Insurers Return to Text Messages for Customer Interaction.
They're not as flashy as apps, but text messages gets the job done quickly and easily for insurance companies.
Smartphone apps are hot in insurance and elsewhere. But simple text messaging is still one of the most popular uses of mobile phones.
Why do companies use texting for insurance needs?
With texting you can...
Send and receive pictures
Send links to web pages/documents
Receive texts through e-mail
Mass text a number of customers
Young adults are sending an average of 109.5 text messages per day, Time reported in 2011. Companies who take advantage of this are the ones who will corner off this market.
Introducing a form of communication that is familiar to young adults will attract them to use your service over another. Being able to send a picture message of an accident right to the insurance agent's e-mail is a useful tool in an increasingly technological age.
Some insurance companies are trying to insert themselves into that flow and take advantage of consumers' proclivity for texting. Customers of Direct Insurance "overindex" into mobile, says company chief actuary Brian Hanrahan.
The company recently introduced a way for customers to pay their insurance premiums by text, as part of an overall push to be more "omnichannel" in its customer interaction strategy. (Direct's new kiosks make it possible to buy insurance or pay a bill).