Insure 247 disrupts insurance industry and provides personalised service at scale

Insure 247 is one of Australia’s fastest growing insurance brokers and arguably the most disruptive. Its target customer base of micro businesses and SMEs is one that many traditional brokers avoid. They believe policy margins are too low and the cost of service too high – a premise challenged by Insure 247. Founder and CEO Steve Sloan said, “I looked at the way the industry was going and said, okay, how can we turn this around and service these customers in a cost-effective way.”

Sloan worked in the banking and insurance industry for years as a digital marketer, and saw an opportunity to build a new type of brokerage based on service and scale. Salesforce has helped make this possible by enabling Insure 247 to provide seamless and personalised service to an increasing number of customers. The company is now entering a new phase of growth by investing in other brokerages and enabling them to take advantage of the capabilities its built using Salesforce.

Like many successful businesses, Insure 247 launched from a garage. It had no customers but Sloan knew it needed Salesforce to scale. He had prior experience working with the platform and saw Salesforce as a catalyst for innovation and growth.

“We wanted to be paperless from the beginning and create a cloud-based experience where customers and employees could find the information they wanted at their fingertips. Salesforce has helped us to create that and differentiate ourselves from brokers with walls and walls of files,” said Sloan.

Salesforce acts as the business’ workflow engine, automating processes along each phase of the customer journey. This often starts with prospects completing a web-to-lead form and indicating the type of insurance they want to buy. From there, Insure 247 is able to tailor their experience and personalise communication based on their insurance needs and risk.

All quotes, policies, claims and renewals are managed seamlessly via custom objects in Sales Cloud. Customer payments are also made simple through Salesforce integration with the Stripe payment processing platform. All of this allows the business to quickly process a large volume of transactions and capture the data needed for compliance.

“Insurance is such a heavily regulated industry that it would be impossible for us to work as efficiently as we do and manage compliance without Salesforce,” said Sloan.

The data captured also helps the business benchmark and improve performance. One of the key improvements made over the last three years is a 50% reduction in the time it takes to process new policies and renewals. As a result, Insure 247 has been able to double its customer growth without adding headcount.

Insure 247 has used Salesforce to create a customer experience that is just as seamless as its back-end operations. Using Service Cloud, call centre agents and brokers are able to capture a 360-degree view of each customer, and better understand their risks and insurance needs. This helps them to act as an advocate for customers and help them find the right solutions. In addition, agents are able to trigger cases in Service Cloud to ensure efficient follow up on any sales or claims queries. The efficiencies achieved have enabled Insure 247 to reduce resolution time by 86% while servicing more customers.

“Service Cloud has really been a game changer for us in that it empowers our support team to drive a positive outcome for clients,” said Sloan. “Also, we’re able to service about 5x the number of customers that traditional brokers have while providing a personalised experience.”

To serve customers even better, Insure 247 has launched a Customer Community where customers can manage their policies and carry out simple tasks like a change of address. The community could be extended in the future for self-service around claims and renewals.

“We want to be the most technically savvy brokerage out there and use Salesforce to put customers in control of the relationship and better meet their needs,” he said.

Insure 247 has been recognised by its peers as one of Australia’s fastest growing brokers and also been ranked as one of the top ten in the country by Insurance Business. In fact, the only limitation on its success has been the ability to find local talent and expand its team. It’s for this reason that Sloan decided to grow by partnering with other brokerages and allowing them to leverage the model Insure 247 has built on Salesforce.

Insure 247 uses Partner Communities to collaborate with these brokerages. It has established one community where brokerages can use Chatter to share knowledge and referrals and collaborate on specific deals. There’s another community where brokerages can tap into a shared support team. The team is made up of contract workers who log onto the community and take on tasks whenever they’re free to work. So rather than sitting in an office from nine to five each day, they are more frequently online in the evenings when customers are purchasing policies.

“The team essentially work when they want to work which may sound unusual, but it has actually improved productivity and allowed us to reduce the time it takes to send out policy documents from 48 hours to an average of three hours,” said Sloan.

As the business grows, Sloan himself spends less time in the office and more time travelling. Dashboards in Salesforce help him monitor and manage the business, 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world in real time. Similarly, each team has a custom dashboard to help prioritise workflow and keep them on track.

Sloan said that in addition to relying on dashboards, he uses Quip to stay connected to the business and collaborate with different teams. “Quip is a real game changer when it comes to collaboration and helps us work even faster. It’s especially great when I’m travelling. I can access it from anywhere and keep on top of different projects.”

Insure 247 is now increasing its use of big data to get out in front of industry trends and offer more innovative and competitive service. The company is also getting smarter about engagement and plans to use Marketing Cloud to personalise customer journeys and also automate lead nurturing. This will help it to stay top of mind with leads and customers whenever they need a new insurance policy or it is time to renew an old one.

The company is continuing to use Salesforce and apps like Natterbox from the AppExchange to scale, and also plans to use Trailhead as they look to bring on their own Salesforce admins. Up until now, Sloan has managed most of the Salesforce development and admin on his own, customising it and layering on new capabilities as the business has evolved.

“When you’re growing as quickly as we are, you need strong but flexible systems in place to support you. Salesforce for us has been an ideal partner in that aspect and many others,” said Sloan.