Salesforce is a platform that allows businesses to connect with clients in an intuitive, intelligent, and personalized way. But is it a good fit for insurance companies, agents, and brokers? The short answer is yes, but don’t just take our word for it.

Read on to learn who exactly is using Salesforce for insurance today and why it could be the next best step for your business regarding organization, growth, policyholder or client engagement, and long-term customer satisfaction.

Do insurance companies use Salesforce?

Absolutely. Top insurance companies like State Farm, Farmers Insurance, AAA, John Hancock, and Prudential have all adopted Salesforce. It allows them to serve their customers better and unite their teams to reach their organizational goals effectively.

Salesforce can be customized specifically for insurance agencies. You can easily integrate your marketing, sales, and service channels and incorporate specialized insurance technology to meet the unique needs of your organization and client base.

6 Benefits of Using Salesforce for Insurance

Dynamic Consultants estimates that CRM software returns an average of $30.48 for every dollar spent on sales revenue. Here are some insurance-specific features your company can incorporate using Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM.

1. Recruitment and Onboarding

Salesforce enables insurance companies to drive recruitment and onboarding processes for new agencies or policyholders. Customize the platform to manage your onboarding process and integrate it with your underwriting platforms to pull key performance data. Salesforce analytics can show you where your marketing efforts are most successful and where you need to improve. You can also track commissions and gain crucial insights that help your team better manage their time to propel your business forward.

If you’re an independent insurance agent or insurance broker, you can identify which agencies submit the most applications or bring in the most business. That way, you can invest in the most promising opportunities.

2. Policy Administration

Insurance companies rely on their policy administration system to accomplish essential processes like building quotes and proposals, binding and servicing policies, and executing policy endorsements and renewals. Salesforce can integrate with your current policy administration system (PAS), so you can continue recording and facilitating policies. But it doesn’t stop there.

Salesforce also empowers you to drive higher customer engagement by delivering digital experiences that your clients expect and desire today. You’ll gain 360-degree views of every customer to meet them where they are and give them what they need to move to the next step in their process.

View policy, coverage, and claims information as well as the data you need to contact users on their preferred channels, delivering relevant information in a personalized way. You can effectively manage the entire policy lifecycle (quoting, issuing, endorsing, billing, renewing, and commissions) through Salesforce.

Policy Administration Benefits

• Manage policy transactions
• Manage producer commissions
• Streamline policy billing
• Provide comprehensive quote-to-bind experiences for stakeholders

3. Claims Management

According to the EY Global consumer insurance survey, 87% of policyholders believe the claims experience impacts their decision to remain with an insurer. And two of the top contributors to the customer experience are process transparency and speed of settlement.

Salesforce, including its claims management platform, is 100% cloud-based, enabling fast and transparent claims processing. This robust platform allows insurance businesses to deliver seamless experiences for both policyholders and claims adjusters and gives them direct access to claim information whenever they need it.

Your business can personalize the experience for all platform users and manage the entire claims lifecycle – from first notice of loss to payment and beyond. Here are several features Salesforce provides for insurance claims management:

• 360-degree view of each contact
• Omni-channel communication
• First notice of loss intake
• Automatic claim lifecycle management
• Claim coverage management
• Payment and reserves management

4. Automation and Boosted Productivity

Salesforce offers automation to streamline processes and boost productivity across any organization. Insurance companies can add automation to the quoting process, underwriting, and policy renewals, to name a few. Nearly any business process an insurance company has can be automated in Salesforce.

Transform your complex insurance processes into seamless workflows. Automate your entire claims lifecycle by building a workflow that advances each claim through defined stages based on rules you create. Contacts can submit claims using any channel, and your system will process them automatically for you.

5. Effective Marketing and Lead Intake

Millennials are the largest generation group in the U.S. today and will continue to make up a significant portion of the population for many years to come. According to a study, they also make 73% of B2B purchasing decisions.

As an insurance company, it’s crucial to adapt your marketing strategies to meet the needs of the millennial population. Here are some of their top preferences when it comes to doing business with other companies:

• Employee satisfaction ratings matter as much as products and services.
• Ethics, integrity, trust, and honesty are essential values.
• Strong ethical values and an overarching vision are attractive qualities.
• A strong online presence, including on social media, is an essential factor in the buying process.
• Brand messaging alignment across various channels. 
• A brand personality that builds trust. 
• Sales processes should be as convenient as possible. AI and automation can help expedite tasks and deliver relevant information to users.
• Content that is useful, sincere, intelligent, and trustworthy. 
• Working with companies that are positioned as industry thought leaders.
• Social justice, charity, and sustainable practices garner positive attention.

As we’ve mentioned already, Salesforce gives you a 360-degree view of every customer. You can get to know what your contacts want – where they prefer to interact and how they want to communicate with your business.

Personalizing touchpoints can help you build confidence with buyers. Increase customer satisfaction by exceeding their expectations. Empower your clients using transparency and self-service capabilities for tracking policies and claims. Developing 1-to-1 relationships will help you earn the trust of millennials and other generation groups – and increase their long-term loyalty.

6. Data and Analytics

Salesforce provides a comprehensive analytics dashboard to grant insights on sales performance so users can more effectively execute future sales. You can segment your customer base for critical insights on meaningful upselling and cross-selling opportunities. The platform will also notify you when key metrics are available and empower you to find, share, and collaborate with your team across different platforms (like Slack, for example).

The CRM offers contextual data with AI-powered analytics that are native to Salesforce. With Einstein AI, you’ll glean intelligent insights – such as how likely someone is to renew – that can inform future decisions.

Salesforce also provides industry-specific templates and prebuilt integrations for tracking analytics. You can customize your analytics dashboards to your business goals. By following intelligent recommendations, you can also identify new opportunities that will lead to more remarkable outcomes. Act on the information you gain by sharing dashboards, collaborating with your team, and updating records as needed.

Salesforce for Insurance Agents, Companies, and Brokers

Salesforce is our top CRM recommendation for insurance agencies for so many reasons. It allows businesses of all sizes to manage complex operations and create the custom solution they need to connect with their customers effectively.

Port & Starboard will meet you wherever you are in your Salesforce journey – whether you’ve never touched it before or it feels like your current system is failing you. We can help with implementation, customization, change management, data management, training, integration, and more. Contact us anytime to learn more or get started with this powerful platform.