Customer Experience: P&C Insurers Not Great, Health Insurers Worse

As seen in previous surveys and reports (see last month's Satmetrix benchmark study and The American Customer Satisfaction Index's ranking from December 2010), consumers don’t look kindly upon health insurers. Such is the case again in the Temkin Group’s latest report, “2011 Temkin Experience Ratings.” P&C insurers, however, came out a little ahead of their health insurer brethren.

The consulting and research firm surveyed 6,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with companies. The consumers named 143 companies across 12 industries, which included health and P&C insurers.

Across all 12 industries, Temkin Group found that retailers provide the best customer experience, while TV service providers and health plans lag behind. The average score for health plans (50%) fell on the cusp between poor and very poor. Exceptions in the health plan industry were TriCare (65%), Medicare (59%) and Kaiser Permanente (57%), which all scored above the industry average. TriCare was the only health plan in the top half of the ranking.

P&C insurers scored just a bit higher at (59%), but still in the “poor” range. Exceptions in this category were USAA (71%) and American Family (66%).

To determine the Temkin Experience Ratings, the firm asked consumers about three areas of their most recent interactions with the companies:

• Functional Experience Component—To what degree were you able to accomplish what you wanted to do?

• Accessible Experience Component—How easy was it to interact with the company?

• Emotional Experience Component—How did you feel about those interactions?

Consumers were asked to rate experiences, based on a 7-point scale, that they had during the previous 60 days. While consumers rated many companies, the firm limited its analysis to the 143 companies for which it had responses from at least 100 consumers. It then developed ratings for each of the three components of experience by taking the percentage of consumers that gave a company good scores and subtracting those that gave it a bad score. The Temkin Experience Rating is an average of the ratings from each of the three experience components.

Among all 143 companies, the following insurance companies received rankings:

23. USAA

43. American Family

53. State Farm

69. Travelers (tied with Citigroup and US Bancorp)

72. Liberty Mutual

73. The Hartford

79. Progressive (tied with Apple)

81. MetLife

87. GEICO (tied with US Bank)

96. Nationwide

108. AAA (tied with Wells Fargo Advisors)

117. Allstate

126. Farmers’

134. 21^st Century (tied with Medicad)

Among all 143 companies, the following health plans received rankings:

46. TriCare

85. Medicare

95. Kaiser Permanente

131. United Healthcare

132. Humana

133. Aetna

134. Medicaid (tied with 21^st Century)

137. Blue Shield of California

141. CIGNA

143. Anthem (BCBS)