I recently attended the latest WOMMA conference in Miami. It was an intense two days, full of knowledge transfer during various break out sessions. We explored the trends and insights of customer engagement, through community and social media. We also listened to similar stories of what was finally proving to be successful, in our ever-evolving world. But, many of these case studies were around causes that ComBlu has always pioneered. For the brands in attendance however, the information was new, exciting and even a little scary.
Brands were in the same boat, asking similar questions such as:
How do I sell this internally?
How do I monetize this?
How do I even begin!?
During a breakout session I noticed one individual was just scratching his head, looking sad of all things. I asked him what was wrong. He said, “Great. I get it. We should be doing this. ALL of this.”
Am I missing something here?
“Well, we do insurance. Who wants to talk about insurance?” he asked with dismay.
I started to think. Well, lots of people! My brain working quickly, I began to lay out an idea.
What’s important in people’s lives? What do we talk about? Family, safety, security, assets, natural disasters, buying one’s first home. I could go on. If your product is boring or un-sexy, go beyond the utility of it and create an experience. Jump right in. Be THE place for these conversations that your customers, or potential customers, are having.
Riffing off this idea, another agency representative said, “Exactly. And, you can provide a place for questions and resources. Insurance is confusing.”
He began to brighten, because now we’ve got something. I continued on.
An insurance community can be a portal for life. With a community you can stimulate everyday conversation, and become relevant to people’s lives. Give guidance, and be a comfort in times of disaster, trouble and need. Be a resource, and provide the content your customers are looking for. Listen, and get direct customer feedback that could help your process and increase satisfaction. Look at it as an opportunity, and not a problem. I could almost see the gears begin to turn in his head.
Do all of this right and you can even measure its effectiveness. You’d be amazed at what a little brand loyalty and awareness will get you. It struck me then, that for an insurer, a little customer love may just be the holy grail.
To drive it home, I began to talk about cost deflection. Eventually your members will develop their own expertise around your service offerings and processes. If engaged properly, they will begin to help each other with policy questions and other important decisions. You’ll save money in a number of areas: claims administration, customer service and support for starters.
Full on smile now. He got up in a daze, reached for his cell phone and walked away. I looked for him later, but never saw him again. Oh well, I hope I was of some help. Good luck Insurance Man.
Senior Consultant
Jenny is a digital content strategist, who leads customer-centric engagements that focus on understanding B2B buying behaviors and developing custom roadmaps.
Her expertise is creating buyer personas and mapping digital content journeys to assess the multi-channel user experience. She helps clients operationalize plans across workstreams and identifies processes to create efficiencies in marketing operations. Jenny also has extensive time under her belt developing and managing customer advocacy programs and community building.
She has helped a diverse group of organizations including Cisco, VMware, Verizon, Microsoft, Dell, BMO Harris, Capital One and many others become more customer-centric.