How to talk about insurance so that customers listen – and understand what you’re selling

Let’s be honest: shopping for insurance doesn’t top anybody’s bucket list. It’s not fun. It can feel overwhelming. The consequences of a poor insurance buying experience are terrible for everyone: when a person doesn’t know what they bought, never mind why, they are not a satisfied customer – and unlikely to be a repeat customer. 

To help brokers and insurers deliver a second-to-none customer experience, the behavioural scientists at Intact Lab spend a lot of time studying how we can talk about insurance in a way that helps customers value – and be valued by – the insurance buying process. 

Here are five tips from Intact Lab research to help brokers make the offer, close the sale and make the customer feel confident about the whole process. 

(1) Make it about them 

At Intact, we stress that insurance is not about things. It’s about people.  

A human insurance experience puts people at its centre. Not products. Not policies. Not premiums. 

People. 

Of course, we need to talk about all of these other p’s, too! But we must start with the person for whom that product and policy exist. 

Good brokers know this intuitively – everyone who works in insurance needs to learn this from day one on the job. 

(2) Make it simple 

Insurance, like every industry, has its secret language. Insured, peril, endorsement, limitation, exclusion. When we’ve been in insurance for a while, we breathe this specialized jargon effortlessly. It’s a useful shorthand – when we’re talking to others in the industry. 

When talking to customers though, we need to use simple language – the language people use every day. Car or truck, not personal passenger vehicle. Flood, fire, storm instead of peril. Additional coverage rather than endorsement. 

(3) Give customers control 

Behavioural science research tells us that people are more satisfied when they feel they have control over a process. Our Intact Lab scientists also like to talk about “the Ikea effect” – the fact that people place a disproportionately high value on items that they took a part in creating. 

Most Intact policies embody this principle: They’re not cookie-cutter one-size fits-all for one price products. They allow a customer to pick and choose limits and endorsements, to really personalize their coverage. Crafting their policy with their broker empowers a customer and helps them understand and value the product they’re buying. 

(4) Speak to the heart, and to the mind 

I personally think insurance is fascinating, but even I must concede that the policy wordings are, at best, neutral. That’s a problem, because people tend to remember information that evoked a positive or negative emotion. Remembering emotionally neutral information is harder. 

Capture a customer’s attention by speaking to the heart – to the things that matter to them and evoke feelings. Then, follow up by speaking to the mind and presenting facts and unbiased evidence. Most of us make decisions emotionally – but we need to justify them intellectually afterwards. 

Effective brokers are multilingual and speak both the language of the heart and of the mind! 

(5) End on a high note 

The Intact Lab behavioural scientists like to talk about the peak-and-end rule. That is, people tend to remember the most impactful parts of an experience: the highs, the lows and the end. They will best remember the very negative part of an experience that was otherwise positive. And how an experience ends absolutely influences the overall memory. 

So, after delivering an overall positive experience, with some highs – where you spoke to the heart, in simple, everyday language and made the customer feel empowered over the insurance buying process – end on an amazing, truly customer-focused note. Develop and keep on refining your call/meeting ending ritual, at the end of which the customer walks away feeling they were seen, listened to and valued – and are now protected by a product they understand, given to them by a broker they see as a trusted advisor. 

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Resources for Intact brokers 

Exclusive to Intact brokers, these Pathways courses are designed to help you better support customer conversations: 

• Providing Great Customer Service – Raise your game with this dive into the fundamental principles of providing excellent customer service and managing customer expectations. 
• Behavioural Science & Sales – Leverage the latest research on human behaviour, decision-making and motivation to create more effective sales strategies! Choose from personal lines and commercial lines versions for an even more tailored customer experience. 
• Smart Teams – Learn strategies for building smart teams, creating a culture of trust, transparency and communication, as well as techniques for resolving conflicts and maximizing individual strengths as you work together to support customers. 
• Overcoming Objections – Discover winning techniques for handling objections, developing emotional intelligence in sales and providing customer-focused solutions.