Digital Finance: Swinton Insurance on Building Brand Trust Through Customer Experience
All kinds of brands today are subject to the complexities of increasingly diverse device usage, but some sectors face further challenges. In the world of finance, brands have to consider meeting the appropriate regulatory standards, to ensure customers are fully aware of what they are purchasing through whichever screen size they choose.
Adam Moran, Senior Marketing Manager – Digital, at Swinton Insurance, knows all too well about the difficulties of balancing customer experience with financial and data regulation. Here, ahead of our webinar with Adam, are a few of the key outtakes. 
Focus on core messages when presenting more information on smaller screens
Adam explains that “As new regulations have come in, it’s meant more information has to be presented to the customer, whilst increasingly those customers are using smaller screens – that presents an obvious challenge.”
Swinton’s approach has been to bring focus to its messaging. Adam defines the insurance brand’s key differentiator as trust, built up through transparency, “but from a user experience perspective it’s difficult to provide that transparency. We’ve addressed this by focussing on core messaging, such as pulling out core policy statements from products and giving them greater weight for the user.”
Prioritise transparency over frictionless user journey
“We aim to be whiter than white with regards to regulation, and sometimes that comes at a cost to customer journeys – quote journeys or secure areas may not be as fluid as they might otherwise be,” explains Adam. “But that’s actually our USP. Rather than making things quick and easy, we want the customer to know exactly what they’re buying.”
The other issue is jargon. Does the average customer know exactly what ‘personal possessions’ means when it’s referred to? Many don’t, so Swinton focuses on explaining things as best as it possibly can to help customers make informed decisions.
Choose the right hypothesis to test
Swinton’s approach to testing its user journeys starts with the problem they want to solve. But there are other factors too, including traffic volume; the higher the traffic is, the quicker a conclusion can be reached.
“We also combine quantitative with qualitative,” explains Adam. “We conduct user groups to see how real people physically interact with the screen. But the other element is your own common sense. In some instances it doesn’t make sense to wait for the data to pile up to prove a hypothesis when your gut instinct shows you it’s right.”
Use reactive content for ‘planned’ agility
Another element affected by regulations and restrictions in the finance sector is the freedom to adopt agile marketing practices. Unlike many other consumer brands, Swinton is unlikely to whip up a reactive piece of content in instant response to the latest trending topic on Twitter – that wouldn’t be on brand. But it can adopt another approach to ‘agile’.
“Some events may not be entirely predictable, but they can be planned for,” explains Adam. Swinton plans content related to issues like weather, which might trigger a need to make a claim. For instance, Swinton has content about what to do in the event of a storm which is fully ready to go and can be pushed out via the website, paid social and other channels. This is timely, relevant and personalised content that helps to build customers’ trust in the brand.
Create useful content
Not every piece of content has to be super flashy, as long as it’s useful. Adam explains that at Swinton, “We learn from data in surveys, social listening and the search terms used to determine what kinds of content our customers are looking for. Then we try to be critical as to whether the content we create suits a purpose. We learn from what’s worked before too – one of our more successful pieces was an infographic showing how to bleed a radiator.” Which seemed not the most exciting pieces of content, but it was really useful for our customers.
Customer experience and trust more important than price
Adam believes that the insurance market, like many others, could be starting to shift away from being ‘price led’ to being ‘customer service led’ for certain groups of customers. Price is clearly still important, particularly with the power of comparison sites, but as customers are becoming more online-savvy, reviews and customer ratings are gaining greater influence on purchase decisions too. This means brands have to focus on where they are delivering great customer experiences and building trust.
To learn more about how Swinton has reaped the rewards of reactive content, sign up for the webinar on May 25 2016.