Perfecting the customer experience

Motshabi Nomvethe, Technical Marketing Specialist at PPS

Customer experience has become a key focus area for most businesses. Organisations are investing a lot of resources to ensure that they are providing their customers with pleasant experiences in all interactions. This is no different for insurance companies, as they too have to do their utmost to enhance and perfect the quality of service they provide to clients.

Over the years it has become very important for insurers to monitor and track client experience on an on-going basis, as this has a direct impact on organisations’ ability to attract and retain business. .

A ripple effect

We live in a digital era where the impact of ‘word of mouth’ has been amplified by high usage of social media networks. Potential clients tend to conduct extensive online research before they decide who they want to do business with.   Negative reviews based on bad customer experiences may result in losing out on potential business.

By effectively monitoring and tracking clients’ experiences, insurers can identify pain points and opportunities, on an on-going basis, to improve the service that they offer to their clients. 

Consistency is key

Both inbound and outbound interactions are important considerations when it comes to analysing customer experience, and may include customer surveys, telephone discussions, written communication, walk-ins, social media interaction, Hello Peter (and other similar websites), word of mouth and employee feedback. To optimise client experience, companies need to have dedicated teams to constantly track client experience and ensure that necessary steps are taken for consistent positive experience.

In designing and improving customer journeys, insurers need to take an ‘outside-in view’ and focus on customer centricity. Insurance companies also need to ensure that all employees who interact with customers have complete contextual awareness to ensure full resolution of the issue.

Companies need to recognise that clients interact with businesses through multiple communication channels and touch points, and provide clients with a seamless and consistent experience across all interaction points. If a customer initiates an interaction online but needs to speak to an agent halfway through the transaction, the switch from the website to a phone call needs to be as seamless as possible and not require the client to start from scratch and provide information that was already provided during the online interaction.

Always be first

Insurers should strive for first contact resolution for client queries, complaints and requests, i.e. address these within the first interaction as much as possible. Companies who have matured in customer service are able to predict and pre-empt customer complaints and queries. This allows these companies to offer proactive service, rather than waiting for clients to initiate contact with the company.

Kate Leggett from Forrester recommends the following;

• Customer obsession – for companies to achieve higher levels of loyalty and company revenue, they need to obsess about delivering differentiated service experiences in line with customer expectations.
• Provide easy and effective customer service that instils positive emotions.
• Assess your operations against best practice and identify opportunities to improve customer experience.
• Get to know your customer by conducting surveys. Information from these surveys should be used to identify pain points along customer journeys.

Customer expectations

When benchmarking customer experience levels, it is important for insurers to compare themselves with progressive industry players like Amazon and Apple, rather than focusing on traditional competitor comparisons. Insurers need to understand that customer expectations have been raised across almost every industry and that customers want to interact with companies that are digitally progressive. This is shaping an entirely new reality when it comes to client expectations, with customers expecting the same level of service from all businesses they deal with.