Home Insurance – Online Providers Failing To Help Customers
A recent Global Reviews webinar, Home Insurance: How Australian and UK websites compare, looks at the Digital Sales Effectiveness (DSE) of online home insurance brands in both regions.
The benchmark study follows the customers’ journey online and found that easy steps can be taken in order to improve the journey and ultimately, conversion rates.
However currently, no one brand succeeds in helping customers throughout each stage of the sales journey online in either region.
Looking at the overall scores relating to customer experience, it is clear that across all brands in the research, there is no clear outstanding performer but most providers in Australia are scoring slightly better than the UK.
Despite the slight variations in scores, it becomes apparent when we look at the industry averages across all stages of the customer journey that ‘Evaluating Options’ scores quite poorly and it is here that home insurance providers could make significant gains, by actively helping customers to find specific cover to suit their needs. On average, 40% of users in the UK failed to find a specific cover, with most websites making it a long and time-consuming process. Introducing quick wins such as a comparison table or calculator function could prove highly effective. In addition, the home insurance industry is weak at the ‘Facilitating Decisions’ stage. It is at this stage providers can really prove their value and stand out to customers by making it easy to communicate or indeed help users to self-serve online by offering relevant channels through which to escalate problems or ask questions. 50% of providers in the study failed customers by not offering clear phone numbers or help sections, meaning users who do have a problem will simply leave the website rather than be presented with opportunities to solve the issue.
In summary, no one brand succeeds across all the stages of the customer journey for home insurance across the UK and Australia. Home insurance providers are not maximising the simple opportunities to create an effective and satisfying buying journey for their customers.
Contact us for more information on our Digital Sales Effectiveness programme and to find out how your website rates.