If there is one thing that the insurance industry gets more than any other business model it’s the importance of customer retention. However, understanding the importance of customer satisfaction and actually measuring customer satisfaction and developing adequate customer retention strategies are two entirely different things. In your quest to create a world class sales culture in your agency, are you harnessing the power of cross-selling and following up to not only communicate with prospective and newly installed customers, but also with your existing customers? You know: those guys you’ve had in your book of business for-ever.

When it comes to customer retention, did you know that:

• A 5% increase in customer retention increases profits up to 125%
• It is 6-7x more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one
• Loyal customers, on average, may be worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase
• Repeat customers will likely spend 67% more and are more profitable to companies overall
• Companies make the customer service experience a priority can generate as much as 60% more profits compared to their competitors
• Statistics show that it will take 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience
• $289 is the average yearly  value of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned by a company

With that said, are you making customer service, loyalty and retention a priority? Are you utilizing social media, technology and customer service best practices?

• News of bad customer service will always reach more than twice as many ears as will good news
• 82% of customers say they have stopped doing business with a company due to bad customer service
• 78% of customers say that customer service representatives – your insurance agents – are the ones who are responsible for a pleasant experience

In business, we often find that companies reward sales. While we can’t argue that thought process, we wish that there was more value placed on the idea of retention, too. Let’s face it: if you want to stay in business, you need to keep your customers happy and loyal. If you want to keep on selling insurance, you need to keep rounding out and renewing those policies.

So get out there and astonish those existing customers and keep on retaining your customers – it will keep everyone happy! Want to know how? Check back in with us next week.