Customer experience is a competitive differentiator. Taking the time to evaluate your entire customer journey can help drive improvement and create happier customers.
Is Customer Experience really that important?
The short answer is yes. Why? Well, “56% of consumers feel that the quality of the customer service they receive has a higher impact on how positively they view a brand than any other criteria” (CMS Wire). How positively they view a brand directly affects the retention rate, which in turn directly affects a company’s revenue. The same survey found that “86% of consumers would leave a brand after as few as two poor experiences.”
At Franklin Madison, we use a team of Customer Experience experts to help improve the customer experience provided to our financial institutions’ consumers. There’s a reason this part of our service offerings includes an entire team rather than just a few employees: it is one of the most essential parts of the overall insurance marketing process. Regardless of the quality of your products, without a good customer experience, financial institutions would still end up with unhappy customers.
Therefore, even if your institution doesn’t handle customer experience in-house, it’s essential to know what to look for to improve the experience when looking into outsourced marketing and financial wellness products.
Better Understanding = Better Communication
Having a clear picture of who your consumer is and what they want allows you to market to them in a way that shows you understand their needs. By collecting and analyzing data on consumer behavior, preferences, and interests, you can tailor the messaging, offers, and experiences to each consumer.
When you utilize simple, clear messaging and images, consumers can easily comprehend the products and the process and feel good about the whole experience rather than being frustrated and overwhelmed—which will likely discourage them from taking action.
This includes clear calls to action, omnichannel fulfillment options such as being able to register by mail, online, or by phone, and ensuring products are simple to use. When consumers can take advantage of a product without confusion or too much effort, they are likelier to take the leap.
Best-in-Class Products for Optimal Customer Experience
Even with the simplest marketing, if the products you offer aren’t best-in-class, you will have a negative customer experience in the end.
To ensure the ultimate customer experience, the products should cover your consumers’ needs, including higher value options for themselves and the option to add their family.
Part of a good product is good value. The price for the product should make the consumer feel like they got a good deal, not that they overpaid because they aren’t getting what they expected. Even better, a complimentary gift or an “extra” shows your consumers you value them and want them to get the most out of their experience with your institution.
Providing Customer Service and Claim Support
A crucial part of a good customer experience is giving consumers options on how to get questions answered. Some will want to hop onto a digital platform to quickly access a FAQ, pay bills, upgrade their coverage, see coverage information, or change basic account information.
However, other situations will require more extensive customer service. It’s imperative that they can access a real person on the phone who is an expert that can provide a one-call resolution. Situations like processing claims are much more complicated, and many people do not understand the paperwork or submission procedure. If they can access a real human being to help walk them through it, they are more likely to feel good about their experience.
At Franklin Madison, we’ve seen how important it is to provide customer support through the insurance claims process. When a person has experienced a severe accident, trauma, or death in the family, a little extra support can make the difference between a positive or negative experience with an insurance product they probably hoped they’d never have to use. We don’t adjudicate the claims, which is helpful in our role as a positive supporter in their time of need. We act as a concierge to help them gather all the information they need to submit their claim successfully.
Gather Feedback
A crucial part of customer service and a satisfactory customer experience is taking, recording, analyzing, and utilizing feedback.
The first step to using feedback to improve the customer experience is to record calls and create a process of reviewing those with positive and negative feedback. The review process should ensure that all complaints or negative feedback are detailed to determine the root cause of the complaint.
For example, a person calling to complain about not receiving something may have put the wrong contact information on their forms.
The best way to receive feedback is by allowing consumers to speak directly with customer service agents. This is especially true for highly personal solutions like financial wellness products or insurance. People take their financial protection very seriously—and rightfully so. Therefore, they want to work with people who also take them seriously. If they are having an issue with communication, paying a bill, or not understanding a part of making a claim, it’s important they have someone with whom they can speak and who can provide clarity.
Survey Customers
You could also consider using a Customer Satisfaction Survey to determine how customers really feel about the products you’re offering and the service that comes with them.
Ensure any surveys you submit are clear, short, and concise. Allow consumers to spill their thoughts in an open-ended question, but keep questions about overall satisfaction and all other questions closed and simple to answer. Make sure it’s only 5-7 minutes long so you don’t lose interest or waste their time. Plus, it’s easier to get accurate answers if people aren’t rushing through the end to get to the submission page.
How Franklin Madison Uses Consumer Feedback
Franklin Madison collects consumer feedback and uses it to continually improve the overall customer journey. Our goal is to increase your consumer retention by providing best-in-class insurance products and turnkey, omnichannel marketing and administration services. This way, you can feel good about providing financial wellness options for your consumers while focusing on what you do best.