Squaremouth Earns International Customer Service Department of the Year Award

Last Updated: June 27, 2018April 17, 2024 — 2 min read

Squaremouth earned the title of 2018 Gold International Customer Service Department of the Year by the Customer Sales and Service World Awards.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla June 26, 2018 – Today’s consumers are trained to distrust salespeople, expecting upsell tactics and unnecessary add-ons. But Squaremouth, a travel insurance comparison website, is teaching their customers to expect the opposite, by building a company and culture on the principle of downselling. This approach to save customers money, has led to record sales, and recently earned Squaremouth the title of International Customer Service Department of the Year by the Customer Sales and Service World Awards.

Downselling in Action

Newly hired call center employees are trained in downselling on day one.

“Given the choice, our customers will rarely purchase the least expensive policy available to them,” says CEO Chris Harvey. “It is our job to teach them that a lower price tag does not correspond with inferior coverage. If the cheapest policy is the best policy for that traveler, we’ll do all we can to encourage that purchase.”

In fact, the company shies away from hiring employees with sales backgrounds, favoring staff who want to help the customer, not make the sale. Squaremouth agents don’t receive a commission and the company purposely does not have sales goals. This allows agents to focus solely on finding the right coverage for the customer at the least expensive price.

The Pay Off

This way of doing business has paid off. The private company has grown every year since it’s launch in 2003, from $1 million in sales to over $26 million. The company attributes this significant growth to the trust they build with their customers.

Squaremouth encourages its customers to shop around to find the best travel insurance policy and has even gone as far as recommending options not on their site.

“Customers come back to us because they know we are straight shooters and they trust us,” says Harvey. “They don’t need to purchase from us. They could buy the same exact policy directly from one of the providers we offer, but they don’t.”

Squaremouth believes the ongoing value in a repeat customer is far greater than any value gained in upsell tactics.

This isn’t the first time Squaremouth has been recognized for its dedication to customer service. The company recently received its fourth Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year. Squaremouth has also been named the Best Travel Insurance Company by TopConsumerReviews.com for the past seven years.