No matter if it’s home and property, life, automobile, or health insurance. When it comes to mobile payments, your agency should provide your policyholders with the best customer experience possible.
Payments In Insurance
So, you’re an insurance company, and you want to start accepting over the phone payments. No problem! There are a few things to take into consideration before taking the next step.
Payment Methods Are Important To Customers
According to J.D. Power customers care about how they pay their insurance. The top reason that a customer goes to a website is to pay their bill. However, that number continues to drop each year. 26% of customers value how quickly they can make a payment. Navigating a website can be difficult, particularly on a mobile device.
- Across all age groups, 57% of insurance customers own a smartphone.
- Among millennial customers, 95% own a smartphone.
Mobile Payments
PEW Charitable Trusts recently conducted a study regarding mobile payments. Respondents answered various questions to evaluate their awareness of the mobile payment process. In each case, the study asked if recipients they have or heard that a smartphone was capable of:
- Making a purchase – 73%
- Paying bills – 68%
- Sending or receiving money – 54%
- Making a payment by text message – 52%
They also discovered that 81% of the participants surveyed, between the ages of 18-50 had paid their bills using a mobile device. More than half of participants that make regular mobile payments believe them to be faster compared to making a payment online. By using an IVR Payment Solution System like Compass Pay, insurance companies can:
- Allow customer service representatives to answer direct insurance inquiries and not have to worry about being on the phone with a customer to process a payment
- Send Bill reminders: For example, you can call and remind customers that their loan payment is overdue.
- Customer notification: Insurance companies can use an IVR solution to notify customers of a claim status or pay-out.
Take customer service to another level by combining advanced speech-recognition and sophisticated call routing; insurance companies can increase call automation rates and your customer’s overall experience.
Text Message Payments
According to a study by Citi, 61% of people make a late payment because they just forgot about it. If your agency encourages your customers to go paperless, why not go the extra step and send a quick reminder? Policyholders could receive a text notification that a payment is due. In turn, this will reduce the likelihood of a late payment, particularly among younger customers.
Forget Facebook or Snapchat; text messaging is one of the most popular applications on a mobile device. In fact, Americans under the age of 45 send and receive roughly 85 text messages per day.
- Reading a text is up to 10 times faster than a phone call.
- Texts have an open rate of 99%
- Marketing texts have a click-thru rate of 36%
Mobile App Payments
Some insurance companies try to improve their chances by building a mobile app. However, this isn’t a viable solution to receive mobile payments. Customers rarely use an app more than once, and if it takes up space, it will get deleted. J.D. Power cited that most customers will delete their insurance company’s app was because it was too slow.
Valerie Monet, director of the insurance practice at J.D. Power noted that insurance apps are not viable. “Although apps have been slower to gain popularity in the insurance industry among consumers,” Monet stated, “Once they do, customers’ expectations are likely to be high based on their experiences in other industries such as banking.”
Faster Payments With Security In Mind
Compass Pay is an IVR payment solution that is faster, easier to use, and built with security in mind. IVR Technology Group is PCI Level 1 Compliant. Our system encrypts information to process payments securely. Therefore, your customers don’t have to worry about compromising private information when making a regular payment. Payment processing and verification is immediate and ensures policyholders that coverage is maintained. Imagine:
- 24/7 access
- Ability to Integrate into your current phone system or toll-free number
- Customize greeting and prompts
- Multilingual options
Compass Payments Suite
Learn more about our Pay By Phone solution, the Compass Payments Suite.