While insurers have certainly ramped up their online offerings and focused on Web customer experience in the past few years in an effort to broaden access to their products and grow consumer appeal, it appears their customers still feel as though they're better serviced through more traditional channels.
A survey released yesterday by
The study evaluated multiple aspects of Web self-service and contact center customer service at 175 enterprises in the United States and Canada, with insurers being among the eight sectors surveyed. The research was conducted using a "mystery shopping" approach, and service performance was measured along multiple dimensions, including choice of communication channels; e-mail response; Web self-service; cross-channel consistency; single-channel (phone) cross-agent consistency; and phone customer service.
Overall, the survey found insurers' service performance to have a "below average" score of 1.8 out of 4.0, which was unchanged from last year. Compounding this was the rating for cross-agent experience, which plummeted from an "above average" score of 2.2 in 2009, to a "below average" score of 1.2 in 2010. However, eGain found disparities across contact center agents in: answers, query handling process, business policy and offers. For example, some agents would cross-sell contextual offers and others would not, thereby passing up revenue generation opportunities. Some agents would answer questions and even provide quotes, while others would transfer the call to another department, or simply direct the caller to the broker channel or the company Web site. The researchers also noted a significant disparity in the quality of agent answers in some instances.
eGain also asserts that the insurance industry has yet to adopt eService best practices. (Last fall, Forrester Research analyst Chad Mitchell
