Effective marketing, communications, and customer service are vital to building a successful insurance company or MGA. At the centre of all those is understanding the journey your customers go on, before and after they buy from you.
As insurance has become increasingly digital and online, customer journey mapping has risen in importance. Companies now have the power to reach and track their customers through numerous channels, at almost any time of day. As a result, they can perfectly tailor their marketing and communications to customer behaviour and needs – both before purchasing and once they’ve signed up.
At the same time, insurance customers have become more demanding. As competition has become tougher, and digital tools more widespread, insurance brands are fighting hard for customer eyeballs. Furthermore, attention spans have declined, with customers seeking the utmost ease and convenience. They won’t hesitate to go elsewhere if they aren’t happy with your service, with a recent survey finding that 60% of insurance customers are actively looking to switch.
Here we take a deep dive into how companies can map the path to purchase, key trends, and how to enhance the customer experience to reach and engage customers more effectively.
What is the insurance customer journey?
Every customer is different, but it is helpful to map out the typical route they take when purchasing insurance, from initial awareness to policy renewal. In most cases, it looks something like this:
- Awareness and research
- Quote and comparison
- Purchase decision
- Onboarding
- Policy management
- Claims processing
- Renewal
Each of the main journey stages will also contain sub-stages, which vary from person to person, and could be both online and offline. Insurance is a highly complex sector, with numerous players involved, spanning insurers, MGAs, brokers, and other distribution partners, depending on the company and type of insurance. This can be confusing for customers and is another reason why understanding and optimising the customer journey is so important.
Customer journey mapping
Creating a detailed map of the customer lifecycle helps insurance companies to tailor their marketing, communications and customer service in several ways:
- Highlights pain points and areas for improvement
- Identifies customer needs and preferences at each stage
- Enables internal processes to be aligned with customer expectations
- Allows marketing messages and channels to be optimised to each stage
- Sparks ideas and priorities for technology investments and innovations
Together, these activities ensure customers are as engaged and informed as possible at each stage, helping push them through the sales funnel, aiding decision-making, and ensuring they become a satisfied and loyal customer.
Trends shaping the insurance customer journey in 2024
Digital-first experiences…
A huge proportion of insurance is now purchased online; around half of home insurance policies, and two thirds of car insurance policies. And even where policies aren’t purchased online, customers still carry out research on the web, and expect to manage their insurance or make a claim from their computer, tablet or smartphone. That means insurers, MGAs and brokers need to be digital-first in everything they do; from having an intuitive website, to online quote and bind, and self-service portals where customers can make changes to their policy or check their cover.
…supported by the human touch
Yet at the same time, companies need to ensure they have experts at the end of the phone for when customers need additional advice, information or reassurance. Insurance can be complicated, and there will always be individuals who don’t fit the standard policy template, particularly when purchasing more specialist cover. Furthermore, transferring from online to an agent can be a significant obstacle in the customer journey, so contact centres are still critical, enabling companies to handle the transition quickly and seamlessly.
An omnichannel approach
Alongside convenience, insurance customers also want choice, and they want to know that their preferences are catered for. Some clients may love interacting with their insurer via an app, or be happy talking to a chatbot, while others may prefer to email, or pick up the phone. The key is operating an omnichannel customer journey, with consistency in brand ‘look and feel’, and information aligned across channels. This gives customers multiple seamless options for how they interact with your business, knowing that if they speak to a customer service representative, the online system will be updated, and vice versa.
Personalised communications and offers
According to McKinsey, companies that invest in personalisation generate 40% more revenue from those activities than companies that don’t. Furthermore, 71% of consumers now expect personalisation, while 72% feel frustrated if they don’t get it. It’s all about making customers feel special by delivering the right messages at the right moment. Thankfully that has been made easier through data and analytics. By collecting and analysing data in the right way, insurance companies can target customers with the right products, offers, and follow up communications, exactly when they need them. And, with 76% of consumers saying it makes them more likely to buy, it is worth the investment.
Emerging technologies
Artificial intelligence has gradually become part of the insurance customer journey in recent years, most commonly in the form of chatbots, which are frequently used to answer customer queries. But what’s next? Now that generative AI is becoming increasingly popular for search queries and research, it’s only a matter of time before customers turn to ChatGPT and other tools for insurance advice or recommendations; a development which could transform the insurance customer journey. Companies will need to start thinking about how this will impact how they engage with customers going forward.
Doing more for less
Finally, the elephant in the room is the economy and tightening budgets. Investing in customer experience and a seamless customer journey can be costly, and with recent challenges such as slower economic growth, high interest rates and inflation, there is a danger that the customer experience will suffer. Consequently, companies have to work smarter to ensure that any budget cuts don’t negatively impact customer onboarding and loyalty and ensure that investment in future growth doesn’t take a hit.
Strategies to improve the customer journey
Even small improvements to the customer journey can have a huge impact on your bottom line. So, where should you start?
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Where are you now? Evaluate the current customer journey to build a clear picture of how much work there is to do. Gather and collate customer feedback and test out the customer journey from various perspectives, to find out what is working and what isn’t. Delve into the reasons behind pain points, so you can develop the best strategies to address them.
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Set a clear vision: There is no one-size-fits-all customer journey. Yours should be unique to your customers and their needs, based on the insurance products you sell, your business model, and your brand. So, the first step should be developing a vision for the type of journey and experience you want your customers to have. Analyse that against what you currently have and make a plan of action.
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Put the right tech foundations in place: A lot of customer journey issues can now be solved with the right technology, from an intuitive and informative website to online quote and bind, or a chatbot to answer simple customer queries. But don’t try to walk before you can run. Start by streamlining and automating your internal processes and data, by implementing the right software. This will enable you to start building the foundations to roll out more sophisticated, customer facing technology, while freeing up your team to serve customers more effectively.
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Be creative and stay focused on the customer: Just because something has worked for another company, doesn’t mean it is the right solution for your brand, so stay laser-focused on what your customers want and need. At the same time, don’t be scared to think outside the box and try new things that may give you the edge.
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Test and learn: The only way to know if a new approach is working is to test, learn and iterate as you go. That’s why it’s vital to establish clear key performance indicators (KPIs) for each stage of the journey, and regularly collect and analyse customer feedback, to check that changes to the customer experience are having an impact. Customer behaviour is constantly evolving, so don’t become complacent and stay curious about how you can best meet customer needs, as well as keeping an eye on what the competition is up to.
Commit for the long-term: Customer-centric transformations can take 12 to 24 months to realize their full potential, according to McKinsey, so be prepared for a long-term commitment.
Making insurance inspiring
Insurance isn’t the most exciting product, which means insurers and MGAs must work even harder to capture customers’ attention and then keep their loyalty over time. Ultimately customers want to feel understood, supported and protected in the best way. Therefore, those brands that spend the time understanding how to do that will inevitably come out on top. And while technology doesn’t have all the answers, it is a key building block to providing the combination of speed and convenience, with human and emotional connection, that today’s demanding customers need.
Keep up with insurance trends with INSLY
Insly has been working with MGAs and insurers for over ten years, providing low-code, end-to-end insurance software to streamline processes and data. Insly includes numerous tools to enhance the customer journey but most importantly it provides the technology and data foundations to make customer experience a long-term priority, not just a quick fix. To find out more, check out our case studies, and get in touch with the team.
