Your Insurance Agency and Online Reviews in 2020

The Good, The Bad, But Not Ugly

For over a decade now we at Confluency Solutions have been preaching the benefits of Google, Facebook and other reviews for insurance agencies.

Online reviews have been used as a local search ranking factor at least since then; and back then online reviews were powerful influences over the decisions people made about where to buy insurance. Those things haven't changed.

A decade ago a common objection to requesting reviews we heard from insurance agents was, 'We are afraid we might get a bad review'. I don't hear this as often now but I sense there is still a hangover.

The thing is, all insurance agents, and every business for that matter, will get something other than a five star review. Not only is that not bad, it's actually good.

I would be surprised if your immediate reaction is anything other than, no way!'

I'm going to let that marinate for just a moment and ponder why, after all this time, so many agents have so few online reviews (and how to change that for your insurance agency).

Times have changed and a growing number of insurance agencies have recognized this. Most of us know that reviews are inevitable, people will post them and people will read them. We do it ourselves when shopping for a new phone, choosing a hotel when traveling, or picking a restaurant for dinner.

Ten years ago it wasn't uncommon to find one, or even all insurance agencies showing up in local search results without even a single review. Today, it is rare to find an agency displayed in the local pack of search results without ten or so reviews, some agencies have dozens or hundreds.

The Google Search Local Pack in 2010:

Local pack in 2010, courtesy of Google

The Google Search Local Pack in 2020:

And now the lowdown on the marinating 'negative reviews are good'...

Difficult and unreasonable people are a fact of life and we all have a few clients who fit into that category. Insurance isn't well understood and is often misunderstood, even by reasonable clients. There are lots of reasons any insurance agent might encounter consumer dissatisfaction.

The important thing to remember is that unhappy people are more likely to write a review than satisfied clients.

One way to combat a negative review is to make sure it isn't seen. You can't remove negative reviews from Google, Facebook or any other platform, but you can push them down the chronological list by getting a flow of positive reviews. 59% of consumers make a purchase decision after viewing ten or fewer reviews. But...

85% of shoppers seek out negative reviews

A 2017 survey by Power Reviews showed that 'peak purchase probability' comes when a business has star ratings between 4.2 and 4.5 stars. Consumers perceive 5 star ratings across the board as 'too good to be true'.

For more stats on negative and other reviews see the 2017 Power Reviews survey.

So negative reviews, in and of themselves, aren't bad, and in fact can be good. Two things will prevent a negative review from becoming a good thing:

1. Not responding to the review
2. Getting a review that is indicative of a business shortcoming that isn't addressed.

Recognizing that you have to sometimes have to deal with unhappy people, that those unhappy people sometimes post negative reviews, and you should respond to those reviews, can only lead to one conclusion.

We all know the customer isn't always right but what is true is that every customer has a much more powerful megaphone than ever before.

Your staff needs to be trained need to be diplomatic and careful in challenging service situations.

Some people will seek out the negative reviews of your insurance agency. What are they looking for? Think about your own experience when perusing reviews for your own purchase purposes. What questions do you want answered?

• Do I think the situation described by the reviewer will happen to me?
• Was the situation likely an aberration or a systemic flaw in the insurance agency's service?
• If it is a flaw, does the owner recognize the flaw and is she willing to address it?
• If it isn't a flaw or an aberration, and it might happen to me, would I want the agency and owner to respond to me the way they responded to the reviewer?

Your staff needs to be able to walk away from negative situations in such a way that you have the ability to respond to a negative review with good answers to the above questions.

Let's take sticker shock for example.

Large premium bumps can happen for many reasons, and sometimes the rate factors can be controlled (or not) by the insured (driving record, claim history). Here's a response that doesn't personalize the situation (you shouldn't), doesn't blame the reviewer (you shouldn't) but answers the above questions in a way that should earn your agency some street cred.

"We're sorry we couldn't find you better rates at this time but we thank you for the opportunity to help you with your insurance. We represent several top-rated insurance companies, and our companies, like all insurance companies, change rates from time to time. Also the personal factors that contribute to the premiums you pay for insurance change over time as well. We hope we have the opportunity to help you find quality insurance, service and lower premiums in the future."

Reviews are inevitable and to the victors go the spoils online visibility and new clients.

Ultimate victory is of course measured in the flow of new clients, policies, premium and commissions. But the victors in that competition can usually be identified in advance of those results, they are the insurance agencies who have a flow of positive reviews each month.

How do you get that flow of reviews for your agency?

There are four keys:

• Make asking for reviews an integral part of everyone's job.
• Ask for reviews in the moment, right after a good thing happens.
  • Ask the client for a review right after you have saved them money, added a valuable coverage, or helped with a claim.
• Make it as easy as possible for the reviewer to follow through and give you that review.
  • Remove friction by sending a text. People see and respond to texts more immediately than is the case with email and usually a separate log in to Google or Facebook happens automatically on a mobile device.
  • Set up a service like Text Request, Zipwhip, or Podium and use a template to make sending review requests quick and easy.
• If you can easily identify clients who are advocates for your agency (see NPS below) ask for reviews annually as part of an automated email campaign.
  • If you are using a service, like Rocket Referrals, that ranks your clients on a net promoter score (NPS) scale, schedule review request emails to go out to clients with a NPS score of 9 or 10 once a year.

A couple of other points about reviews are worth bearing in mind.

• Respond to all reviews, as previously noted, even negative ones.
• Encourage clients to mention mention a specific service or product, such as claims experience, insurance review or business insurance, etc. Keywords in reviews matter.
• Flow is more important than sheer quantity. In most locales, there is at least one insurance agency in the top three of search results with 5 or fewer reviews. As long as you have a process in place that nets you one or a few reviews each month your agency's competitive profile will improve.
• The most important review platform is Google, so make sure you build a stream of reviews there first but reviews on a diversity of platforms counts as well. Once you have Google figured out send customers to other platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and Citysearch. Google sees them all.