How the insurance industry can use SMS

Insurance messaging solutions

There’s a good chance you have some sort of insurance policy. From insuring your car, health, or funeral cover, paying for insurance is almost a necessity in life. While it may be one of the largest industries in the world, it is also one that causes a lot of pain for clients. Specifically, the insurance industry would benefit from utilizing SMS. Here are a few reasons why.

Insurance industry statistics

In 2015, the US insurance industry’s net premiums were $1.2 trillion. The premiums in health care accounted for 55 percent of this, but property/casual insurers only 45 percent. Those numbers are massive and show how much the industry is worth. But if the insurance industry is not effectively catering to its clientele, it will lose money.

Mobile phone penetration and open-rate

Every single mobile phone, whether it be a feature or smartphone, can send and receive SMS messages. It’s a standard of the technology and one that offers far greater reach that using a mobile app. Add the fact that SMS messages have an open-rate of 98% and are read within minutes, and you have the perfect marketing platform. If the insurance industry wants to market its goods and services, then utilizing SMS technology should be in their marketing plan.

Data gathering

The insurance industry thrives on analytics and data. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible to obtain. When updating customer profiles, agents need to go through a laborious task of asking questions, which can waste a customer’s time. By initiating an SMS questioning system, powered by an AI chatbot, the insurance provider will be able to collect a range of information in no time.

This allows for clients and potential customers to send through their information when it is convenient. The process would open the way for claims to be made via SMS, in order to reduce the time needed to process them. By restricting major contact to SMS systems, customers are able to contact the agency and sort out claims in their own time. They no longer need to receive phone calls in the middle of the day while they’re at work.

Keeping up to date with claims

One of the largest frustrations with handling a claim is customers waiting on the progress. It doesn’t matter if their car was broken into or their house burnt down, each customer thinks their claim is the most important, and rightly so. But a lack of communication from the insurance industry can instill distrust in the organization.

The insurance industry should adopt a two-way SMS notification system for all claims. The system would allow clients to make a claim and then have them updated every single step of the way. This would include if the claim has been accepted or rejected, what the next steps are, and if the customer needs to do anything else from their side.

As an additional step, incorporating an AI chatbot and analytics system will allow the insurance company to scrape all of the data from the claim. This includes how long it takes to process, where there may be problems, and how the customer responds to the service.

It’s not just the insurance industry that can benefit from SMS integration. In our latest article, we look at how SMS solutions benefit the automotive industry, from the ease of use to marketing strategies.