In 2014 MGA’s and their parent insurance and financial companies face 5 customer engagement challenges to create a competitive advantage in a highly competitive market.
Challenge #1 - Simplicity
Customer engagement is directly related to how simple things are to understand. Currently customers believe the current MGA product portfolios to be confusing and tough to navigate. For an MGA to be effective at it’s sales efforts they need to focus on educating their consumers on what choices exists, what options they have and why the MGA is the clear winner.
For an MGA to succeed and create the level of engagement required to hit their goals they must provide customers with easy to access, easy to understand and easy to consume information and literature that explains the clear benefits and unique value proposition of your products and services.
Challenge #2 – Multi-Channel Engagement
Customers are searching for information across a huge variety of channels, but most MGA’a are focused on just one or two.
To create a clear competitive advantage and engage your customers where they are looking for information, MGA’s must embrace a much broader set of channels for their communication and customer engagement. Channels such as social media have become an integral part of how customers search for information and must be a consistent part of the MGA portfolio.
Moving into a multi-channel universe ensures your MGA is delivering the right message to the right person, through the right channel at the right time. As organizations look to attract the next generation of customers, these “alternate” points of contact become crucial to success.
Challenge #3 – Monitoring Customer Engagement
Knowing who your MGA network is talking to and what are they showing them is crucial for success, and not many firms are doing it well.
Engaging your MGA to ensure they have the right information to provide their customers is a critical step in customer engagement. So many firms rely on their MGA to showcase their products but it's amazing that so many insurance providers don't take an interest in what's being shown or conveyed. This leaves the door open for the MGA to potentially miss opportunities for engagement because they are not armed with the best information. The firms who take an active role in managing the content and message for their MGA have gained valuable leading indicators of success, better engagement rates and higher sale-through metrics. This allows the parent firms to adapt message to customer and customize offerings to create more value.
Challenge #4 – Customer Education
Your customers don't understand insurance!
If you want them to engage with and work with you and your MGA, you need to be sure you are being as helpful and informative as possible. By engaging your customers when they want to be engaged and educating them on products they are interested in, your going to give your products a competitive advantage over others.
Challenge #5 – Keeping Up with Technology
Rapid advances in technology can make for quick obsolescence.
Using technology to your advantage can pay off big time, but you have to use it in the right way. Just having an iPad or smartphone is no longer enough. For an MGA technology can provide engagement, insight and intelligence about customer needs and wants, while improving their face-2-face interactions and multi-channel engagement abilities.
MGA’s who embrace and adopt Adaptive Sales Enablement technology will also ensure they are compliant with rapidly changing compliance and regulatory requirements.
Finally, Adaptive Sales Enablement technology helps MGA deliver engaging content, specifically tailored to their customers, helping drive increased sales.
The MGA landscape continues to develop and become more competitive. With more and more product being put into the market, MGA’s must ensure they are engaging with customers, helping them understand the value of their products and embracing technology to drive adoption and compliance. Those who lead will win.
Is your MGA engaging with customers like they could be?
Google+ Toby Petit
