The insurance industry is currently going through a “hard market” – a period of low-risk appetite where carriers are tightening their underwriting requirements and agents are finding it harder and harder to place certain types of business. With access to policies decreasing and prices going up, it’s more important than ever that agencies look for ways to get an edge and to allow their agents to do more with less and provide standout service. There is arguably no better tool for these types of market conditions than a good insurance CRM, and many agencies have turned to CRMs in order to leverage the technological advantages they can provide over legacy systems. Unfortunately, insurance is a traditionally slow-to-adapt industry, and many agencies aren’t familiar with customer resource management software. So, what exactly is an insurance CRM, what does it do, and how can it help agents and agencies compete better?

 

What is a Customer Resource Management System?

CRMs are software applications designed to store and manage customer data in a centralized way that allows effectively all customer-facing activities to become data-driven. They allow sales organizations, like insurance agencies, to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects faster, while simultaneously reducing the time and resources required. While all CRMs have customer data management at their core, many advanced CRMs also offer a wide variety of productivity tools covering everything from marketing to administration to communications to payments and beyond. In short, customer resource management systems save sales organizations time and money while allowing them to turn more leads into paying customers and generate more revenue from each one. 

 

How Insurance CRMs Benefit Agencies and Agents

Insurance CRMs provide agents with a single, centralized point of control for almost all of their daily tasks, allowing them to reclaim an enormous amount of lost time and do their jobs more effectively. A good insurance CRM allows agents to log into a single system and use it to better manage their leads, better track each prospect’s progress through the agency’s funnel, and deliver better service when a customer is ready to purchase a new policy or add on additional services. 

Improved Lead Collection and Management

Insurance CRMs make lead management easier and more effective by automating capture and categorization and, in turn, minimizing the potential for hot leads to slip through the cracks due to human error. A good insurance CRM will automatically recategorize leads and customer profiles based on everything from their existing products to their interactions with promotional materials to the amount of time between contacts, and more. As a result, it becomes far more difficult to lose track of a lead and far easier to identify which leads are the most primed to convert into new policyholders. 

More Complete Customer Awareness

One of the biggest benefits of an insurance CRM is that it gives agents constant access to complete data on each and every customer and prospect. That enhanced situational awareness makes it easier for agents to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities and to more carefully tailor their sales efforts when dealing with prospects. For instance, with an insurance CRM, an agent can easily keep track of which existing customers have certain products, making it easy to identify opportunities where bundling additional coverages could both unlock new revenue for the company while also providing the customer with added value. 

Productivity Increases and Advanced Task Automation

Top insurance CRMs like CRMDialer also include a wide variety of productivity tools that help agents, administrative staff, and management work smarter through improved information access and advanced automation. Everything from follow-up contacts to marketing blasts to payment processing can be automated. In the case of CRMDialer, a built-in power dialer means even an agent’s daily calling can be automated. By helping staff work smarter, insurance CRMs allow agencies to spend less time handling repetitive busy work and more time on revenue-generating activities. 

 

How to Choose the Right Insurance CRM

Choosing the right insurance CRM comes down to analyzing and weighing three different factors: the included sales tools, the included productivity tools, scalability, and cost. While many insurance CRMs have the same core features, it’s important to ensure certain key functionality is included in order to maximize the ROI a new CRM can provide to an agency. The following is a quick breakdown of some of those features. 

1) Sales Tools

Sales tools are at the core of what a CRM does, and any insurance CRM making the shortlist should have the following features at a minimum. 

Automatic lead categorization: The system reclassifies leads based on their interactions with agents, communications, and promotional materials, ensuring all leads are accurately categorized and easily prioritized.

System-wide lead access: Lead accounts are quickly and easily accessible from across the entire system, ensuring agents can get the information they need in seconds without the need to interrupt their workflows. 

Automatic lead capture: Leads can be automatically captured into the system from a variety of digital sources, and new lead accounts are created without any manual intervention or data entry required.

2) Productivity Tools

Productivity tools take CRM value to the next level, and a good insurance CRM should include a variety of tools to save an agency time across more than just sales activities. 

Fully-integrated communication and scheduling: All email communications and scheduling can be integrated with the insurance CRM to allow agents to manage email, calendars, SMS messaging, and internal chat from a single point of control. 

Native power dialing: It should be possible to integrate a third-party power dialer at an absolute minimum. However, ideally, a native dialer should be built directly into the system. An integrated dialer enables agents to save time through automated dialing, one-click voicemail drop, and more. 

3) Pricing Model and Use Limitations

Features are extremely important, but so is scalability. And it isn’t just a question of how easy it is to scale an insurance CRM, but also of how much it costs. 

Unlimited Lead and File Storage: An agency can add an unlimited number of lead and customer profiles to the system and store an unlimited number of documents, ensuring easy scaling as an agency’s book grows. 

Unlimited Users: Agencies can add as many agents and employees to the insurance CRM as they need to without incurring the extra costs associated with a user-based fee model. Unlimited-user pricing is crucial to ensure agencies can grow rapidly without being overwhelmed by new costs.

CRMDialer is the top insurance CRM available today, offering the sales and productivity tools necessary to tackle the unique challenges facing agencies. From the advanced lead management suite to the built-in power dialer to the intelligence provided by an unmatched reporting suite, CRMDialer makes it faster and easier for agents to convert prospects into policyholders. 

 

To find out more about everything CRMDialer can do for your agency, reach out to a member of the team or start your no-commitment free trial today.