Insurance can be a high risk business and in today's troubled economic times it is vital to maximise the return on investment and make that dollar stretch a little bit further. Mobile messaging with Clickatell offers the insurance industry that opportunity and a whole lot more. Clickatell has compiled a list of the easily obtainable benefits of mobile messaging for the insurance industry.

Mobile messaging solutions improve the quality of customer service

• Interact positively with clients with non-intrusive or non-confrontational SMS text messages.
• Proactively inform them of special events and promotions beforehand to increase campaign effectiveness and thus revenue gain.
• Send SMS 'call to action' messages; promote new insurance products and benefits through mobile messaging.
• Offer a self-service environment saving customers valuable time and reducing your operational costs.
• Two-way text messaging allows customers to interact with the company speedily with regards to claims or complaints.
• A SMS Customer Services department can alleviate frustration from customers tired of waiting in phone queues with their queries. They can send an SMS text message, receive an SMS notification of waiting time and the query can be forwarded to the relevant person.
• Customer-centric service is becoming increasingly important as the insurance market becomes more competitive; sometimes the only differentiation between companies is the level of service that they offer.

Mobile messaging solutions reduce operating expenses

Mobile messaging solutions significantly reduce the costs of outbound customer and employee communication:

• By encouraging a move towards a self-service environment. Repeat enquiries or notices can easily be sent by SMS saving the cost of hundreds, if not thousands of calls. Automated SMS can be used in-house for staffing and shift availability queries or used for customers who need transaction status notifications, alerts as to delivery of documents and 'reminder to pay' SMS messages.
• By reducing the need for one-on-one phone calls; thousands of SMS messages can be sent in minutes more than halving the labour time taken to deal with routine queries and notifications. The average call time of two minutes is decreased to less than 2.5 seconds per text message.
• SMS has proved to be a highly effective method for delivering premium payment reminders as people are more likely to respond to a message delivered in a non-confrontational and non-intrusive manner.
• SMS mobile messaging leads directly to immediate cost savings on telephone calls and labour and increased collections resulting in higher profit margins.

Reducing the strain on call centers

Escalating operational and infrastructural costs are putting strain on call centers already struggling to make a profit and deliver a high level of service to their customers. A recent UK study shows that most people give their mobile phone number as their prime contact number and that because of this almost 70% of call centers outbound calling costs are the result of calls to mobile phones.

The same study shows that half of US adults who only use a mobile phone are 30 or over and one third of 18-29 year olds in the US, the insurance customers of the future, only use a mobile phone. There is both a threat and an opportunity for call centers within this trend towards mobile domination of the communication sphere. The threat is that expenses associated with the calling of mobile phones keep rising putting immense pressure on the economic survival of the call or contact center. The opportunity is that if proportionally more people are using their mobile phones as their primary form of communication, then text messaging (SMS) is a viable and certainly far more cost-effective measure.

Attract new markets

• Mobile messaging opens up a communication channel to entirely new markets whether on a local, regional or global scale. Metropolitan Life's campaign which launched a short-term insurance product purely through SMS messaging was a huge success in South Africa. Youth in particular use text messaging to communicate and this makes SMS mobile messaging an ideal marketing tool to access this market. SMS messaging transcends all age, gender and income disparities making it extremely powerful. Clickatell can offer an extension of that SMS power to over 220 countries through more than 790 networks.
• Once you have integrated Clickatell's award-winning mobile messaging products with your existing site, application or interfaces, you can immediately begin harnessing some of the benefits of the mobile insurance market.

Mobile messaging solutions reduce the opportunities and incidences of fraud

• SMS alerts and real-time transaction text message alerts can address fraud and identity theft concerns. Santam, a South African insurance company, with the help of Clickatell's mobile message-enabling products has dramatically decreased the opportunities for fraud within the insurance field.
• Mobile messaging is proven, dependable and highly secure. Clickatell enables further security measures such as SSL encryption on the SMS services that they offer to ensure the integrity of private information.
• By using SMS messages as 'point-of-sale' receipts when new policies become active, payouts are made, claim decisions are made, customers are assured of knowing what is happening with their insurance portfolio's at all times.