Survey: Insurers Need to Shine at Claims Time
Recently, Kin surveyed homeowners about their experience with home insurance claims. Turns out the majority of homeowners — about 89 percent — haven’t had a claim in more than 15 years.
That’s good news considering fewer claims means fewer losses for both homeowners and insurers. But is also means that the stakes are high when insurers must deliver on what their product promises. One bad claims experience after years and years of customer loyalty could be the straw that sends that valuable customer to a competitor. (Remember, repeat customers are more likely to be brand ambassadors, require less marketing spend, and spend more than first-time customers. They are key to an impressive ROI.)
Here’s what we learned from the survey.
Survey Highlights
These are the areas where customers struggled the most during the claims filing and settlement process:
- Receiving payment
- Completing claims paperwork
- Interacting with the claims adjuster
Overall, 36 percent of homeowners found the claims experience either somewhat or very stressful. While the majority of respondents (82 percent) were either somewhat or very satisfied with how their provider handled the claim, that satisfaction rating would hardly fly in any other industry.
36 percent of homeowners found the claims experience stressful.
Think about it this way: historically, insurers are only delivering their product to a customer’s satisfaction 82 percent of the time. That might be fine for passing a final exam you didn’t study for, but this is business.
Customers deserve better than a passable experience. They should be wowed.
It’s time to stop expecting so little from insurance companies.
Reimagining the Claims Process
There is certainly room for insurers to improve customer experience during the claims process, especially when it comes to limiting stress. We believe transparency, automation, and connectedness can help insurers reduce customer stress and turn a satisfactory claims experience into an exceptional one.
- Transparency: Insurers should have a process in place to educate customers on what they need to do, why they need to do it, and what to expect when filing a claim. This transparency builds trust — customer don’t feel like they’re jumping through hoops for the sake of it. It also ensures they don’t get blindsided by paperwork that could delay the settlement process.
- Automation: No customer wants to fill out more paperwork than they have to. While using tech to select risk and pre-rate policyholders is becoming more common in insurance (though let’s be honest — it’s not common enough), claims are long overdue for an update. That’s why we’ve been testing the use of drones after major disasters to help document property damage and get claims underway faster.
- Connectedness: Insurers don’t have a reputation for being friendly or easy to talk to. That’s why we make good communication a cornerstone of our business practices. We even check in with our customers just to see how they’re doing. And that inclination becomes even more important when customers experience property loss. That’s why our claims center is open when customers need us. We know questions and stress don’t just happen during business days. Relatedly, we also partner with home service providers that can help make sure our customers are less likely to experience severe property loss from the outset.
Though insurers still have a long way to go to get claims processing into the future, these guiding principles can help ensure innovations are focused on what truly matters: making the customer’s life easier.
The Takeaway: Your Product Is Only Half the Battle
You can have a great product, but without the customer service to support it, you risk losing customers to a lesser product paired with stellar service. Make sure your product delivers on its promises, but make sure you also have a customer service team that amplifies and streamlines its use.
