Customer Service in the Insurance Industry: the Baby Boomers Are Coming

With the num­ber of retir­ing baby boomers increas­ing, it’s time to assess cus­tomer ser­vice in the insur­ance indus­try. Is your insur­ance call cen­ter ready to serve this pop­u­la­tion? Do your call cen­ter employ­ees know how to uncover needs, rec­om­mend plans, and explain cov­er­age? The Baby Boomers are com­ing, are you ready?

Prepar­ing for this increase in ser­vice needs takes three impor­tant steps: hire qual­ity agents, train your staff, and cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of con­tin­u­ous learning.

Step One — Hir­ing: What qual­i­ties do you look for?

Have you heard of the say­ing, “Hire the smile; train the skills?” Cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives are truly the voice of your com­pany. When you’re look­ing to hire new employ­ees to pre­pare for the increase in ser­vice needs, keep the fol­low­ing five char­ac­ter­is­tics of the HEART Model in mind:

Hear and Under­stand: Does the prospec­tive insur­ance employee show good lis­ten­ing skills? Does he or she ask clar­i­fy­ing ques­tions to ensure understanding?

Expect the Best: Does the can­di­date exhibit a pos­i­tive out­look? Is he or she excited about the prospect of work­ing for your company?

Act with Integrity: Can the appli­cant give exam­ples show­ing how he or she has responded with integrity in prior work or school situations?

Respect Diver­sity: Is the can­di­date open-minded? Ask the appli­cant to share how he or she would han­dle a call with cus­tomers from diverse back­grounds, of var­i­ous ages, and with dif­fer­ent health care needs.

Tran­scend Your­self: Ask the prospec­tive employee to share some cur­rent goals. Is he or she will­ing and inter­ested in learn­ing new skills?

Step Two — Train­ing: How do you pre­pare employ­ees to succeed?

When hir­ing new employ­ees, it’s impor­tant to equip them with the skills to achieve suc­cess. Call cen­ter agents need to be able to serve callers quickly in a way that leaves cus­tomers sat­is­fied and pre­vents call­backs. How do you achieve these results? Pro­vide cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing! Train­ing will improve cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores, reduce the num­ber of call esca­la­tions, and keep insur­ance rep­re­sen­ta­tives engaged and motivated.

Step Three — Ongo­ing Learn­ing: How do you set a prece­dent for con­tin­u­ous improvement?

Once new employ­ees are meet­ing call qual­ity stan­dards, train­ing shouldn’t stop. In order to keep your staff per­form­ing at their opti­mal poten­tial, cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment through ongo­ing coach­ing, brown-bag learn­ing lunches, on-the-job activ­i­ties, and men­tor­ing pro­grams. Stud­ies have shown that effec­tive learn­ing depends largely on what hap­pens after train­ing is over. This is the stage when the ideas learned in train­ing are rein­forced and become a part of the employee’s skillset.

If you want to be pre­pared to serve the aging baby boomer pop­u­la­tion, imple­ment these three steps. Agents will have the con­fi­dence to answer insur­ance ques­tions and serve cus­tomers to their best abil­ity. You will not only have sat­is­fied cus­tomers, you will have sat­is­fied employees.