Turning Negative Feedback into Positive Change
When we talk about reviews, you almost always think about positive, 5-star reviews.
Yes, it’s essential to any insurance agency’s marketing strategy to collect reviews to build your brand, enhance SEO rankings, and showcase your credibility.
What you don’t see talked about often enough are negative reviews and how you should handle them as a business.
With that in mind, let’s right that wrong and talk about how your insurance agency can not only tackle negative feedback head-on but also find ways to improve for the better.
Because at the end of the day, it’s the negative feedback you get that will push your agency to make meaningful changes that improve your service and the client experience as a whole.
The hidden power of negative feedback.
Most insurance agencies focus on the positive reviews, but either shy away from or try to ignore the negative reviews.
And that makes sense, it’s natural to gravitate to hearing what you are doing right as a business.
Sometimes, it may not seem like the feedback is completely valid, which adds another layer to why you might want to stay as far away from bad reviews as possible.
The role of negative feedback is this: you can—and should—leverage it to your benefit, while addressing the needs of the client.
Use the feedback you get and take an inward look at your business by asking yourself these questions:
- What specific issue is the client highlighting, and have you encountered this feedback before?
- Is there a pattern or recurring theme in the negative feedback you receive?
- What changes can you implement to prevent similar feedback in the future?
- Are there any gaps in your current processes or services that this feedback has uncovered?
- Is there additional training or resources your team needs to address the issues raised?
- How can you turn this feedback into an opportunity to improve your client experience?
- What positive outcomes can result from addressing and learning from this feedback?
By asking these strategic questions, you’ll start to uncover not just the specifics of the feedback, but an introspective look into your business, team, and process.
Taking this approach can put you in the right mindset to find out what the issue is, where the weak points are in your process, where more training might be needed, and provide actionable changes for you to make.
By first identifying areas of growth and improvement, you can also understand the feedback from the client’s point of view, which can help you shape your overall client experience as well.
Effective strategies for handling negative feedback.
Now, let’s dive into how you should respond to negative feedback.
The most important tip is to handle with care. Negative feedback isn’t fun to receive, and it can seem natural to be reactive to what was said.
Here are some best practices on how to approach responding to feedback, as well as assisting the client as much as possible.
1. Acknowledge and empathize.
Start by acknowledging the client’s concerns and expressing empathy. This shows that you value their feedback and understand their frustration.
For example, you could start by saying something like, “Thank you for sharing your feedback. We’re sorry to hear about your experience and understand how frustrating this must have been.”
Then, you can address their specific concerns. Identify the specific issues mentioned in the review and address them directly. This demonstrates that you’re paying attention and are committed to resolving the problem.
In your response, it’s important to stay professional and calm. Avoid getting defensive or emotional, as this can escalate the situation.
2. Take responsibility and offer a solution.
After reviewing the situation and investigating, if there’s a legitimate issue on your end, take responsibility and apologize for any inconvenience caused. This helps build trust and shows accountability.
Lastly, be sure to provide a clear and actionable solution to the problem. If possible, offer to resolve the issue by phone or email, especially if it is a public-facing response, such as on Google reviews.
3. Where and when you respond matters.
Depending on where and how you get feedback, as well as the situation, you’ll want to approach contacting the client differently.
Always be open to a phone call when you have the opportunity, as you can discuss the matter on a deeper level. Email or responding digitally (such as a Google review response) work as well, but you want to make sure you provide a way for them to contact you so they can reach out on their schedule.
In addition, don’t let negative reviews linger. The faster you can respond to them, the better the chance you can resolve the client’s issue, turn the situation around, and at the very least, identify areas where you can improve.
It shows that you care about providing the best experience, and whether it’s something only they will see or it is a public response, you are enhancing your credibility at the same time.
Plan for improvements.
Now that you’ve addressed the client’s concerns and landed on a resolution, it’s time to spend more time evaluating your agency by developing a strategic plan.
1. Investigate the problem.
First, you need to take the information you have on the scenario and lay out the facts.
After you have that information, pull in the teams who were involved or have a part in the process that led to the negative feedback.
The goal here would be to go through the workflow and experience that the client went through, and walk through what the team had done leading up to the feedback.
This, compared with the feedback you received, will uncover weak points and flaws in the system.
2. Develop a plan to implement changes.
Once you identify the problem areas, you need to develop a plan to make actionable changes to the processes that are lacking.
How much change and the timing depend on your agency, workflow, and the situation, but regardless, you should get buy-in from the team and make a decision as to what changes will be made and the timeline for them to be completed.
3. Identify where more training is needed.
Next, you need to pinpoint if the change of process, or the situation itself, was due to a lack of training and address that.
Providing training for the teams that are impacted or involved can allow you to address the issue, share a resolution, and lead to a mutual understanding of the process moving forward, and use it as a learning opportunity to improve.
Leveraging technology for feedback management.
Though it was mentioned once before, we’ll make the point again—the sooner you can respond to any feedback at all, the better. There are no instances where a quick response does not make a noticeable difference and show that you care.
But how can you do that?
As an insurance agency, staying on top of feedback and reviews is usually at the bottom of your priority list.
However, there are technology solutions that not only make the process of responding to feedback easier, but they can also assist you in automating things like sending out client feedback surveys.
In the fast-paced insurance industry we are in today, having a tool that does this is not only important, it’s necessary to keep up and stay relevant.
By requesting and asking for feedback, you’ll not only get an influx of positive reviews, but you’ll also get the opportunity to uncover negative or constructive feedback.
For example, let’s take the Reputation Management feature on our insurance marketing platform and walk you through how technology solutions like this work and can benefit your agency.
1. Automate client surveys.
With Reputation Management, you’ll have the opportunity to send out automated surveys to clients throughout the year, typically every 6 months. By checking in regularly, you show that you are listening and value feedback.
2. Respond to client feedback.
When a client submits a survey, your team gets notified and is prompted to respond to that feedback with suggestions on how to approach the messaging. And if you get stuck, you can use our built-in AI tools to help you fine-tune what you’ve written if you need help.
3. Monitor trends in feedback.
On your Reputation Management dashboard, you’ll see all of the collected feedback and reviews over time so you can track trends to identify areas of improvement and celebrate wins for the positive reviews. You can also directly embed reviews on your website.
This is just one example of a technology solution that helps your agency manage your reputation and respond to reviews in a timely manner.
The point is, having a tool that assists your agency in all of this makes sure feedback isn’t missed, it’s addressed in a timely manner, and you can track trends and make informed decisions on process changes based on the feedback you get, so it’s not just guesswork.
Applying a feedback management process for real.
At Agency Revolution, we practice what we preach.
So, in the spirit of giving you the best advice, I want to give you a real example of us taking negative feedback and turning it into positive change for us (and ultimately our clients).
A few years ago, we had a client who had recently launched their brand-new website on Forge. However, when we asked for feedback, they let us know they felt they didn’t have enough training during the process of building their site.
Our goal at all times is to deliver stellar service that goes above and beyond, so right away, we investigated what happened and asked ourselves what led to this, and identified two areas of learning.
- First, we determined that our team needed to take a more educational approach during the Onboarding process.
- Second, we identified that we needed to ask more questions of clients about their goals.
- We then reached out to the client and not only offered them training, but our team was able to resolve their technical request on the same day.
The resulting change from this feedback was even better.
- We used this as the framework to create an internal process of streamlining the website integrations process and the hand-off between teams.
- We updated our Help Center resources to make the process clearer and included more helpful information.
- We began the practice of offering weekly training sessions, which we still do to this day, where clients can ask questions or simply get a refresher on using the platform.
All of this to say is that because our client let us know about their experience, we were able to take that and make an actionable change so that moving forward, we were providing better service.
You can apply the same approach with your own agency in how you analyze the feedback, handle the situation, and implement change as a result.
The silver lining of negative feedback.
Negative feedback, often overlooked in favor of positive reviews, is a powerful driver for improvement and innovation within insurance agencies.
By acknowledging and addressing client concerns with empathy and professionalism, agencies can transform criticism into actionable insights.
This approach not only resolves immediate issues but also uncovers systemic weaknesses, leading to strategic enhancements in processes and client interactions.
Leveraging technology, such as Reputation Management tools, ensures timely responses and helps track feedback trends for continuous improvement.
By embracing negative feedback, agencies can foster a culture of growth and adaptability, ultimately enhancing their reputation and client satisfaction.
If this sounds like something you are interested in, the great news is that Agency Revolution has this complete insurance agency marketing solution that includes a Reputation Management feature to help you gather feedback, review responses, and respond accordingly.
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