I’m always amazed by what kinds of things one can find on Twitter. Just this week, I realized that President Barack Obama has a verified account on Twitter. Now, I understand that it is entirely possible that someone other than the President himself is updating that account, but it was interesting to me anyway. I followed this account, hoping to find updates about the Affordable Care Act. This made me wonder what other insurance related resources I could find on Twitter.
I’ve noticed that there are different categories of Twitter accounts that have something to do with insurance. Some of them seem to be collecting general information about insurance of all kinds, and tweeting links to recent news articles. Others are Twitter accounts for private insurance companies. Twitter has quickly become a way that businesses can reach out to potential customers, as well as to keep in touch with customers who have questions or complaints.
If you are looking for information from a private insurance company, there are several that you can follow on Twitter. If you are shopping around for a good insurance company, you might want to visit the company’s Twitter account. People who are unhappy with a particular company can reply to that company with a complaint on Twitter. This causes the complaint to appear on the Twitter page for that company. This means you can see if people are especially unhappy with this insurance company. You might be able to discern how quick or slow their response time is once a complaint has been made, or a question has been asked. It’s a good way to learn how good or bad a particular company’s customer service actually is, without having to become one of their customers in order to find out.
You can follow a few nationwide insurance companies on Twitter including @allstate, @KaiserInsurance (Kaiser Permanente), or @VPI (VPI Pet Insurance). Looking for updates about insurance in the news? Follow @ijournal (Insurance Journal), @insurance_news (from V Insure), @SNLInsurance, or @InsuranceLinks. All of them tweet about insurance in the news, and include links to articles. Want to find a government insurance link that is relevant to where you live? I’ve found @IdahoDOI (Idaho Department of Insurance), @NDID (North Dakota Insurance Department), @CDInews (California Department of Insurance), and @NYSInsuranceDep (New York State Insurance Department).
Image by JoshSemans on Flickr