Most Canadians are so dissatisfied with their insurance providers that they are not likely to recommend them to family and friends, a new study from Ipsos found.
Surveying a total of 13,000 Canadians who own at least one type of insurance policy, the Ipsos CSI Insurance tracker found that Canada’s insurance market got a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of -8 for 2020. Ipsos noted that this low score is “unmatched” compared to other sectors in Canada, such as the banking industry, which got an NPS score of 12 for the period of November 2020 to January 2021.
For a business or entity to be considered successful in terms of customer satisfaction, it has to place an NPS score between 0 and 30.
Customer experience and service appear to be major pain points for the insurance industry, the report suggested. Only one in three Canadians said they were generally happy with the quality of customer service they receive from their insurance provider, Ipsos found. The report also revealed that fewer than 30% of Canadians are completely satisfied with their insurer’s COVID-19 response.
Ipsos also took a quick look at the insurance brands Canadians purchase from, and found that across general key performance indicators, a majority of them perform similarly – with a few exceptions.
The few insurers that made it to the top rankings found the right balance between satisfying functional needs (i.e., premiums, variety, accessibility) and creating an emotional bond with clients beyond overall satisfaction, the report said. Ipsos said that these insurers are discovering new and efficient ways to innovate customer engagement – though not many insurers can say the same, as only 9% of customers agreed that their insurance provider is “innovative.”
The report additionally uncovered that fewer than 25% of Canadian insurance customers were satisfied with the level of proactive and personalized communication they received from their insurers. Ipsos noted that this is a sore point, particularly for long-time policyholders who feel that they have lost touch with their providers.
Consumer interaction channels were also reviewed by the Ipsos report, which found that the preference to buy directly from the company rather than using a broker was prevalent whenever customers are in the purchasing phase. It is much later in the policyholder phase that the website and call centre channels are most used by customers. But over the past 12 months, there has been a decline in customers interacting with their insurers, the report noted, as demonstrated by a drop in the use of these channels.
Insurance has always been characterized by low engagement, the report highlighted, and the pandemic only further reinforced this trend.
“One thing is true, the pandemic has made clear to all industries there is a need for increased focus on omni-channel strategies,” Ipsos commented on its report. “The current climate dictates that customers utilize different platforms for various tasks. Along with instilling improvements to the day-to-day claims process and wait times, companies need to keep the long-term customer relationship in mind. Thinking about the future and how insurance can fit into our lives beyond the sales/claims process is what will differentiate brands down the line.”
