Across the country, insurance agents may have to deal with many different types of claims every day, but when a major event happens, that could lead to their fielding many calls and answering some hard questions. A recent set of earthquakes in the Dallas area seems to have sparked just such a wave of calls from homeowners, who want to know if they’re covered for any damage the tremor caused. However, agents will typically find that such damage is not covered for these homeowners, and will need to explain to them both why this is the case and what they can do to better protect themselves going forward.
The earthquakes themselves weren’t all that sizable – of the 11 felt over the course of a day or so, the two largest only reached 3.5 on the Richter scale – but certainly did enough to jar homeowners into wondering whether their properties were covered, according to a report from the Dallas Morning News. However, it seems as though the vast majority of people who didn’t have earthquake coverage called to ask their insurers about adding the coverage.
“We have received a noticeable increase in inquiries – does my homeowners policy cover this, and how hard is it to add that,” said Gary Stephenson, a spokesman for the state’s largest home insurer, told the newspaper.
What does this mean?
In short, while experts say that people who live in areas far from fault lines may be seeing more earthquakes these days, the intensity is not so great that it would be worth the extra investment in many cases, the report said. Nonetheless, the belief is that events like this typically cause people to add such coverage, and those in the insurance industry point out that the investment is usually only about $5-10 per year.
The more agents can do to help people understand their home insurance policies, the better off both sides of the issue are likely to be. That’s because high-quality customer service is often seen as being more crucial to keeping people happy with their plans than even something as important as keeping premium costs down. The more people know about their plans, the better they’re going to understand what they are and aren’t paying for, which can lead not only to additional sales, but also improved relationships and higher retention rates.
