Customers have higher expectations while digital technologies impact communication. In a competitive landscape like the insurance industry, companies need to understand customer expectations and deliver their promises.
Customers pass various internal processes during their digital journey. How can you provide a smooth online experience for your customers? The Insurance Customer Journey Map helps identify what’s important to customers and directs their focus on avoiding wasting resources.
The customer journey map explained
The customer journey map reveals the customer’s experience in different phases of the purchasing process. It shows how customers interact with the insurance company when buying a policy or filing a claim. The journey map has different stages, and analyzing them helps you understand where to improve to provide the best customer experience. The customer journey is noted in chronological order, starting from the awareness stage.
The benefits of mapping out the customer journey
Mapping the digital journey is largely implemented in the e-commerce and travel industry. And it shouldn’t be underestimated by the insurance companies. The goal is to improve the customer experience, and there is no better way to do it than by understanding their perspective.
Better customer experience
The customer journey mapping helps you understand what an ideal experience would look like for the customer and where you need to improve. Insurance companies should divide their customers by demographics to understand how the process looks for each age group.
Growth
Even though mapping the customer journey identifies areas for immediate improvement, it also enhances long-term growth. Companies can reveal opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling, and improving retention. In addition, they will improve the service and product.
Enhanced customer engagement
The customer comes across various touchpoints through different channels. The goal of the company is to find out where they engage the most and focus on that particular channel. This way, they can direct their resources to achieve the best results. In addition, this step can help establish consistent experience throughout all the channels.
Understanding customers
Mapping the journey can help insurance companies understand their customers. At a certain point in their journey, customers might be lost. The company should identify this and improve the business process.
Personalized services
Understanding the customer journey allows insurance companies to offer personalized service. Customers will be so happy to have the perfect product or service that exactly matches their needs and preferences.
Efficiency
Mapping helps identify the exact areas that require improvement, allowing companies to direct their resources there. They will save time and money by fixing the important problems first.
Stages of mapping our customer journeys in insurance
Customer awareness
During the first phase, customers are actually realizing they need insurance. Mapping your customer journeys reveals how the customers perceive your brand. You will understand what customers think of your company when looking for the perfect product.
What does this mean for insurance companies? They can enhance first-time engagement with their marketing efforts. For example, they can put effort into SEO to appear higher on the search engine result page. During this stage, you might discover that potential customers give up when they need to wait long on the phone to reach support to answer their questions. Such insights can lead to adding self-service support to improve the experience.
Customer decision
After careful consideration, the customer will choose their company. During this stage, you would need to focus on how customers pick products. Also, you need to understand how they perceive your brand against the competitors.
Understanding how customers make decisions can help you identify opportunities, such as implementing cross-selling and upselling. Also, companies might discover issues with the design and interface that deter potential customers and make improvements.
New policy acquisition
During this stage, companies will learn how customers get their products and the amount of effort they put into the process. Customers don’t want hassles, so simplifying the purchasing process through digital channels will enhance satisfaction.
Your customers might be deterred by the lengthy PDF documents, so why not turn them into a user-friendly digital journey? Simplifying the data gathering and signing will also work well in terms of enhancing customer satisfaction.
Customer experience during product ownership
During this stage, companies need to consider how the post-purchase activities are connected with future actions. Also, customer’s needs change over time. For example, they might need new coverage after the wedding, buying a new house, or the birth of their child. Lastly, try to find out more about the stages where the customer gets stuck. A poorly designed checkout page might be the reason for this, so you have room for improvement there.
The useful insights you gather at this stage can be used later in the cycle. For example, they can serve as a base for improving claims processing and policy renewal.
Customer retention
After your customers have used your product for some time, it is time to see how they perceive your brand. Marketing efforts directed toward existing customers can enhance the retention rate. Insurers can also consider cross-selling strategies.
Product end
What happens when the policy expires? You need to find out whether your customers will stick with your brand or go with another company. Based on these insights, you can implement improvements such as web chat and real-time support or provide better support during the claims process.
Why you should have a digital journey strategy
The customer journey maps help you gain useful insights that serve as a base for further improvements. When the process is smooth and straightforward, you will have a lot of happy clients that will come back.
Insurance companies will understand which steps customers take when they need insurance. With this, they can identify the pain points or the exact stages where the customer gets frustrated.
After you complete the mapping, you need to analyze it and identify the problem that needs immediate attention. Developing an action plan comes next and is followed by close collaboration among different departments.
