We know a positive client experience is a critical factor in any insurance firm’s success. In fact, recently published research suggests clients who have a poor experience with their firm (as indicated by their satisfaction rating) are nine times more likely to be actively looking for a new insurance provider1. And as the industry and our client base continue to navigate unprecedented change and disruption, many business leaders are taking another look at their existing CX programs to examine success, and look towards innovations that may deliver an outsized impact for their firm. At ClearlyRated, we’ve worked with more than 350 business service firms, including providers of commercial insurance, and our team has fielded more than 5 million surveys to fuel their CX initiatives. Here are 4 strategies that we have seen transform CX initiatives and fuel real growth in our modern business climate. Understand the client journey. It can be easy to misinterpret the “client experience” as a monolith. But in reality the client experience is not static. It ebbs and flows with the client journey, which starts the moment a prospect decides to work with you (or even before, during the sales process). Understanding the client journey will help you build a more robust CX program by identifying critical moments when the client experience is most likely to be impacted. From onboarding to paying an invoice, renewing a contract, seeking additional services, or even—because it does happen—terminating a relationship with your firm, each of these moments represents a unique facet of the client experience that you can be capturing in your client survey program to fuel insights and transform your CX outcomes. Add outsized value for true CX impact. If you think of your CX strategy as a series of levers, do you know which levers your team can pull to create an outsized impact on the client experience? Put differently, do you know which actions and processes to invest time and energy into that will demonstrably improve CX outcomes? Recent research identifies critical client perceptions that are tightly correlated with high satisfaction (as reported by the client)¹. Those perceptions include (from most valuable to least valuable): These findings are an aggregate view of key drivers of client satisfaction for insurance providers based in the U.S., and as such they offer a strong starting point for identifying key areas of investment. But your firm can, and should, leverage your CX initiative to identify those client perceptions that are most tightly correlated with satisfaction in your own client base, and use that intelligence to build a plan for improving the client experience. Building a data-informed foundation for your CX strategy will deliver an outsized impact on any investment. According to McKinsey & Company, delivering a superior customer experience requires significant investments, relentless improvements, and collaboration across customer channels and business functions. Reduce stress during the buying process. Prospective clients are facing a challenging and complex landscape when it comes to purchasing commercial insurance. In fact, 92% of business service buyers say they experience stress during the buying process². Competitive differentiation between service providers is slim, and in the aftermath of COVID-19, buyers are feeling more risk averse than ever. Fortunately, your CX program can help reassure prospects as they navigate these uncertain times. Asking for referrals from happy clients identified in your CX initiative can deliver on prospects’ most ideal resources during the purchase process: a referral from a friend or colleague1. Testimonials, the second most persuasive resource buyers use during their purchase decision, can (and I would argue, should!) be sourced directly from your CX initiative to supercharge business development efforts and deliver credible proof of the service you deliver. Similarly, satisfaction scores and online ratings (both of which can be tied into your CX program) go a long way towards easing the anxiety of the buyer, and are proven to be more persuasive than your own sales and marketing materials, even your website1. Empower your client support team. At its heart, a CX initiative is an intelligence gathering campaign. But who has access to that intelligence, and how quickly? While it’s impossible to overstate the value of integrating client feedback into larger business initiatives, it’s even more critical to ensure that feedback is available to the teams who can use it to inform relationship efforts as soon as humanly possible. If you’re working with a digital client survey to source CX insights, be sure to integrate those findings into your CRM or database where client relationship managers and support teams have access. These folks are the face of your brand, they are the true source of the client experience. Empowering them with real-time feedback data will help them tailor the service they deliver based on the wants, needs, and sentiments of the clients in their portfolio. In short, giving client support teams access to client feedback in real time will empower them to perform to the best of their ability. I hope these 4 strategies have provided new insights for thinking about (and measuring the success of) your firm’s CX initiative! If you’d like to discuss any of these strategies with my team, please feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to share more about our mindset related to CX strategy for insurance firms, details about our research, or to discuss how ClearlyRated can help your firm level-up its CX initiative. Interested in learning more about our NPS survey program? Click here for our feature on the Insurance Marketing and Communications Association’s (IMCA) website. ¹ Source: ClearlyRated’s 2021 Service Benchmark Study ² Source: ClearlyRated’s 2020 Service Benchmark Study
