Three ways in which insurance agents should be available online

When people are searching online for insurance, most want a quick and easy way to reach out and get their questions answered.

In fact, 73% of customers find live chat to be the most satisfying way of communicating with a business according to research done by Invesp.

Additionally, consumers don’t want to have to navigate to a completely different platform or website just to find a way to chat with you. Instead, you need to be available where people are already looking for insurance: Google, Facebook and your website.

Website

You know how important a beautiful and functional insurance website is for converting leads. Even with simple quote request forms and ample testimonials on your agency website, some people still prefer to talk to a real person. Make sure your web chat lives directly on your site.

You aren’t available 24/7, so make sure your agency has an away message that pops up when someone tries to chat with you outside of normal business hours. Create a simple message to request the individual’s contact details and let them know when you’ll be in touch.

Brand your chat icon to match your website, including web chat colors, a welcome message, chat placement and more. Use cookies to remember returning visitors so you know whom you’re chatting with and can pick up any conversation where it last left off. Assign key employees to read and respond to online chats and keep message transcripts after each chat ends for E&O purposes.

Facebook

Many people search for insurance on Facebook. It only takes a few minutes to enable Facebook Messenger on your business profile so you can start chatting with prospects and customers. Choose which employees you’d like to monitor Facebook messages and keep chat transcripts of completed conversations.

Google

Google still holds over 90% of the global search engine market and is where most insurance prospects start their online search. With Google being such a popular search engine, you’ll want to set up Google business messages on your Google My Business profile. Just a heads up: Google requires you to have a privacy policy on your agency website before you can use their online messaging tool.

Be sure to update your business hours on Google and set an accompanying welcome message for online visitors. If someone writes in after hours, send them an automated message requesting their contact information so you can get back to them the next day. Pick a few employees to grant access to Google business messages so they can respond to chats and keep records of any conversations.

All your conversations in one place

Keeping up with all the messages that come through across different platforms sounds overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. With ClientCircle, you can respond to messages across platforms in one dashboard. Our mobile app makes it easy to reply while you’re on the go. If you ever need to access your message history, all your archived conversations are saved in one searchable location. We can also email key team members a chat transcript after the conversation ends.

With our Conversations tool, you can see additional details about a customer or prospect while you’re chatting with them, including policy information and other communications you’ve sent them. Your team members can leave private notes on any conversation to let others know important details about the prospect or customer, such as action items. If you send the same messages frequently, you can save templates to quickly respond to people chatting in with similar requests.