Answering Services & The Insurance Industry

There are several businesses where, if no one is there to pick up the phone when the prospect calls, the prospect will probably be lost forever. There is just too much competition between homeowners insurance agents and insurance agents that sell vacant home insurance products. Clients will not "wait" for someone to call back, and if they leave a message on an answering machine, they probably won't even remember who they called.

In the homeowners insurance and vacant home insurance market a skilled call center and answering service can make or break the ability to close a particular prospect. No call center is going to be able to close the account on it's own (and they are not even licensed to do so) but collecting the critical information about the prospect can be very important. For licensing purposes the call center would need to make sure they find out what State the insured is calling from because the insurance agent may only be licensed in a few States. It would be preferable if the answering service knew exactly where the agent was licensed and could inform clients that call in from States where the agent is not licensed, that a quote cannot be generated for that reason. This would save the agent valuable time returning calls to prospects in unlicensed States that could never become clients.

Other critical information, other than the State, that could be collected by a good call center working for a homeowners insurance agent include the following:

  1. The estimated value of the house
  2. The existing insurer
  3. Why is the prospect seeking insurance quotes: (price, coverage, etc)
  4. Can any other insurance be combined with the homeowners quote like auto insurance, vacant home insurance, life insurance, seasonal properties, etc)

When potential clients get a call back from the agent, they don't want to start from scratch. An agent that can call back a potential prospect, and reiterate the situation back to the prospect by having all of the information prepared, tells the prospect the agent is both professional and very interested in their business. A good call center can act as a critical catalyst and jump start the sales process.

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