Running From Good Customer Service!

Well gosh, it makes no sense to run from good customer service if you’re the customer. Especially a life insurance customer, and I say that for reasons I’ll explain in this post. You want it. It makes you feel respected. You deserve it!! But here’s the deal. Customer service comes from the other life insurance agent or company in the transaction and no matter what they may say when you’re paying them, there’s no guarantee they’ll treat you right going forward. “I’ll be there for you”. “No matter what comes up, just call me”.

What’s the truth? The truth is that sales, more than any other profession, is prone to high turnover. The truth is the commission pay jobs (sales) lose more people in the first year than any other profession. The truth is that only 5% of insurance agents make it to the 2nd year in the business. There’s a ton of reasons for this, but I’ll just touch on a few.

1. There is almost no formal education for life insurance sales. You may be given some sales material and it may be suggested that you try it on friends and relatives first, but no mentor or classroom education.
2. When you have education or a mentor, as sad as it is, because you don’t know what you’re getting in to you don’t know if you are being guided in the honest direction. This happened to me a long time ago. I worked for a company that had a one week education around one product, disability income. Why just DI when they had the full array of insurance products available? It had the highest profit margin. Then I was given a mentor that went on one appointment with me and basically showed me how to talk someone into buying something they didn’t want and honestly may not have been able to afford.

So, all of this is to lead to one of the most anti customer service directions in the industry today. I don’t say this to tout myself, but after talking to a lot of my customers and other agents it seems I may be one of very few agents that follow up with clients annually just because it’s the right thing to do. Is there a chance I’ll be around and  remembered when they make another purchase or convert their term life insurance to permanent life insurance? Sure. Do very many do that? No. One of the major life insurance carriers has made that one good reason for most agents to follow their customers a mute point. When a life insurance client converts their policy, the agent makes commission again, something they haven’t had since the 2nd year of the term policy. This company has now decided they won’t pay commission or offer good products for conversion after the 9th year.

Bottom line. So for most life insurance agents in this hostile customer service environment, other than the right thing to do, don’t. They abandon you because there is no almost no chance they will make more money. Sad, huh? If you have questions or need some customer service, call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.