Providing above and beyond service for your customers, whether traveling to another state or another country, is important to your brand as a travel agent. When offering travel insurance, here are 10 tips to ensure they have the best experience when considering protection for their vacations.
Be Confident
As a licensed travel agent, having confidence is the key to recommending destinations and services to your customers – especially travel insurance.
Exuding confidence in your presentation of potential benefits included in the plans and preparing yourself to answer common questions about exclusions, or the claims process, gives customers the opportunity to trust the options available to them for protecting their trip.
Educate Yourself on the Product Benefits
Your customers will have questions; arm them with the proper information to solve their problems by brushing up on your product knowledge with resources available to you and your clients to help answer common concerns.
If you need a quick refresher on travel insurance knowledge, try taking a course, read travel articles from the provider, or request information to acclimate yourself with their products and associated benefits.
Position Travel Insurance Positively
Warning clients of the dangers that come with not planning against the unexpected can put a dark cloud over a sunny Jamaica honeymoon.
Talking about the importance of travel insurance doesn’t have to be scary. When discussing the need for travel insurance, having an optimistic outlook and highlighting the benefits it could provide can be the difference between enlightening a new customer and scaring them away.
Step Into Your Customers Shoes
When positioning travel insurance to your customers it’s important to consider the product through their eyes. Are they traveling with young children? Do they have a pre-existing condition? Does their itinerary include exclusions they should be aware of?
Being able to assess each vacation need from your customers’ perspective is an extremely valuable skill that can help bring forward the benefits that would be most useful to them – providing them the highest degree of service.
Offer Protection at Multiple Touchpoints
Waiting until checkout to introduce customers to the potential for travel insurance can seem like an upsell, or just another added cost.
Instead, introduce the importance and benefits of travel insurance at several different touchpoints of the customer journey. For example, educating them on the potential value of the baggage loss feature is a great benefit to highlight after they’ve secured their airfare.
Build a Dialogue
Help your customers understand the benefits of travel insurance by listening to their needs and concerns with a “feel, felt, found” statement.
You may notice, for example, a customer has declined travel insurance because they are in good health. Using a “feel, felt, found” statement:
- Reassure your customer that you understand how they feel about not wanting travel insurance because they are in sound health.
- Remind them that a lot of other customers have felt the same way about travel insurance medical benefits and their concern is common and valid.
- Educate them that many have also found it to be beneficial in situations where health insurance could not provide benefits – like being able to return home should an immediate family member like a parent or child, become ill.
Be Flexible in your Approach
With global and local incidents arising more frequently, customers have an increased concern with the general safety of travel.
As a travel agent consider different ways to approach destinations and attractions affected by tragedy. Educating yourself on the restrictions, exclusions, and potential benefits available in case of a tragic event, and thinking outside the box when approaching the conversation of travel insurance can help customers prepare for the unexpected.
Stay Patience with Customers
Every customer and vacation is different. Some clients purchase a plan with every trip, while others are unfamiliar with what travel insurance includes and want more information to help consider their options.
Understand that your customer may need some time to think things over before making a decision. Provide them with information such as brochures, supplier websites, and the contact number for the insurance provider and encourage them to reach out with any questions.
Use Tools That Help You Follow-Up
As the season heats up, so does the amount of back-end work required to keep all of your itineraries on track. Managing your clients’ travel information is a balancing act in itself, let alone remembering to follow up with them about purchasing travel insurance before their trip.
Using a tool such as Allianz Global Assistances’ Agentmax Online can not only help manage your customers travel insurance information in one location, but the 2nd Chance by Maxmail feature can send automated follow-up emails to reluctant customers –creating one less task on your to-do list.
It’s Okay If They Decline
The challenges and opportunities involved with offering travel insurance can’t be overstated. Having solid sales and follow-up strategies will reinforce your credibility as an agent while helping you close a tough, but important, conversation.
If you’ve made a good faith attempt to protect their vacation, but the answer is still no, as a best practice, we recommend getting customers to sign a waiver stating they were offered and declined to purchase travel insurance.
These customer experience tips are a great way to begin the conversation about travel protection with your customers. If you or your clients have further questions, please contact our customer service representatives at 800-284-8300 for more information.