your performance is a simple way to get some informative feedback.
Use Metrics to Drive Your Service:
You are spending time gathering information from your customers so why not use it to improve your overall customer service strategies? Collecting data is an aimless task if you do not ultimately apply it to improving your business. Keep statistical data on everything from the average time spent with a customer on the phone, common questions and concerns, and the overall customer satisfaction numbers. How many customers gave you high service ratings?
Try Harder to Understand Your Customers:
Many times it can be easy to forget where a customer is coming from when they call you to ask a question regarding their policy. Typically when someone calls customer service they are looking for a brief to the point answer to their question. The last thing they want to do is sit on hold for 10 minutes to get a simple answer to their question. Ask yourself, how can you streamline this process? Do you notice any bottlenecks in the process? If several customers contact your CSRs with very similar questions, maybe you should add something to your Facebook page, or website answering the question on a Frequently Asked Questions page.
Some Tips for Choosing the Best Inexpensive Auto Insurance Policy
As a consumer, the wide selection of insurance products available today may seem wonderful, but the wide selection can make it very difficult for consumers to find outstanding deals and proper coverage. If you are having a hard time sniffing out inexpensive auto insurance, or you are having a hard time finding the right policy for you, you should read the following tips.
Tip 1 – Talk about insurance with your family and friends. Your friends and family can relate a great deal of information about the insurance industry to you if you consult with them before making a purchase. The information your friends and family provide you with will also help you find the best companies available in the industry too.
If your friends and family love the services of a specific company, you can be fairly certain that you will love that company’s services too. Also, your loved ones can guide you towards the most affordable companies too. If your friend has recently searched for the cheapest policies available in the industry, you can use their research to uncover the most affordable policy available to you today.
Tip 2 – Seek out professional advice. Many people rush into buying insurance policies just to find out that they did not purchase enough coverage. If you want to avoid exposing yourself to the risks of being underinsured, or you want to avoid spending too much on your policy, professional advice can give you the guidance you need.
Not only will professionals like insurance brokers and financial planners be able to estimate how much insurance you need, but they can also help you find affordable policies too. If you are working with an extremely limited budget, an insurance broker can look through the offerings of multiple companies and show you what you can afford.
Tip 3 – Work with companies to lower the cost of your insurance. Many companies are willing to drastically reduce the cost of their policies if the policies are tweaked in various ways. If you are willing to accept a smaller amount of coverage from the company you are working with, they will likely be more than willing to accept smaller monthly payments from you.
Many companies also offer special discounts to their customers too. If you qualify for these discounts, you may be able to save hundreds of dollars on your policy every single year. You can save money by purchasing multiple policies from one company. You can also obtain deep discounts if you are a good driver and a good student. These special discounts will certainly help you find a very inexpensive auto insurance policy.
Things to Check With Your Car Insurance
Car insurance is mandatory. Everybody driving a car needs to have it. When buying car insurance many people simple ask for a quick quote and go for the cheapest insurance available. This however can prove to be a big mistake.
Car insurance like many other insurance policies is something people do not like to buy and do not like to pay for on a recurring basis. The reason is simple. Insurance is by definition a product that pays back only if god forbid something really bad happens. Thankfully for most people such bad rare events never happen and thus most people feel that all the money they have paid toward their insurance was a waste of money. But for a small group of people those bad rare events do happen and when they need to get paid back from their insurance policy they might find they have been paying for the wrong insurance for many years not being able to now get the benefit they need at their worst time.
Car insurance is relatively simple and within a short time anyone can get educated for its basic concepts. As with any other purchase everybody should pay attention and learn a bit about what they are buying before opting for the cheapest available option. Here are some basics things to know. First insurance is like any other product and the brand name and reputation of the insurer is important. Since you would only be interacting with the insurer service in the future if god forbid something really bad happens the only way to judge if the insurer is good or not is by reading other people experience. Thanks to the Internet nowadays you can relatively easily find information and reviews from other customers. Take the time to read and see what they say. Being able to easily file claims and get paid for your damages is important. Other fine print issues like your ability to choose your own car shop and so on are also very important.
There are however a few parameters in a car insurance that are easy to check and are easy to evaluate. One of those is the limits on the policy payouts. Simply put every car insurance policy puts a limit on how much they would pay per incident no matter what your damages were. The limits set by law for car insurance are very low and since the higher the limit the higher the insurance prices most insurers tend to quote insurance policies that only cover the minimum required payouts. If you choose to buy such insurance you might put yourself in a situation where you are underinsured. In other words if something bad happens like a car accident and the damages are higher than your insurance policy you would have to pay for the difference between the insurance limit and the real damages. In most cases increasing the limits significantly increases the policy in relatively small amounts which makes buying the basic minimum required limit insurance even more unreasonable.
Another thing to check with your car insurance is who and what is covered. The cheapest insurance would only cover damages to you and your car. If for example you hit another car and both your and the other car are damaged the insurance will only cover your car. This can be a real risk as you never know what the other car would be. For example hitting a Ferrari can be very costly if you have no insurance. Another parameter to pay attention to is coverage for uninsured motorists. If you get hit by someone and they have insurance their insurance would pay for the damages. But if you get hit by someone that has no insurance and no money you will find yourself with nobody to ask to pay for your damages. Paying a bit more for your car insurance policy can provide coverage for such cases where if the party hitting you has no insurance your insurance will kick in to cover your damages.
Get The Lowest Auto Insurance Quote Online
I am sure none of us don’t have a few years to spend and searching for all auto insurance offer available out there. Insurance quotes companies have spend so much time at work to help us learning about insurance and searching for insurance resources that will suit with our needs and budget. With insurance quotes our chances are high that we will definitely land up at the perfect deal suited to our requirements. This is why all of those solutions that helping us find the best insurance deals are very quickly and very poplar these days.
These resources are best suited if we thinking of such thing like getting in touch with insurance agent and walking to the nearest library to get an encyclopedia on insurance we are on the wrong track all together.
To make it happen you need to make a way to the nearest internet connection and computer. If you have already in your home then it’s going to be perfect. This is the best method for you that could help find multiple car insurance rates and help you compare insurance quotes at zero cost on internet.
The only thing you need to go is by visiting website that offers multiple insurance quotes. Within a minute the estimates will be on your screen after you specify the information that required in the form. You will find that information will be formatted in such a manner that even a novice can quickly compare the same.
Moreover you don’t need to spend much time for discussion with your insurance agent. These resources is going to be very useful so go online and get your best deal. If you find yourself are not comfortable finalizing the insurance deal online then you might want to get in touch with your insurance agent. When you discuss with your insurance agent simply specify that you want such insurance policy. This such insurance policy usually offering a specific amount of coverage with specific amount of premium.
Keep in mind that compare insurance quotes is very important before getting signed up with an insurance policy. By having online insurance quotes you are saving both money and time since you are guaranteed to get the best and lowest insurance quote.
