Call Center for Insurance Agencies: Must-Have Features

Insurance agents often juggle numerous clients daily, managing everything from customer inquiries to claims processing to policy renewals and updates. Handling this call volume while balancing administrative tasks, compliance concerns, and follow-up calls can result in overwhelmed agents, operational inefficiency, and poor customer service.

Cloud call centers can help, allowing you to leverage business process outsourcing to a qualified insurance contact center that can manage high volumes of both inbound and outbound calls.

How Call Center Solutions Benefit Insurance Agencies

Call center solutions can facilitate improved customer communication across multiple channels, including phone, email, live chat, SMS messaging, and even social media. Insurance businesses and contact centers can use this software to improve their marketing, customer support, and sales efforts.

Let’s discuss how call center solutions can benefit small and large insurance agencies alike.

Improved client experience

Agencies can significantly improve customer satisfaction and customer retention by streamlining communication and enabling agents to handle multiple client inquiries efficiently.

Intelligent routing and automation help agents deliver faster response times and improved service quality on all customer inquiries, ensuring that each call is sent to the department that can best help.

Call center solutions typically integrate with third-party tools, including your CRM, so your agents can offer personalized support and recommendations for each client. Your agents can help clients compare their rates, understand their coverage, and offer assistance to reinforce your company’s value.

Customers want to feel confident that you’re three steps ahead when it comes to something as high-stakes as insurance. Call center solutions help you do that.

Increased productivity

Call center solutions for insurance agencies allow reps to focus on high-value tasks like nurturing leads and resolving complex client needs, as opposed to being bogged down by routine queries that can potentially be answered by live chat or interactive voice response (IVR) menus.

Automated workflows and call handling save a significant amount of time, preventing agents from needing to greet new callers, go through their scripts, and then route them elsewhere. This improves the customer experience at the same time.

Integrations with your company’s CRM system reduce the time spent searching for client information, making it easier to offer better and more personalized support quickly.

Cost-effectiveness

Cloud-based call center solutions are completely digital, reducing the need for expensive PBX on-premise infrastructure. These products can drastically lower the overall operational costs for both installation and ongoing maintenance and make it much more cost-effective to scale.

Pay-as-you-go models with transparent pricing also allow agencies to control their costs, paying only for what they use.

Data-driven decision making

Cloud-based call center solutions have reporting features that enable managers to better monitor agent performance.

Use analytics to track trends in call volume, agent response times, and customer satisfaction metrics to guide staffing decisions and process improvements. Managers can optimize operations based on real-time insights, such as ensuring enough staff is working during peak seasons or discovering new opportunities for agent training.

Related: How a Cloud Call Center Can Benefit Your Real Estate Agency

8 Key Features to Look for in Insurance Call Center Software

When choosing insurance call center software — whether you’re leveraging call center outsourcing or looking for an improved solution to handle customer communication internally — there are eight must-have features to look for.

1. Omnichannel communication

Look for contact center solutions vs. call center solutions.

Call center solutions may only support functionality for voice calls, potentially with limited features around SMS messaging or video calls. Contact center solutions, however, typically offer advanced features for multiple channels, including phone calls, email, SMS, live chat, and potentially even social media in a single platform.

To create a true omnichannel experience that allows you to connect with customers through multiple touchpoints based on their personal preferences, look for a contact center solution that offers multiple communication channels.

2. Intelligent call routing

Call routing features are essential, allowing your phone system to direct callers to the right agent.

Look for a solution that offers intelligent call routing, which routes calls to appropriate agents based on predefined criteria like language preference, location, and inquiry type. It’s not just about which agent is available but also about putting callers in touch with agents specializing in sales, claims processing, or insurance policy questions.

3. IVR

IVR allows callers to interact with an automated system to get answers to simple inquiries regarding policy information or claims filing. IVR systems can also help callers complete simple processes, like requesting a callback or helping policyholders make a payment. This can reduce agent workload and help them connect faster with customers who need assistance.

4. Call recording and monitoring

Advanced call recording and monitoring features allow agencies to record calls for compliance and training purposes. This approach ensures quality control and provides additional protection in instances of dispute resolution.

Contact center software should have seamless functions to start, stop, and pause recording calls on demand.

5. CRM integration

Seamless integration with CRM tools allows agents to access client information during calls, helping them provide personalized service and efficiently manage relationships. Your contact center software should have a ready-to-go integration with your CRM or API access to connect the two platforms.

6. Automated follow-up and reminders

Insurance call center agents have a large number of tasks on their hands. Your contact center software can lighten their workload with features like automated appointment scheduling, renewal reminders, and follow-up calls. This resource ensures that clients receive timely communication and increases overall operational efficiency.

7. Mobile app compatibility

Mobile communication apps allow agents to manage calls and access client information from anywhere, helping field agents remain productive outside the office. The increase in remote work amongst call center agents and office workers makes this approach essential for increasing agent productivity and promoting team collaboration.

8. Compliance management

All businesses need to consider data security and privacy laws, but certain types of insurance may have to abide by additional guidelines or regulations like GDPR and PCI. Health insurance and life insurance companies, for example, regularly handle sensitive patient data and must abide by data privacy laws like HIPAA.

Call center software should have advanced security features like secure call handling, top-of-the-line encryption, and data storage.

You can learn more about contact center compliance to ensure that your company follows all essential regulations.

Use Cases for Insurance Agents

If you’re unsure whether call center software can benefit your business, here are a few common use cases of value to insurance providers.

Lead management and qualification

Contact center solutions can support and even automate lead management and qualification as potential clients reach out about insurance policy enrollment.

Agents can use IVR and intelligent call routing to qualify leads, collecting basic information before speaking to them directly. This method ensures that agents spend time on high-priority, high-value leads.

Some agencies even use outbound call center services for lead generation, using features like predictive auto-dialing to call prospects on lead lists. Automated callbacks can improve conversion rates among interested prospects.

Claims handling

Claims filing can be a time-intensive process. Your IVR system can help clients by allowing them to report incidents or check claim statuses. Your agents, meanwhile, are freed up to handle more complex inquiries.

Call recording helps ensure compliance with claims-related documentation, reducing liability risks for your agency.

Policy renewal reminders

Policy renewals can be time-consuming when conducted manually. Clients typically need to be reminded of an upcoming renewal, payments need to be made, and auto-payments may need updated payment information.

Use advanced contact center solutions to automatically notify clients of upcoming policy renewals, reducing the likelihood of lapses and cancellations.

Personalized renewal offers can be presented to clients during these interactions, enhancing the chance of customer retention.

Dispute resolution

Recorded calls allow managers to review interactions and ensure proper handling of client disputes, providing peace of mind and avoiding potential legal issues.

Real-time call center monitoring enables supervisors to intervene in live calls made through answering services to resolve escalated issues quickly.

Take Care of Your Clients With Nextiva

Call center solutions offer advanced capabilities, allowing insurance agencies to leverage automated workflows to improve the customer experience, increase agent productivity, and increase the total number of calls handled.

Nextiva is an AI-powered contact center solution that supports your customer service agents with IVR, intelligent call routing, lead management features, and omnichannel communication channels. Use Nextiva to address core business needs like lead generation, policy renewals, and outreach.

Nextiva worked with Hancock Insurance, for example, to improve their customer communication. With Nextiva, they were able to set up secure online documentation transmission and support widespread international calling.

“The entire team is happy with Nextiva. We receive great service and the call quality has improved significantly, plus we can call Canada cheaply! Our potential customers are searching online, and then they call in. If we miss a call, we miss a chance to earn someone’s business. With Nextiva, we’re all much more confident in the reliability of our phone service.”

~Cory Wormell, Insurance Agent

Learn more about Nextiva’s insurance contact center solutions today. 👇