The insurance industry is fundamentally about relationships, which means your success as an agent or broker is largely dependent on forming constructive relationships with customers and earning their trust. A Harvard Business Review research reveals that trusted organizations earn a higher total market value than their competition and that customers are 88% more likely to give repeat business to a brand they trust.
But how do potential customers know that you’re a trustworthy insurer, someone they can rely on to safeguard their most valuable assets like their homes and lives? One crucial way is through customer reviews.
The Power of Customer Reviews in the Insurance Industry
When people search locally for an agent or broker, they read reviews. They want authentic, honest, detailed feedback from verified customers that helps them understand your credibility and what they can expect if they work with you. Your customers’ words — along with how you react to them — carry more weight and do more to shape your online reputation than anything you can say about yourself.
Moreover, reviews play a critical role in local search rankings. Google’s algorithm prioritizes businesses with higher review counts and better ratings, meaning that the more reviews you have, the more likely it is that your agency or brokerage will appear at the top of search results. This alone makes reviews a cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy.
However, gathering reviews doesn’t just happen organically. You have to ask for them.
Maximizing Review Volume: The Data You Need to Know
To understand just how critical reviews are, especially the act of requesting reviews, we recently analyzed over 23,000 GatherUp customers in our Maximizing Your Online Reputation study. Based on data from 2023, we looked at how businesses and locations in six different industries — including insurance — manage their online reputation. Here’s a closer look at the data that impacts the insurance industry and how you can use it to achieve results.
Increase review volume for credibility and priority in your prospect’s options
Key insight: To increase review volume and realize the benefits that come with having a large number of reviews, send review requests to your customers and make it a central part of your online reputation management strategy.
When you have significant review volume, two things happen: 1) Potential customers get the valuable information they need to make a decision about you, which means your conversions go up, and 2) Assuming you have more positive reviews than negative, your Google rating increases, since your rating is based on an average of all your reviews. As Mike Blumenthal mentioned in “How Searchers Behave on Google” during the Back to School for Digital Agencies event last September, clients turn to reviews as a means of disqualifying options.
So, how do you build up your review volume?
It’s easy to assume customers will just give you a review on their own. If they had a great experience, they loved the service, and they trust you, of course they’ll be moved to share it on Google or other review sites — right?
While this may be true for some customers, there are still many others who won’t think about it at all. People are busy and have a lot on their plate. They may not even know that leaving a review is an option, let alone how to do it, or if it’s worth their time.
But when you ask customers directly for a review, it can have an enormous payoff in terms of review volume.
According to our data, when insurance agents request reviews:
- They see a 6X increase in reviews.
- They have an average of 60 total reviews per location (vs. an average of 10 reviews per location when they don’t request reviews).
- They have an average of 49 first-party reviews and 11 third-party reviews per location (vs. an average of 1 first-party review and 8 third-party reviews when they don’t request reviews).
One reason insurance agents get such good results when they request reviews goes back to what we said about relationships. A review request is another customer touchpoint. It’s a way to engage the customer further by asking for their honest feedback and proving to them that their opinions are valued and respected.
(And by the way, yes, you do want honest feedback. Positive reviews are great for your reputation and your bottom line, but negative reviews are just as valuable in that they point out exactly where you might be faltering and what you need to change so you can attract and retain more business. In addition, how you publicly respond to these can make or break the client’s perception of your business and their desire to engage with your organization.)
From the customer’s perspective, they feel gratified when you specifically ask for their feedback. They like knowing that you’re listening and that they have a real stake in the customer/agent relationship. It strengthens the emotional connection they have with you and deepens their loyalty.
By regularly asking for reviews, you will generate more over time — and nurture your customer relationships to boot.
This difference is largely due to the nature of SMS. Text messages have much higher open rates than emails, and people are more likely to engage with texts immediately. Furthermore, in today’s fast-paced world, clients appreciate the convenience of receiving a quick text rather than having to sift through their email inbox. By embracing both methods, you significantly increase the likelihood that customers will follow through on your request.
Pro tip: When you request a review, ensure the process of leaving it is as easy and painless as possible. It shouldn’t be more than one or two steps. If it’s more involved than that, your customers may get annoyed and fail to follow through.
Combine methods of requesting reviews
Requesting reviews can yield great results, but the method you use to ask is also crucial. According to our study, combining email and SMS review requests produces dramatically better results than relying on email alone.
- Insurance agents who request reviews via email alone get an average of 53 reviews per location.
- But when they combine SMS and email, the average review count jumps to 635 reviews per location — that’s more than 10 times the number of reviews compared to email-only requests!
This difference is largely due to the nature of SMS. Text messages have much higher open rates than emails, and people are more likely to engage with texts immediately. Furthermore, in today’s fast-paced world, clients appreciate the convenience of receiving a quick text rather than having to sift through their email inbox. By embracing both methods, you significantly increase the likelihood that customers will follow through on your request.
Pro Tip: Set clear expectations during your interactions with clients. Let them know ahead of time that you’ll be asking for feedback via text or email, and encourage them to share their thoughts.
Focus on Automation and Streamlining the Process
Scaling your review request efforts can seem daunting, but the good news is that the process can be automated with the right tools. Many reputation management platforms, like GatherUp, allow you to automate review requests, track customer feedback, and respond to reviews — all in one place. This streamlines your workflow and makes managing your online reputation much easier.
By adopting such a platform, you can:
- Automate the process of sending review requests after interactions.
- Receive alerts when new reviews are posted, allowing you to respond quickly.
- Monitor customer feedback across various review platforms in real-time.
- Gain insights into the quality of customer interactions and identify areas for improvement.
Pro tip: Set expectations by mentioning during your interactions with them that you will be soliciting them for feedback. Specify how and when they can expect to receive the ask, and make sure to use comprehensive reputation management software that includes SMS features, so you can do everything from one platform and drive review volume faster.
Focus on review requests to get results
Being able to showcase your credibility and the quality of your customer relationships through customer reviews is one of the best ways to gain a competitive advantage in local searches for insurance.
But to get there, you need to focus on a review request strategy.
If you haven’t already done so, adopt a platform that can help you automate and streamline your review-related tasks — including sending requests, monitoring websites and social media for new reviews, and responding to reviews. You can manage customer feedback in a much more efficient way and get insight into the feedback itself, so you can learn from it and make continual improvements that drive customer satisfaction and growth.
To learn how GatherUp’s reputation management platform can support your insurance business, request a consultation with one of our reputation experts today.
