Leadership
Customer Centric: What It Means And Why It Matters
Putting the customer first has worked for Westwood Insurance Agency. Here's how it can work for you.
Sometimes, it’s just the simple details that can determine success.
Let’s paint the picture: You’re a consumer looking to buy a car. You do your due diligence, shop around, take the car for a test drive. At least on the surface, everything is being done by the book.
Take a closer look, however, and instead you’ll see that factors like consumer confidence, company reputation, prior experiences, integrity and more come into play. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a car, home, or insurance, these experiences matter.
Westwood Insurance Agency works with 14 of the top 20 homebuilders. They understand that our core business proposition begins and ends with one thing: How are we serving their customers?
Westwood, at its core, is about streamlining an experience that is often overlooked or overcomplicated in the home buying process: Obtaining quality insurance. While our specialty is integrating insurance into the closing process, we continue to serve your customers for years, providing support when it matters most.
Trust is a vital part of insurance. Typically, you insure something because it is of value to you. As insurance professionals, we are considered to be – and expected to be – a trusted advisor, knowing that people come to us for expert advice and guidance.
Establishing credibility is important in this business, and it is an aspect that we take very seriously at Westwood.
For much of our company’s history, we’ve operated behind the success of our niche market, working with homebuilders. Still, I would put our reputation and high-level of satisfaction among clients and customers against anyone.
Westwood has been around for 70 years. Our leverage is our longevity. Our builder relationships span decades because we deliver on our promise to serve their customers – the home buyers.
The point of all this is to challenge the readers of this piece to take a minute to stop and not think just solely about the end product. Rather, focus on the steps being taken throughout to ensure that what we are doing is both good and right for the customer in the end. Whether you are a builder, architect, designer or otherwise, don’t forget to take a second in your day and remember what you are providing and who it is for.
Throughout our company’s history, we have been tasked with helping close the home. Repeatedly, we have been relied upon to simplify and fasttrack the last step in the process to keep everything on time for everyone involved.
In a time where insurance companies have moved most transactions online or have limited their service offerings, Westwood has done the exact opposite, and for good reason. Retention is paramount in our business, and the only way to do that is by having authentic relationships with the customers we serve.
Because of our history, we understand their needs from the start, and that allows us to be involved in a unique way throughout the life of their policy. It is one thing to work with a new customer moving into a new house, but it is another to get to drill down and reach out to see if our customers need assistance when a major storm or life event has impacted their daily lives.
We want to grow as our clients, partners and customers do, so even with the goals that we have for our company, it is our charge not to lose sight of what got us this far. This is a niche market, but this is where we are and what we are good at.
It is an expensive exercise, but so worthwhile. It is our biggest advantage over our competitors and the one thing that we are consistently lauded for in the industry and by customers.
Even as we look to the future and find ways to elevate the customer experience, we will only make a move once we are confident in our ability to continue providing the highest quality of customer service throughout their time with us.
All we have are our relationships. Relationships with our builder clients, lender affiliates and customers. When it comes to the commitment we have made since our founding, we have always been geared toward how we serve.
In the end, service is something that everyone has become accustomed to. When I go out and there are other prospects that we see, all we request is for them to ask their peers about what we have done for them. That says more about us than anything we could ever could.
All tied into the singular message of what can happen when we take a second to take stock in what we are doing, and who we are doing it for.
If you are interested in how Westwood works to provide exceptional service for customers, visit our website westwoodinsurance.com/partners.
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