A recent extensive study of the insurance industry by Cap Gemini S.A., a Paris, France-based business and IT solutions provider, finds that while U.S. life insurers rank best in the world with an average satisfaction rating of 78 percent, yet only 30 percent of customers reported a positive experience with their insurer.
The “World Insurance Report” included a voice of the customer survey of more than 16,500 insurance customers across 30 countries.
The seemingly incongruous results can be explained by nuances of life insurance, says Carlos Dunlap, editorial director for COLLOQUY, a LoyaltyOne research group. Life insurance typically is something that customers don’t think about. They pay the premiums, sometimes through payroll deductions, so they don’t really think about it. So people are usually satisfied during most of the time they have a policy. But a policy pays during time of grief, so any potential issues, like a late payment, will be magnified in the customer’s mind.
“Customers can be satisfied, but that doesn’t mean that they will have a positive experience,” Dunlap told Loyalty 360. “Life insurance is a necessity. It provides people with a security blanket. As long as nothing goes haywire, customers are satisfied. But that doesn’t mean that they are loving this relationship.
“Satisfaction doesn’t lead to loyalty,” Dunlap added.
Loyalty in the life insurance industry depends largely on relevant communications with customers, including consistent messaging from all parts of the business (underwriting, claims, etc.) when interacting with customers, according to Dunlap.
The life insurance industry is trying to do this with new technology designed to make communications and other aspects of the business more efficient, said Dunlap, citing a 2013 Ernst & Young report. If those communications are customer focused, life insurers can build better customer loyalty, according to Dunlap.
Behind the use in the customer satisfaction rankings were South Africa (76 percent), Australia (74 percent), Belgium (72 percent), and Canada (70 percent). Other mature markets have the lowest positive satisfaction scores in the study. Among them: Japan (38 percent), Hong Kong (42 percent), South Korea, Taiwan (48 percent) and Sweden (51 percent).
The survey also found that more than half of customers in North America (56 percent) express satisfaction with their agent. This compares with 41 percent, 37 percent, 44 percent, 45 percent and 40 percent, respectively, who say they have a positive experience using the broker, bank, phone, Internet/PC and Internet/mobile channels.
When asked to rate the importance of certain initiative in implementing a successful integrated multi-distribution model, creating mobile channel capabilities rank highest among the survey respondents: These capabilities receive an average score of 4.9 on a scale of one to seven (one being “not important” and seven being “very important).
The Cap Gemini report said that 50 percent of insurers are making mobile and social media a priority over the next two years to strengthen the Customer Experience. However, the report also found that those channels will need to be tightly integrated and provide seamless transitions across all channels to be effective.