Author: Judy DeLaRosa
While listening to the news this morning, I heard the phrase “customer experience” (CX) included in a statement from the U.S. Post Office as part of the announcement that they are ramping up same-day delivery. I’m not sure about you, but given my experience, I actually had to pause and play back what I heard in my mind. Imagine that, the U.S. Post Office focused on customer experience.
So if despite the daily barrage of information about the value of a customer experience driven culture from companies like Apple and Amazon you are still a doubting Thomas, I hope your interest will be piqued by a valuable new resource published by the ACT Customer Experience Work Group. For the rest of you, whether you are working through what this means to our industry or are a CX practitioner, I hope you’ll find ACT’s newest effort valuable as well.
This past February, the ACT Customer Experience Work Group published Version 1 of the Customer Journey Recommendations document. This valuable resource provides agents and other members of the distribution system with an understanding of the six phases of the consumer’s insurance journey and, for each of them, details consumer actions and expectations. It also provides actionable recommendations to help agents deliver valuable interactions with consumers throughout their journey.
Why did we create the work group and publish this document? Because while customer experience itself isn’t new – and certainly not new to us – what has changed is the expectations of today’s consumer and the fact that they are in control of their journey. If we want to stay relevant and be a part of their journey, we must first understand it and then determine how to apply technology and improve our processes to deliver an experience that meets, and ultimately exceeds, their expectations. We cannot continue to have our processes and technology control their experience.
In 2014, the ACT Customer Experience Work Group spent several months doing just this, developing a deep understanding of the consumer’s insurance journey. To keep focus, we first established personas for both a personal and a commercial lines consumer (a persona represents groups of users who exhibit similar behaviors). We then created a journey map detailing the various stages of the insurance buying process for each of these consumers. As we did not have the opportunity to engage end consumers in this process, we leveraged the knowledge and experience of the work group members as proxies when documenting the journey (after all, we’re consumers too).
The details identified and captured in the maps include consumer behaviors and actions in each stage of their journey (Discover, Evaluate, Buy, Experience, Renew or Leave, and Advocate). For each interaction, or “touchpoint,” we noted the quality of the current experience considering both the actual experience and the consumer’s emotional reaction. What were the pain points? What areas cause frustration or deliver delight? Can we leverage existing best practices? And what new ways does the consumer expect to interact with us. Finally, we used this information to develop recommended actions agencies should implement to improve engagement and value delivered at each interaction. We’ve also included some resources to help agents get started.
The resulting draft Consumer Journey Recommendations document was vetted with the larger ACT group and refined based on feedback. We then conducted a review with a group of agencies to determine the value of the recommendations and usefulness of the document. Throughout the pilot, we met to discuss findings and confirm or update our recommendations.
And ultimately, we proudly published the Consumer Journey Recommendations. This document is not intended to be exhaustive or all-inclusive. However, as validated by our great group of volunteer agencies, it does contain a lot of valuable, actionable information that will help you no matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned individual in this space.
Stay tuned – maybe even get involved – with the ACT Customer Experience Work Group, because our work here certainly isn’t done; in fact, it’s just beginning. The consumer’s journey is an ever-changing one; minute to minute and day by day there are new resources available, new ways of interacting, and new expectations established by our competitors and other companies consumers are interacting with. These competitors and companies are reaching out to our customers and getting their attention both online and off. And it’s certainly worth mentioning that we are seeing competition from industries we would have never imagined (e.g., Walmart, Amazon, Google). I think you would agree companies like these know a thing or two about customer experience. So we invite you to review and use this valuable resource and stay connected as we continue on our journey to consistently deliver an exceptional experience.
Judy DeLaRosa is VP, online platforms and solutions manager at Chubb.