Sue Nimmo, Head of Customer Experience at Markerstudy Insurance Services Limited (MISL)
In the financial services industry and its subindustries, in particular insurance, meeting the pressing needs for products and services to abide by new and strict regulations, compliance, and security guidelines, has impacted the industry’s ability to provide a satisfying customer journey.
Customer satisfaction in each of the UKCSI sectors has dropped in 2024 compared to 2023. Building an excellent customer experience strategy is key – and there are three key areas for organisations to focus on, where they already have to tools to improve the customer journey at their disposal.
- Ensure a smooth journey by answering customer question with improve data insights
Financial services providers are under pressure to ensure their products continue to be fit for purpose and that they address key customer pain points, while providing great customer outcomes at every touch point of their journey. But how do companies know that they are doing this?
A successful customer journey begins with knowing your customer segments. Understanding their needs, including different vulnerabilities, and objectives enables you to build customer personas to use when designing customer journeys. Without the correct insights to build customer personas, the customer journey design could be purely based on assumptions and not meet customer needs.
Data is key to reaching next level insights
Touch points may need to be designed differently for various customer types and the use of data to measure their effectiveness is critical. MISL for example, is currently issuing customer satisfaction surveys to drive insights to measure exactly where customer journeys meet expectations and where they don’t – and it’s not always where you think!
This data helps financial services companies dig deeper than simply high-profile issues within the claims processes that may be obvious. The use of other data sources can also provide organisations further intel about pain points within the customer journey. Insights can come from complaints, quality assurance, experienced employees, and others in the distribution chain.
- Utilise your employees, their diversity can add to the customer journey
But it’s not just data alone that helps find where customers are struggling.
The diverse culture and acquisitional nature of many financial services organisations provides a wealth of varied experiences within the business. The combination of deep expertise across the company, from employees of different backgrounds offers new perspectives, views, and outcomes to match consumer preferences.
Merging employee viewpoints
For example, when a new business becomes part of a parent company, existing and new employees can come together to offer a fresh perspective and feedback on touch points in customer journeys. This helps an organisation look at challenges differently, meaning a company can appeal to a wider consumer base and help tackle a broad range of consumer pain points.
- Tackle customer challenges head on by improving communication tools and training employees
When dealing with insurance claims and queries, it’s paramount customer interactions are always handled with respect. To ensure this, employees must be supplied with the best training, tools, and empowerment that equips them to deal with issues whatever channel the customer chooses. When it comes to communication methods, today’s customers demand choices.
Front-line employees can improve the quality of customer experiences through the use of smart call routing that helps direct customers to the correct person to deal with their query. From here, insights captured from customers calling can be used to iteratively improve their experience. On the other hand, online portals allow customers to report and track a claim. This should be an effortless switch using the customer’s preferred channel.
Start by answering these questions
But improving communication sometimes needs to go back to basics and it can be as simple as improving the company website. Financial services organisations need to be asking how easily can customers access our services? Are policy documents simple to understand? Is it easy to complain? Are we signposting next steps to the customer clearly? Technology experience truly does matter! For 45% of consumers, the poor use of technology has made them avoid an organisation.
Consumer Duty keeps standards high and consumers in first place!
People are always willing to shop around, competition is fierce, and it’s made getting the customer journey right more important than ever. It’s time financial services tapped into their data points, their diverse range of employees and their communications approach to deliver truly great customer outcomes.
