If you’re using Salesforce, it doesn’t make much sense for payments to be back-office transactions. It’s definitely understandable to stick with what you know — we are creatures of habit, after all. But let’s turn the question around: if you can manage payments in Salesforce, where you’ve also stored all other customer information, why wouldn’t you?
If your insurance company still manages payments outside your CRM apps, read on and be inspired by a native CRM payment management solution!
Payments: part of the Customer 360 experience
Customer interactions may happen in silos, but they should be considered as a coherent whole.
Most customer service departments are familiar with the Customer 360 experience. Basically, this means each customer interaction requires you to take action — whether it’s a phone call, an email, or a website visit.
But what about payments? Although these are not often mentioned in this context, we believe each payment is, in fact, a customer interaction, too. This is especially true for insurance companies — recurring premium payments are full-fledged customer interactions and should be treated as such.
Why are payments crucial to complete your Customer 360 experience?
You need a 360-degree view of the customer experience to optimize your processes and realize growth. The question is why payments are a crucial part of that overarching picture, especially for insurance companies. So, let’s discuss four crucial reasons!
1.Improved efficiency
Suppose a customer calls because they want to buy an additional product. The customer service agent helps them fast, so the customer decides to ask another question: “Now that I’m on the phone with you, can you check why my premium has not yet been debited?”
If you handle payments in Salesforce, the customer service agent can look up the answer fast, so the customer won’t have to call you back. This enhances efficiency and customer satisfaction.
2.Targeted sales and marketing campaigns
Do you know which customers do and don’t pay on time each month? And are you aware of the reasons why certain payments failed? Your finance team has this information. But it’s incredibly useful for your Sales, Marketing, and Service Departments to access this data, too, as it helps them analyze the financial loyalty of your customer base and take targeted action.
For example, they may decide to set up upsell campaigns for customers who have shown good payment behavior in the past 24 months (rather than those whose payments failed 20 percent of the time). And they can double down on retention if customers from this group want to cancel their insurance policies. In terms of marketing and sales campaigns, the possibilities are endless.
3.Accurate follow-ups and risk reduction
There’s another reason why analyzing your customers’ financial loyalty is useful: you can filter defaulters and follow up accurately.
In the (near) future, it might also be possible to use this information for predictive purposes: you could perform risk analyses using AI. If, for example, you can conduct churn prediction, you’ll be able to implement campaigns for those who are likely to cancel their insurance policies (for retention purposes, you might want to offer them a contract renewal discount for the next 12 months).
4.Monitoring of operations (and your reputation!)
When customers don’t pay their premiums, they’re uninsured. So if, for example, a customer’s direct debit fails right before they go on a vacation, your insurance company won’t cover any unexpected expenses incurred during their trip (not even if they’re in a car accident).
It’s crucial to avoid situations like these at all cost. They may result in tragedies on the customer’s side, and they won’t do your reputation any good. Moreover, you want the customer to feel secure and get what they’re insured for. By handling payments in Salesforce, you can keep close track of them and better monitor operations. So, you can quickly follow up on late or failed payments.
Salesforce and the Customer 360 experience: a work in progress
Salesforce is a great CRM system for insurance companies. You can register policies and claims, calculate monthly premiums, and check the amounts customers pay each month. As a platform supplier, Salesforce embraces the Customer 360 experience. It constantly expands its processes, adopting a more holistic view: the CRM system supports an increasing number of customer interactions. For example, the possibility of calculating a customer’s total insurance premium is fairly new. If your insurance company wants to leverage all Salesforce’s capabilities, you can take your entire customer experience to your powerful CRM (rather than ‘solely’ using it for customer service and marketing purposes). How? Through FinDock!
Create a full-fledged customer experience now
FinDock is a payment management solution that is native to Salesforce, which means you can leverage all Salesforce functionalities. For example, if a payment fails, you’ll see it in your trusted CRM — the source of all customer data. That means you can take timely action and reap the above-mentioned benefits. With FinDock, you can implement a Customer 360 experience. You can see all your customer interactions in Salesforce, including those all-important payments! Want to learn more about handling payments in Salesforce as an insurance company? In our next blog post, we’ll discuss four best practice use cases.
Curious to see how FinDock works? Contact us or schedule a discovery call.
