How to retain your customers when their renewal approaches

When you started your career, did you think you’d rely so much on meerkats and moustaches?

For businesses, they undoubtedly increase market coverage and attract more customers, but many policy sales from aggregators only break-even in year one.

Whilst comparisons sites work to get you a wealth of new customers, how do you keep them with you when it comes to their renewal?

The facts

It's important to strike a balance between using aggregators and acquiring direct customers. Ultimately it's really what's right for your business.

But it's a hot topic within the industry right now.

We spoke to Steve Tarbard, owner of the agency BeyondClicks, who has worked in the insurance broker industry for over 30 years. Steve said:

“The main thing we’re seeing on a daily basis is an over-reliance on aggregators and third-party lead generation providers. Insurance brokers buy a lot of their leads/sales from third parties and the majority don’t generate their own. This reliance on others diminishes their control, and limits their ability to say “We want x amount of sales in this area”, and then having the ability to target it.”

So, what’s the trick to retaining customers an aggregator site has enabled you to get in the first place? Selling to an existing customer has a 70-80% success rate, whilst selling to a new customer is 5-20%¹.

And, as 41.2% of salespeople said their phone is the most effective sales tool at their disposal², how can call intelligence to supercharge this and close more sales?

Call on us

Call intelligence gives you the right keywords which are, or aren’t, generating valuable sales calls directly to you, rather than an aggregator site. Once you’ve got this data, you can replicate this success at scale to drive more revenue directly to your business.

Once you’ve managed to bag these precious calls, then it’s time to close the sale. But you already know that. Infinity’s caller insight app can help enhance your chances by gleaning information on everything the customer has done on your site.

Our app’s insights empower your operator to tailor their sales message, identify opportunities for cross-selling, and removes the need for the customer to repeat what they’re looking for.

In fact, 41% of customers stopped using a product or service after having to repeat themselves over and over on calls (and 88% hate having to repeat information provided via another channel

Infinity’s Conversation Analytics suite may also be your magic bullet to revealing why a customer may want to switch providers. Immediately after installation, Conversation Analytics starts identifying pre-determined keywords that matter most to your business and can be tailored.

Keywords that could mean the cancelling of a contract could be

• Cancel plan

• Switch

• Go Compare

• Contract

Identifying these calls manually is a gigantic and monotonous task, but is often needed to discover the real reason why people are switching. Conversation Analytics does this for you at speed and scale. With these insights, you can be agile in making changes to your customer retention strategy.

Mid-term cancellations

Of course, not every customer waits until the end of their plan before they enquire about switching. Mid-term cancellations also present a serious challenge to insurers as people move house, sell their car, or just find a cheaper option elsewhere and want to cancel their plan.

This is another area where Conversation Analytics can save the day. Highlighting keywords and terms such as "cancel my plan" helps you identify all of these calls, and gives you a bank of them to listen to and research how to keep them. By analysing these calls, you could see which approaches are enticing people to stay and what's having no effect.

You could also see what pages they're visiting before making this call. By mapping out this journey you could leave reminders of your strong points or tempting offers along the way to keep them on board.

The next level of call tracking

Brands such as Swinton, Marsh, and Titan Insurance, already trust Infinity’s call tracking platform to unlock valuable insights that make a real difference to the success of their business.

Discover more about how Infinity works with the insurance industry here.

Click below if you’re ready to take real steps in keeping your customers, for longer.

I want to keep more customers

References: 

1. Customer retention, IMRG, 2016
2. Selling via the phone, MarcWayshak, (2019)