Tealeaf: Experience Your Customers

And I Quote

By Julie Zisman, Director of Marketing —

Right now, I'm working on a survey project to understand how insurers balance the requirements of agents versus consumers. It has to be tough managing a business that has two distinct audiences with competing needs. I'm told it ultimately boils down to the quoting process. In a highly competitive market, an insurer's conversion from marketing touch to policy holder is paramount and understanding the impact of obstacles in the customer experience can make or break your company. It's even started to penetrate acquisition marketing.

Take a look at Esurance's current marketing campaign, "Technology when you want it. People when you don't." What an ideal example of appealing to the customer's needs regardless of channel. However, Esurance's approach to improving its customer's experience didn't end with its marketing campaign. It extended its philosophy of meeting its customer's needs regardless of how those customers chose to interact to its entire business. You can read more about how Esurance delivers a simple, fast, and seamless insurance buying experience—which helps it grow online revenues while reducing support costs—by clicking here.

At this point you may be wondering: Can an insurance company establish a competitive advantage just by optimizing its online channel? Here are some things you should consider:

• Are you asking questions that are increasing the threshold for completing an online process? For example, will new drivers know what kind of insurance limits they will need?
• Can consumers and agents "game" your online process? If someone is quoting online for life insurance, can they change their age brackets to get a better deductible?
• When you have complex offers based on demographic details are they executing correctly? If you offer someone a discount at the end of an online quote is that discount carrying into your purchase process?

When it takes 15 minutes or less to switch insurance companies and often less to switch in other industries, a bad first online experience with a consumer or agent can become your last opportunity to obtain a new customer.

By the way, to see how Esurance is benefiting from Customer Experience Management, have a look at the case study.

Mobile Banking: Where Do I Start?

By Julie Zisman, Director of Marketing —

Last week I attended the banking show, BAI Retail Delivery. Most of the show buzz was around digital payment methods and the future of mobile banking. As technologies in this area advance at the speed of light, banks are scrambling to understand how to develop a meaningful mobile channel. Do you develop for a mobile web banking experience, an application or both? Which mobile channel is better for acquisition or self service?

My first piece of advice on this subject is to have a primary understanding of user experience thresholds. I recently saw a report that online shoppers will start an online shopping experience in the morning commute on their phone, continue it in the office on a desktop and finish it at home on an iPad. It's easy to see a banking customer paying bills or conducting online transactions in such a manner. Where, then, should banks start?

Are Banks Prepared for Generation Y?

When was the last time you were inside a bank? You know, with human tellers, cardboard marketing promotions, and lollipops? The answer probably depends on a few factors, including your age and the type of transaction you were trying to make. Recent research suggests that "Generation Y" (the folks born in the mid 1970s through early 2000s, also known as "Millennials") will shape the future of online banking, effectively making brick and mortar banks a thing of the past.

Two interesting surveys, one conducted by Cisco and the other by the American Bankers Association, concluded that Gen Y-ers are demanding "on-the-go, personalized communications" and will want to use a variety of platforms and channels to conduct their banking, including mobile devices (97% of Gen Y-ers own one), and social media. The ABA survey found online banking to be the preferred banking method for 25% of bank customers under the age of 55.

Interestingly, nearly 40% of Gen Y-ers are interested in interacting with an adviser via video and prefer web-based personal financial management tools (primarily those offered by their banks) to manage expenses, reduce debt, and maximize long-term savings. Because of this, it’s never been more important for banks to stay ahead of the curve and invest in technology that will support online banking and sustain the influx of the largest American generation since the Baby Boomers as they enter the marketplace.

So, what can banks do?

Saving Customers, Current and Future

Couple of weeks ago a friend emailed me about a disturbance in her neighborhood. Seems a gunman had taken over the bank just down the street. The interesting thing is, the guy didn't want money. He let all the bank patrons leave, the tellers as well, and locked himself in the bank. Why? Turns out he had a list of grievances with the bank and wanted to air them as publically as possible.

There's got to be a better way to understand your customers than that.

I don't mean to make light of a tragic situation. The incident I've described is regrettable for all concerned. But it does underscore the need to listen to every customer and resolve their issues as quickly as possible. Sometimes it saves the relationship you have with just that one customer and keeps them coming back. More often, proactively uncovering issues saves the relationship (and the revenue) with many more customers—including those whose future business you might have lost due to the issue.

There are lots of ways to listen to your customers. Website feedback forms, social media monitoring, recording call center activity—all of them very powerful tools for understanding customer experience. But it's important to remember that only a fraction of your customers go to the trouble of actually telling you when there something wrong—and it’s usually not until they're already very dissatisfied. Of course, we'd tell you a better approach is to detect and remedy the struggles of all your customers, not just the vocal ones.

By the way, ironically or maybe fittingly, I received that friend's email about the bank incident while I was moderating a track at a Retail Financial Services conference. There were a number of great sessions on improving the online customer experience and we were glad to meet with several of our financial services customers who are using Tealeaf to do that very thing. Thanks to all who spoke on our behalf.

Connect the Dots of Customer Experience

I had a typically frustrating experience with my bank's customer support center today (and I say typical not in reference to my bank, but to calling customer support lines in general). I tried to make a credit card payment, and thought I successfully had, but it never seemed to go through. Read: I was trying to give my credit card company money, but to no avail. After multiple attempts I called in to see what I was doing wrong. Upon reaching a representative (success!), I had to recount exactly what I had done online—what I had clicked, any error messages I saw or did not see, the last page I was on. This all amounted to a 10 minute phone call where my question of “what did I do wrong?” was never answered. Instead, I was walked through the “correct” way to make online payments.

Upon going through the payment process again after the call, I finally realized that when I clicked from one credit card's statement to pay the bill, the site was taking me to a payment page for a credit card that I was no longer using and not trying to pay—a technical issue on their end that I imagine others were also encountering. By the time I figured this out, I had already incurred a late fee and had no way to prove the issue that was preventing me from making a payment online. It’s enough to make one question the real time savings of online bill pay...