Why the insurance industry needs a helping hand

I have gained first-hand experience working within the insurance industry on their customer experience management and voice of the customer strategies over the past decade. One of the things I have seen is that many struggle to let go of outdated business methodologies. While there are industry leaders who are interested in exploring CEM, few have fully realised how digital CEM strategies can catapult their business to an all new high.

A look at the latest Insurance Multichannel Customer Experience Study released from the US reveals just how short companies are falling when it comes to prioritising consistency across all channels when it comes to CEM.

The study, conducted by Eptica, evaluated one hundred U.S. insurers across 10 sectors on their ability answer routine questions via the web, email, Twitter, Facebook and chat. The results showed the state of the insurance industry when it comes to customer experience:

• 47% of insurers failed to provide consistent answers between different channels
• Only company out of 100 replied on all four channels of email, Facebook, Twitter and chat
• 17% of insurers claimed to offer chat, yet only 5% had it operational when they were evaluated

As a benchmark, the study also showed that the US trails behind the United Kingdom, where insurers consistently answered 54% of all customer service questions.

On the other end of the survey, a sizable sample of one thousand American consumers were polled on how long they were willing to spend looking for the answers they need: 46% said they’d spend no more than five minutes searching for information on a company website before giving up and going elsewhere.

What does all this mean for South Africa?

For a start, it is clear that it’s not only South African insurance companies that need a helping hand to implement a customer experience strategy that can fix these problems. It’s an issue that hinders insurance companies across the globe. From my experience, this is because CEM is largely misunderstood.

But fortunately there are proven methods for implementing the change that is needed for companies to meet their customer needs. Let me know if you’d like to learn more about how CEM can be a game changer for your company.

You can also download the study here: http://www.eptica.com/us-insurance-multichannel-customer-experience-study