Digital transformation is all the rage these days, and for good reason: It helps your agency move faster, offer better experiences to clients, and increase its profitability. 

When you successfully enact digital transformation initiatives, your agents are able to sell insurance products around the clock, serve up on-demand quotes to clients at their convenience, and reduce errors and omissions exposure, among countless other benefits. 

At the same time, you’re able to generate large swaths of data, which you can then leverage to continuously improve operations—all while using less paper and doing your part to preserve the environment.

Yet property and casualty insurance companies can’t just invest in digital transformation initiatives and expect great results. In fact, quite the contrary. Believe it or not, a whopping 70 percent of digital transformation efforts fail. 

The last thing you want to do is invest a whole bunch of money in overhauling your outdated processes and workflows only to wind up in a worse position on the other side. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes agencies make with their digital transformation efforts so your P&C insurance agency can avoid doing the same.

The Top P&C Insurance Digital Transformation Mistakes

Here are nine of the most common mistakes P&C insurance agencies make with their digital transformation initiatives.

1. Failing to ask customers what they want

Many agencies decide to invest in digital transformation initiatives without enlisting the help of the people who matter most to their organizations: customers. As a result, they end up implementing new tools, policies, or processes that make the customer experience worse. 

There’s an easy fix here: Once you’ve decided to move forward with your digital transformation, reach out to your clients and ask them what they would like to see in your business. 

For example, maybe they want you to publish more educational content that’s designed to help them get through the insurance-buying process. Or maybe the bulk of your clients are looking for the ability to buy insurance on your website at their leisure.

Rather than guessing what your customers want, reach out and ask them, and deliver on those requests.

2. Expecting customers to rapidly adapt to changes

Oftentimes, agencies don’t spend enough time thinking about the effects their digital transformation efforts have on their customers. For example, an agency might roll out a new website overnight, complete with self-service quoting and enrolling capabilities. 

The agency might be excited about the change, but its customers might be caught by surprise.

The easiest way to avoid this mistake is by communicating with your clients ahead of time, informing them of changes coming down the pike. Then, once you implement new technology, get ready to train your customers and troubleshoot any issues they might encounter.

3. Failing to invest enough in marketing

In the age of social media and SEO, insurance agencies that don’t invest in digital marketing are doing themselves a massive disservice. By publishing search engine-optimized content, spreading it on social media, and using email marketing to keep your customers engaged, you’ll generate a marketing ROI faster.

4. Tracking too much data

In the digital world, it’s easier than ever before to generate data and track it over time. Unfortunately, not all data is the same. And just because a certain metric is improving doesn’t mean the underlying health of your business is improving alongside it.

Many agencies make the mistake of developing too many KPIs and focusing on data that isn’t really valuable. For the best results, pick a handful of metrics you want to optimize—such as conversion rates, revenue, organic search rankings, churn rates, and engagement—and focus the bulk of your efforts accordingly.

5. Focusing on the wrong data

At the same time, many agencies focus on the wrong data—or things that aren’t relevant to their customers.

For example, you might decide that you want to add a certain number of Twitter followers in a month. After doing some research, you figure out how to game the system by attaching content to popular hashtags and following accounts that automatically follow you back. 

That’s great: You now have more Twitter followers. Except none of those followers will ever become customers, and the fact that you’re spending your time focusing on this unhelpful metric means there’s less time to focus on your real customers and leads.

6. Favoring quantity over quality in marketing

In an effort to bolster their digital marketing efforts, many P&C agencies decide to pump out an endless amount of content and populate it persistently across all of their social channels. 

This approach often does more harm than good. For starters, if you don’t have the right marketing attribution tools in place, it can be that much harder to track where your wins are coming from. And if you publish too much content, you run the risk of annoying your audience—which could cause high-value prospects to stop following you.

If you want your digital transformation efforts to succeed, focus on quality over quantity. Start small, see what’s working and what isn’t, and go from there.

7. Failing to communicate effectively with your internal teams

The decision makers at your agency might have a great idea of what your company looks like on the other side of your digital transformation. But if they’re unable to communicate those sentiments effectively internally,  the team might not be able to share the vision.

Prior to kicking a digital transformation initiative off, you need to let your team know what they can expect, why you’re doing this in the first place, and what resources the team can leverage for help as you move through the process. Keep your team in the loop, and it’ll be that much easier to get the results you’re hoping for.

8. Neglecting to give your team adequate training

Agencies are also known to roll out new technology, transition to new systems overnight, and fail to prepare their teams for what comes next. Whenever you’re switching up processes or deploying new tools, it is critical that you take the necessary time to train your team and make sure it’s up to speed with the new setup.

9. Investing in too many different software solutions

Believe it or not, nearly 10 percent of businesses have more than 200 applications. Your agency might not be anywhere near there, but the last thing you want to do is end up in that situation.

This is why it’s so important to be strategic with your P&C insurance agency software investments. In order to increase your team’s productivity and help your agency reach its full potential, look for solutions built specifically for insurance agents. That way, you won’t have to roll out 15 different apps just so someone on your sales team can do their job.

Make Your Digital Transformation Easier with AgentCubed

One of the easiest ways to increase the chances that your digital transformation initiatives will succeed is by investing in purpose-built, property and casualty insurance software solutions. When you pick the right tool, designed specifically for the insurance industry, your efforts can pay off rapidly. 

This is why it’s so important to determine the precise needs of your agency before you begin evaluating potential software solutions.

AgentCubed is a powerful and intuitive solution designed specifically for insurance agencies like yours. For more information on how AgentCubed can help your organization beat the odds and succeed with your digital transformation efforts, request a demo today.