One thing recommended to insurance shoppers, often by objective sources like your state’s department of insurance informational brochures, is to ask your friends, family, & neighbors for their opinions about insurance companies. In my opinion, personal referrals are not useful in making sure you will get good customer service from your agent or insurance company. This blog post will explain why referrals are not reliable, and where to find more objective measures of customer service, so you can avoid having problems when you most need the help of your agent or company.

When I was working at an insurance agency, I loved it when someone would call for an auto or home insurance quote, and they told me they were recommended by a friend or family member. The friend or family member usually had a good experience with the insurance company, they were very satisfied with how a claim was handled, or the rates are great. I loved these calls because the person asking for the quote had a trusted person telling them I represented a great company, so all I had to do was meet the customer’s expectation. If the expectation was great claims service, the price I quoted did not matter much. If the customer expected low rates, I would make the sale if I could beat what they were paying, although they may have found a much better rate by shopping with more companies.

On the other hand, I have lost customers to the competition while representing this same company, when they have had a friend or family member tell them about a bad experience with the company, which caused them to shop and find a better rate.

Based on these two situations, was the company I was representing at the time a good company or a bad company? If you ask around, you will find some people like or love an insurance company, while other people hate it. This is true about all insurance companies. Amica & USAA have great reputations over all, but you can find complaints about them from some people which would make you think they are the worst companies in the business. One person will say Company X has the best rates. Another person says Company X has the worst rates. Who do you believe? Maybe there are 3 people claiming good rates & service to every one person saying an insurance company has bad rates & service, Is this enough to rely on to make sure you get good rates & service? I don’t think so.

If your father tells you how great his experience with Company Y auto insurance has been, the only thing you can rely on is someone else’s father is telling his children how horrible Company Y is.

The only way to make sure you are getting low insurance rates is to shop with all the leading insurance companies. You may be surprised which company has the best rate for you. I’m occasionally surprised, too, even with my many years of insurance experience.

When it comes to evaluating customer service, a sample of even several hundred customers is not enough, much less one or two opinions based on personal referrals. You need a large sample of people to make a judgment about a company’s customer service.

Periodically, JD Power & Consumer Reports conduct home & auto insurance surveys. These are large, broad surveys and they should be considered before choosing an insurance company. Also, national & state (if available in your state) complaint data is important to consider when deciding on an insurance company. This is why I provide JD Power customer satisfaction ratings & NAIC national & state complaint ratings on my website.

Referrals are not a bad thing, but you need to consider more than a few opinions or you may regret your decision. Use the information on my website to help you make a better decision.

You should be wary of referrals to use a particular agent, too. The agent may be great, but if the company the agent represents often provides poor claim service, the agent has little control over it. You should decide which companies have the best combination of service, coverage, and price for you, and then select the best agent representing at least one of them.

Beware of referrals to independent agents whom claim to be able to shop the market for you. For life insurance, this may be close to true, but for home & auto insurance, some of the largest companies sell only through their own agents or direct from the company. Independent agents can’t sell their products, or may not be able to offer the same low price. An independent agent may claim to represent 30 companies, but few of them will be the leading insurance companies, and important companies like State Farm or Geico won’t be among them.

People usually refer people to an agent based on how much they like the agent, or based on a personal relationship they have with them, without really knowing how good the agent is at doing their job or taking care of their customer’s needs. For example, your home loan officer may refer you to his golfing buddy. Your aunt may refer you to the sweet, nice, young lady handling her auto insurance.

It’s worse with life insurance. The nice young man who sold your grandpa a final expense life insurance policy will push your grandpa to call up his friends and family to tell them to meet with the agent regarding their life insurance needs.

Many agents give incentives to customers for providing them with a certain number of referrals, like a gift card for the names & phone numbers of five people they know. Your friend’s encouragement to get a quote from their agent probably has more to do with the gift card than how good their agent is at their job.

A future blog post will tell you about the qualities of an excellent agent, so you can recognize one, and cut through the hype coming from the agent or a person referring you to one.

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