This week we were joined by Joanne Pupo, head of digital engagement at AXA Group Emerging Technologies and Data, Assaf Henkin, co-founder, president and chief operating officer at Sproutt, and Johan Sundstrom, head of sales – financial services at Trustly.
We discussed customer retention, understanding customer expectations and encouraging customer advocacy.
Here’s what we learnt:
If customer loyalty is the end, customer understanding is the means. There is no one singular kind of customer, and demographics don’t necessarily tell the whole story. Johan Sundstrom points out that Trustly sees many over-60s who want digital experiences, bucking demographic assumptions. Other customers have been found to be more annoyed at seeing content, and data analytics can tailor customer journeys to their expectations.
32% consider that their company is successfully making a priority of customer retention, while 24% don’t see enough progress being made and a further 7% see very little being done.
Quality matters as much as quantity in customer engagement. In many industries, frequency and recency are among the key metrics in customer retention – this isn’t quite the case for insurance. Some customers want continual engagement, others want to be left alone. What no customer wants is spam. Insurers should ensure that outreach is bespoke and relevant.
32% speak to customers on a daily basis, while 11% almost never get to speak to customers.
Customer retention needs to be taken as seriously as customer acquisition. Joanne Pupo says that insurers need to invest further in an emotional customer connection. In this relatively low-touch industry, every customer contact counts. There will always be a balance between digitisation and direct human contact, and insurers need to tailor their customer experience in the same way that they would tailor their underwriting or claims processes.
43% consider that their company prioritises measuring customer advocacy, while 20% don’t see this happen at all.
Customer advocacy is the holy grail of insurance marketing. Assaf Henkin says that customer advocacy should be a key performance indicator for firms looking to bolster their customer retention. He points to an initiative that Sproutt launched where they asked their community to submit feedback videos, which have since become their most popular content on record. Put simply, harnessing first-hand customer testimonials can be the most authentic and effective marketing.
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Matt Kenyon is a content producer at Insurtech Insights.
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