Many insurance leaders are keenly aware of the importance that data quality has on the success of an insurance agency, however, as hard as they try to keep the data in their operational systems clean, errors are bound to creep in – particularly when it comes to capturing client contact information. The knock-on effect of incorrect data capturing when onboarding a client or updating a policy could cost an agency far more than just a few missed marketing opportunities.
[Related Topic: Slash Manual Inputs and Boost Operational Excellence With Synatic]
The deal is closed, the client has signed all the documents, now it’s up to the agency teams to service and retain that client for as many years as possible, cross-selling new products wherever they can and, hopefully, enticing as many of their friends and family as possible to also become clients.
However, this mission-critical customer management can only happen if an agency can communicate with its clients. Unfortunately, incorrect contact information can have an expensive knock-on effect for both the agency and for the customer.
The problems start when Account Managers (AMs) potentially capture information such as physical and email addresses incorrectly into the Agency Management System (AMS).
This challenge is exacerbated when teams are left to manually fix physical and email address information. This process usually involves reviewing policy details with the naked eye, exporting policy contact details into an Excel spreadsheet and working through thousands of rows and columns. Costing the agency valuable time, resources and effort.
Incorrect contact details in an insurance agency's AMS can lead to a number of problems.
For the policyholder, incorrectly captured contact information can cause unnecessary delays and bottlenecks when agents attempt to communicate with the policyholder. This can slow down processes such as submitting a claim, and make it more difficult for policyholders to get the help they need – especially after a stressful incident.
For the, incorrect contact information in the AMS opens them up to a world of operational pain and potential loss:
You can’t market to customers you can’t contact – Any marketing campaign depends on having the correct contact information. Misspelt email addresses will mean bounced newsletters and other communication, and if the agency database has too many email bounces, communications could be relegated to spam folders. It won’t matter if the agency is using Salesforce or HubSpot, everything depends on correctly captured contact information.
Similarly, costly printed policy documents and brochures have no chance of reaching customers if physical addresses are incorrectly captured.
Policy renewals – a lot of agencies still deliver physical renewal notices to their client’s doorstep or mailboxes. Inaccurate physical address information will result in missed policy renewals which cost the agency vital revenue from renewed policies.
[Related Topic: An Integrated AMS and CRM System Facilitates Easy Insurance Renewals]
The cost of bad data is well known. Back in 1992, George Labovits and Yu Sang Chang developed the 1-10-100 rule which still applies today.
They suggested that it costs a business $1 to verify the quality of a record, $10 to cleanse or deduplicate the record, and a ‘failure cost’ of $100 if teams end up working with an incorrect record.
Legally, an agency and insurer must be able to reach their customer to communicate legal and regulatory requirements. Incorrect contact data could be a major compliance issue for agencies and insurers costing them potential fortunes in E&O lawsuits.
In addition to legal and legislative costs, frustrated clients can also cost insurers and agencies precious revenue as the customer is far more willing to switch service providers than they used to be. Keeping clients happy starts with ensuring that agencies can communicate with their clients effectively and that agents are able to quickly and easily answer questions and provide them with excellent service. This can only happen when data is corrected at the source—in the agency's AMS. The AMS must serve as the single source of truth.
DataFix by Synatic helps to automate many manual data cleansing processes with the help of cleverly designed AI capabilities.
DataFix allows AMs to easily identify contact detail and physical address errors in each policy. It then automatically suggests and makes the appropriate fixes, flagging data points that can't be fixed automatically and that need further review. This process of automatic error identification allows agencies to fix policies by exception and not by quantity, which means AMs only have to review and fix the contact details in 100 policies instead of 10 000 policies.
DataFix saves time and money and means agencies are no longer shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for full data cleanses to bring their AMS policy contact information up to scratch. Critically, DataFix continuously cleanses data, so whether you acquire a book of business and need to cleanse that, or you want to monitor new data entered by your AM team, DataFix is continually watching for errant records and cleansing that data inside your AMS.
Most importantly, agencies can have 100% trust in their AMS information, allowing them to run the business confidently. This includes knowing they can quickly and easily contact clients. To learn more about DataFix and how it can help your agency effortlessly fix your policy contact information, contact Synatic today.
