How many companies are guilty of only talking to their customers once a year—if that? It happens more often than we think.
After our daughter was born, my husband and I leased a larger family car. After driving the car for a year we realized we had never filed paperwork with the insurance company. We had been driving an uninsured car and paying insurance on a car we no longer drove for nearly a year!
It wasn’t totally the fault of the insurance company that we hadn’t updated our information. We could have taken charge and made the change ourselves, but the insurance company should have done a better job of keeping up with us to know that things had changed in our lives.
The average insurance customer talks with their insurer once a year or less, and it’s often a simple contact. That means that unless they go out of their way to communicate with customers, insurers often don’t have fresh data. Without knowing what’s going on in their customers’ lives, how can insurance companies provide personalized experiences and recommendations?
Insurance companies can and should do a better job of staying up to date with customers and keeping a database of changes in their lives. This includes things like knowing if a customer is buying a new house or planning to move, if their child is getting to the age that they will be getting a drivers license or if they are pregnant or just had a new baby. This are huge changes in a customer’s life, but what busy customer will take the time to seek out their insurer and let them know of changing life situations?
Think of the sales opportunities—aside from just knowing more about customers to build a stronger personal relationship, having updated information helps insurers sell products that matter to their customers. They might need updated home insurance, to add their child to their car insurance or a new life insurance policy after the birth of a new baby.
It’s a missed opportunity if insurers don’t have fresh information and aren’t staying on top of what is happening in their customers’ lives.
I’m sure my husband and I aren’t the first people to forget to file insurance paperwork. Keeping customer data fresh can help keep customers connected to their insurance company and open the doors for more personalized service and product recommendations. There’s always room for more data and personalization in insurance.
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, author of More Is More, and keynote speaker. Sign up for her weekly newsletter here. Go farther and create knock your socks-off customer experiences in your organization by enrolling in her new Customer Experience Schoo