The insurance industry still has a way to go on improving its digital experience for customers, a new SAP report has found.
The annual Digital Experience Report ranked the industry in the bottom three when it came to digital experience with a score of -5 – with only telecommunications (-11) and utilities (-15) ranked lower.
Stuart O’Neill, head of SAP Hybris Australia and New Zealand, told
Insurance Business that more work needs to be done to improve digital experiences in insurance.
“If I was looking at the insurance sector, we have seen them improve from where they were last year where they were -7, to -5, but they are still not anywhere near the average which is about -4,” O’Neill said. “There is still a lot of room for improvement within the industry and within the sector.”
O’Neill said that the industry has done well in getting the basics of digital experience right for their customers – it is seen as secure and has digital capabilities that make a customer’s life easier. In addition, it also offers information online that is simple and easy to find.
The industry fails though, on more emotion-based metrics, O’Neill said.
“A lot of the emotional areas are still lacking,” O’Neill continued. “If you look at where insurance companies failed, it was making you love the company, making you feel individual and special, being able to excite me.”
In a bid to strengthen customer experience, the industry should look to understand its clients better, personalise information whenever possible and contextualise customer details to offer more targeted and specific products and services to clients.
“That means, I might be looking at a home loan and if I have a home loan, could it be time to talk to me about insurance,” O’Neill continued. “There is the ability to move in this direction and the ability for the more traditional players to improve their digital ranking as long as they concentrate on their customer and understand that digital is part of their core business.”
O’Neill noted that digital experience could be more important for brokers than insurers as direct players look to boil comparison down to price.
“Security and relevancy is almost as important as price,” O’Neill said. “Price, at the end of the day, is the lowest differentiator; it gives me a boundary of who I might want to talk to.
“But if I can deal with someone who can combine all my insurance products, provide me with something that is simple and easy to use, and then comes and tells me that I can benefit from something I didn’t know I could benefit from, or I could use differently, that becomes valuable to me.”
Related stories:
FMA emails all brokers on advice changes
Expert speaks out on whether chatbots can replace brokers
