Customer Experience Does Not Recognize Organizational Boundaries

In my recent report, Digital Marketing in Insurance: Lessons from Other Intermediated Industries, I discussed how the data collection, personalization, targeting, and journey orchestration possible throughout the full marketing funnel in direct-to-consumer businesses is often interrupted or broken for insurers. Leads are handed off to agents, distributors, producers, or other intermediaries. Subsequent conversations with insurers focused on interruptions in data collection, lead management, and ROI reporting.

It occurred to me as I was working on customer journey mapping earlier this week that this inside-out way of looking at customer experience is flawed. Most customers and prospects are apathetic to organizational boundaries between insurers and agents. Digital customer journeys need to be seamless across all of these boundaries to provide positive experiences.

Interruptions in the sales funnel usually occur after a prospect has expressed interest or intent. Prospects go to the public website, which presents them with messaging and information from the insurer brand. They then follow a call to action, usually “get a quote,” “learn more,” “contact us,” or “find an agent.” They may receive a request to provide some basic personal or product information.

Shortly afterward, prospects are guided off the insurer website to an agent site or a digital dead-end with a phone number or message informing them that an agent will contact them shortly. This break in the prospect journey is complete from an organizational perspective: Different lead management platforms will take over the journey, different teams will start communications with the prospect, and different data collection processes will send prospect data to a different repository.

However, there is no break from the prospect’s perspective: They don’t care who owns their data or lead-nurturing journeys; they just want a quote. Consumers are often unaware of whether the agents with whom they communicate are independent, captive, or insurer employees.

Prospects want an easy, seamless quote and might hesitate or abandon the process if the insurer presents them with a disjointed funnel with breaks in branding or look/feel. Consumers expect pre-filled forms, where possible, that don’t require them to enter the same information more than once. They also expect that there will be a “next step” at the end of the process about which they can be proactive.

There are three implications to engineering this experience from the eyes of the consumer.

1. The experience should be uniform and seamless between agents and insurers. Jarring pass-offs from insurer to agent websites, where the insurer brand has disappeared, could cause the consumer to abandon the funnel. Agents should maintain their insurer’s brand-awareness, or at least supply re-assuring messaging that indicates a continuous experience. Any information that the visitor supplied on the insurer website should be available to the agent so that the visitor does not have to enter the same information twice.
2. The experience should be uniform and seamless between insurer products. If a visitor clicks a “get a quote” button for auto, then clicks a “get a quote” button for home, the website should direct them to similar-looking forms or funnels. Otherwise, visitors might get confused about where the site has direct them and abandon the funnel. Additionally, any data that the visitor entered for auto should carry over to home, reinforcing the brand’s uniformity and expediting the process.
3. The experience should be uniform over time. Customers who leave an organization’s website and return later should have an experience that is consistent in terms of forms, links, and branding. The website should store visitor information tied to their cookie IDs and use it to pre-fill data in any funnels they enter, even if these visitors had not set up logins.

This uniformity doesn’t just apply to acquisition and sales; it also applies to servicing, claims, and renewals. Insurers also need to measure the process via clickstream, session playback, or web analytics implementations to make sure that visitors are making it through the funnel easily.

Digital back-and-forth between agents and insurers may be unavoidable, but an exchange of data, consistent branding, and language that re-assures and sets expectations can help avoid any disruption or friction in digital consumer experiences.