Never has the Indian insurance landscape been witness to the raging competition levels as today. 42 insurance players are fighting it out for market share in a vertical that is perceived as “push-oriented” – in a red ocean like this, progressive customer-intent signals hold the key to moving the needle for some core metrics like Customer Lifetime Value, Renewal Rate and Conversions Per Agent. Increasingly, revenue teams are deploying cutting-edge automations to ensure that timely “moments of truth” are communicated with sales representatives real-time, especially in a sector that witness an average of 50% “NC (Non-Communicable)” customers in their database.
We ventured out to converse with our customers about some game-changing automation that have been deployed in their revenue environment. Having witnessed the impact of these automations from a first-person lens (LeadSquared is their platform-of-choice for driving the workflows) it was imperative for us to articulate them with from a revenue-acceleration standpoint. To further tag them under specific revenue-driving levers, we have classified them as aiding in either new policies distributed or an uptick in cross-selling.
Automation #1 – Communicate cross-selling signals to representatives
Imagine a scenario where a cross-section of your “child plan” customers visited your website and flipped through “retirement plan” pages only to read them and bounce off. Note – they have bounced off and not placed an enquiry on your website or called their account manager for the same. Maybe they are too early in their purchase cycle and are only in an information-hoarding mode. As marketers and sellers though, isn’t this the moment of truth that you were waiting for?
Our customers exploit this moment wisely; an instant notification is delivered to their respective sales representative informing them that their customer X, who bought a child plan has just visited a retirement plan page. This notification is followed by auto-creation of a sales activity; in this case, “call the customer after 24 hours” of their page visit (lest, they be termed stalkers! )
Automation #2 – Increase in new policies distributed through intelligent lead distribution
Let’s face it – every sales representative has a sweet spot. For some, their superior product knowledge in health plans might land them more policies than cursory knowledge in a savings plan. Distributing leads around dry metrics like zip code, product line or mere sales-representative availability is counter-productive and simply, a waste of leads.
Our customers are automating lead distribution to address product-specific leads in a specific geography through proven high-performers. An AI-driven core evaluates the historic performance of representatives in a product vertical and allocates a particular unit specific lead accordingly.
The result – superior new policy distribution numbers.
Automation #3 – Increase in new policies through precise and targeted lead nurturing
We spoke about it earlier – insurance sales is still heavily oriented towards educating the customer in the right earnest without coming across as “slimy” in the process. The right content for the right customer at the right time is a mantra that is serving insurers well and why not – after all, India is still heavily underpenetrated and lack of information is attributed to be the biggest factor.
An automation that is geared towards nurturing a segment of consumers with related content and in their moment of “search” has triggered windfall gains for our customers. For instance, all their leads who happen to visit a travel insurance product page and have not bought one earlier are exposed to a series of nurturing emails centered around travel – “10 things to be cautious about in your next foreign travel” being one of them.
Delight is a term we are striving to achieve in all our consumer interactions – this automation takes you one step closer to achieve this pipe-dream.
Automation #4 – Increase in new policies through auto-recognition of urgency in a lead’s disposition
“Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Neither can insurance be sold without data, and then some. What’s the revelation here, you might ask?
Timely data. Contextual data. Actionable data.
Your direct sales or call-center agents might have a steady inbound stream of leads but is there a pecking order in which “urgency” of a lead is being allotted its due importance? In most cases, no. Let me explain.
Let’s look at the “best-outcome journey” of a lead who decides to visit your insurance website. Here’s how it goes
- Lead lands on website through a particular product page or homepage
- Lead flips around various pages trying to identify if there are better products
- Lead converges her interest around 2-3 product options that address her short and long-term requirements
- Lead submits details before she is routed to the premium calculator
- Lead pays the premium online
Dream sequence, right? If only all visitor paths concluded in the over-simplified direction mentioned above! Our customers did the next best thing though – allot a priority calling tag to the leads who performed actions on the premium calculator page. Simply put, an automation was geared to push leads who calculated premiums (contextual) in various scenarios on top of the calling queue for agents with a notification email of their specific activities (actionable) to get in touch with them “just-in-time” (timely)
By establishing an instant contact with customers deep in the purchase funnel, our clients have witnessed record new policy initiation numbers.
Automation #5 – Raising red flags if the number of qualified customers from a bancassurance branch falls below a pre-defined level
Not all bancassurance branches generate equal throughput – some generate more returns than others and insurers protect their high-performing turfs with vigor. On the opposite end of the spectrum though, a lingering problem persists – lack of visibility of activities and engagement at high performing branches.
Our customers wish to be abreast of everyday activity count and engagement metrics at branches. These branches are classified into 5, 4 and 3-star branches with respect to their potential and net addition to revenue. The respective branch managers inject the number of “inquiries”, “logins” and “customers” generated, in a CRM of choice.
However, the CRM is not equipped to notify their managers of a sudden dip in any of these numbers. The best that managers can achieve is dive into the CRM and seek information whereas information should flow to them, real-time.
Our clients have published automations that inform them of any unforeseen dip in average submission numbers daily, weekly or quarterly. These red flags empower unit heads to eliminate any blockages and stay on top of their revenue game because of access to granular branch activity data in their inbox without they having to search for it.
You can replicate these workflows for your organization as well, to help you automate and simplify your revenue acceleration. However, to do this well, you need a tool that helps you create and implement these automation workflows. That’s where LeadSquared comes in. It has a drag and drop builder which it makes it easy for you to build your insurance sales workflows. And, it is very flexible, giving you multiple options to experiment and test your workflows. Of course, all the above templates are easy to build in LeadSquared.
So what are you waiting for? Try it out for yourself and see how easy it is.
Do you have more workflow ideas relevant for insurance sales? Let us know in the comments below.
