How Are Insurance Agencies Streamlining Operations?

How much time is spent on marketing and repetitive tasks?

Efficiency and productivity are at the center of streamlining operations. If you have an imbalance in the time your team is spending, such as repetitive tasks that aren’t directly revenue-generating, then you aren’t spending that time on what makes the most impact: advising your clients.

In this survey, we found that 54% of agencies spend more than half of their time each week on manual, repetitive tasks. In addition, 4 out of 10 spend 60-70% of the week on these types of tasks.

If we’re to go with the majority here, that means over half of agencies are missing out on upwards of 50% of opportunities to be selling more or growing retention through relationship building.

And over the course of the year, that adds up, especially if all or most of your team are essentially at half capacity because of the extra work you have to do. While it can’t solve everything, incorporating AI and automation into the mix has been shown to help agencies break out of this box and take those time savings and reinvest them into the work that makes the biggest difference for pushing the bottom line.

On top of that, 63% of agencies surveyed say they spend less than 3 hours per week on marketing. That’s an entirely separate growth opportunity most agencies are leaving on the table.

And while not every agent is going to be a marketer, there are tools and technologies out there, such as our insurance marketing platform, that can not only reduce the time spent per week but also help you do marketing without adding extra work to your team’s plate.

Are insurance agencies responding fast enough?

Responses matter, but timeliness matters even more.

The good news is that most agencies surveyed (50%) respond to digital client service and quote requests within an hour or less. This is key, and something your agency should strive for with every form submission or live chat on your website.

However, 22% say that it takes 3 hours or more, and 6.5% say that it takes over 12 hours to get back to someone.

Now, this, of course, depends on many factors, including team capacity and the number of requests you receive throughout the day. However, the best rule of thumb is to get back to someone within an hour, and, if possible, within minutes of receiving the request and reviewing the details.

For the prospecting side, this is especially important because it’s more than likely they’re shopping around with your competitors too.

The difference-maker can be how quickly you respond, which can set the right expectations and create a first impression that leads a new client to sign up with you rather than choose someone else.

For service requests or questions, handling them will go a long way toward building trust and keeping clients around longer. In fact, we’ve seen agencies that send out a review survey after they help them with a request, and what better time to see what clients think about your agency than after you just helped them?
Here’s what the most responsive agencies are doing to stay on top of every request:

• Use form submission notifications to trigger a process that sends your team a response right away.
• Set up automations to send a first-touch email thanking them for their request and setting proper expectations.
• Add new business requests to a lead management pipeline that streamlines the sales process.
• Set up after-hours responses for voicemail, email, and text messages that automatically send a message outlining expectations for response times when your office is closed.

With these in place, you won’t miss a lead or leave a client waiting. And, if you want even more advice on how to maximize lead management, be sure to get out guide on Lead Management Best Practices for Insurance Agencies.

How are insurance agencies using automation?

Insurance agencies are spending time on repetitive tasks, but 59% of the agencies we surveyed are currently automating their email marketing, meaning most are able to at least reduce the time spent on those initial emails that send out as part of a targeted campaign.

However, even by automating emails, agencies might be missing out on additional outreach opportunities through text messaging (only 6.5% of agencies are using automation for texting), or even having an automated approach to lead management from the quote requests they are getting (which only 15% of agencies are doing now).

For these agencies that are using automation, they’ve attributed these results:

• 20% saw faster client response times.
• 13% saw higher retention rates.
• 13% saw increased employee satisfaction.

What we see then is that having automation in place is a win-win-win for the agency, their team, and their clients, as it reduces the work involved for the team and leads to a higher growth and retention rate simply because there is more outreach at the right time.

One example of this in action: agencies using renewal-based triggers and client anniversary campaigns to send messages at exactly the right moment in the client journey. Automation is helping the client because they are being reminded of their renewal, the employee doesn’t need to send that email manually, and the agency sees the benefits of increased retention for business growth.

On the flipside, 1 in 3 agencies are not using automation at all. That’s a big gap that sheds light on why so many of them are also spending more time on those repetitive tasks.

If you’re in that camp of not using automation, or maybe you are only using it in one area of your business, you’ll want to consider taking a multi-channel approach to automate not only email, but also text messaging, social media, and even review surveys so your agency can do more with marketing without adding extra work, which is exactly what a platform like Fuse marketing automation is built to do.

And if you are new to running a marketing campaign, here’s everything you need to know in our Marketing Campaign Must-Haves for Insurance Agencies guide.

How are insurance agencies adopting AI to streamline operations?

61% of agencies who completed this survey said they don’t use AI at all to help them streamline their operations. But to the 39% that do, the benefits they’re seeing are encouraging:

• 17% of agencies using AI say time savings is the biggest benefit.
• 13% say that AI has made their employees more efficient and productive.

This goes to show that AI is directly helping agencies build efficiency and allowing them to reinvest time saved into revenue-generating activities instead.

For those already using AI, there’s still room to go deeper. One area that you could find even more efficiency is through audience segmentation. Whether that’s using AI to help you create an audience from a spreadsheet, or using something like our AI Sidekick tool to set up an audience based on your AMS data in seconds, either way you are removing the manual lift and creating more targeted audiences to leverage automation to its fullest potential.

And if you don’t use AI yet for your agency, here are a few ways you can get started to make the most impact with the lowest amount of effort:

• Use AI to help you draft emails, whether it’s a one-off reply or a bulk email as part of a marketing campaign.
• Generate content ideas for your website, blog, and social media to stay relevant with marketing.
• Ask AI to summarize client notes after a meeting so you can add them to your AMS for added context.

The barrier to getting started is lower than you think, which brings us to what’s actually holding agencies back.

How comfortable are insurance agencies with using AI?

67% of agencies surveyed say they are either neutral or comfortable with using AI. However, the biggest barriers are related to the actual implementation of it within their agency, not necessarily an aversion to using the technology. The most common barriers for agencies include:

• 30% say that lack of technical expertise at the agency has kept them from adopting AI.
• 26% indicated that lack of time for implementation is the main reason they don’t use AI.

This means that most agencies who haven’t adopted AI is due to a solveable challenge, and not necessarily something that they are opposed to or resistant to change, as I had worried might be a cause for concern.

And because these challenges are solvable, if you fall into one of these two categories, I’ll give you some advice on how to start adopting AI.

If you find that your agency lacks the technical expertise to learn and use AI, I’ll simply say that anyone can use this tool to great effect, regardless of how much you know about how AI or technology works.

The good news is that AI is designed to be user-friendly, and you don’t need a technical background to get value from it. The key is finding the right tool. General-purpose AI tools require more context and back-and-forth to get useful results. Something like our AI Sidekick already has full insurance industry context built in, so you can simply say ‘Write me an email reminding my auto insurance clients about their upcoming renewal’ and it handles the rest.

As far as a lack of time, I would simply say that it’s a minimal upfront time investment to research and find an AI tool that works for your goals and needs, and once you go through the process of getting it set up for you and your team, it will likely save your team hours each week.

Again, if you use something simple that has built-in context of the insurance industry, like AI Sidekick, the barrier to entry is greatly reduced. On top of that, you’ll reap the benefits of streamlining your operations and cutting back on repetitive work that AI can handle for you.

Whether you feel ready or not, if you’re not using AI, your competitors might be, and that gives them the advantage. It’s better to be on the leading edge so you can gain these benefits as the technology continues to improve and help you do your job better.

If you want a great resource that shows you just how easy it is to start using AI for your agency, you’ll want to check out our AI Adoption Playbook for Insurance Agencies.

These results show how agencies are streamlining their operations.

The agencies that are winning aren’t necessarily the biggest or most tech-savvy. They’re the ones taking small, consistent steps toward automation and AI, and reaping the rewards in time saved, happier clients, and stronger growth.

Whether it’s automating a renewal reminder, responding to a quote request faster, or asking AI to draft an email in seconds, every step forward compounds over time. And the barriers that are holding most agencies back, such as time, technical know-how, and budget, are more solvable than they might seem.

If this survey tells us anything, it’s that there are great benefits to using AI and automation to build efficiency and streamline operations. And it also shows us that there’s plenty of opportunity for agencies to adopt this technology even more to make the biggest impact on time saved, client retention, and team productivity.

That leaves me with one final question for you. How is your insurance agency streamlining operations, and what will you use to maximize efficiency, retention, and productivity?

Want to learn more?

If you’re ready to take the next step, our complete insurance marketing platform offers the tools and features your agency needs to stand out and succeed.

From marketing automation that keeps you connected with clients and boosts retention, to insurance websites designed to drive growth, and a suite of marketing tools to meet your needs, Agency Revolution is everything you need after your AMS.

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