I don’t know when it happened for me, but I think it was about 3-4 years ago when my online purchases outnumbered the purchases I made in a typical sales environment. It is now rare that I don’t at least do some comparison shopping online before I make a purchase (as I did recently when purchasing a new car). I love the convenience (don’t even get me started on shopping for clothes in a mall) of sitting at home or work (during a break, of course) and doing my research and, ultimately, making the purchase online. I even get excited when the UPS man makes the delivery.
When we started our life insurance website six years ago, after having sold many policies over many years in the traditional manner (in my clients’ homes or offices), we were excited about the prospect of simplifying the life insurance buying process. We started out wanting to create such a website where people could research different types of policies, estimate their needs and search a database of life insurance quotes (anonymously), and ultimately leave us their contact information so we could follow up with a phone call and conduct the sales transaction over the phone in much the same fashion as we did in their homes and offices.
While many people still want to have these discussions (in person or on the phone), we have found there is a large portion of the population that would prefer to conduct their business solely via the Internet. While we are always more than happy to discuss life insurance needs with a prospective client, we now know that in order to accommodate the Internet-only folks, we need to automate as much of the process as possible. You can now learn about life insurance, compare quotes from the major insurance companies, begin the application process and schedule the required medical exam all with a few keystrokes and button clicks. Of course, if a person has questions or concerns that need to be addressed, our representatives are always available via telephone or email.
We are looking forward to making improvements to our process in the near future to the end of a fully automated system. To that end, we will be conducting surveys to find out what people need and want in this experience. Once we have compiled this data, we will incorporate changes (that are technically possible) to the system that fill these needs and wants. And to all those who still want to hear the voice of an experienced insurance representative, we will always make that available to those who don’t want a Fully Automated system.