A new J.D. Power study showed that insurer digital experiences now lead in satisfaction importance.
The J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Auto Insurance Study released last week revealed that auto insurance websites have become more important to the customer experience than human agents for the first time.
This was the first time in the 21-year life of the study that digital came out on top.
The study found that auto insurance websites had a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than human agents. This suggests that if insurers want to score the highest marks with their policyholders and potential customers, the digital experience will need to be a top priority. Though this doesn’t come as much of a shock to insurance companies, as the trend has been moving in this direction for a long time, what makes this study’s results particularly notable is that it has recorded the first time that the digital experience has more influence than human interaction.
“We’ve seen this trend developing for several years, but this is the first time that the digital channel has become the preferred means of interacting with auto insurers, exceeding one-on-one communication with agents,” said J.D. Power senior consultant for insurance intelligence, Robert Lajdziak. “This has huge implications for the industry because it puts the focus squarely on digital investment to notably expand creating seamless customer touch points. It’s an area in which the major national carriers excel, versus hyper-local, albeit knowledgeable, agent networks.”
The 2020 study findings indicated that auto insurance websites continue to rise in importance.
The following are some of the key J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Auto Insurance Study findings:
- Digital channels contribute widely to record high customer satisfaction levels.
- Investments into digital channels pay dividends. The insurer sites contributed 34 percent of the company’s overall interaction score on the J.D. Power index. This is a full percentage point higher than the influence from agents.
- Trust is crucial, and insurers need to focus on improving their score. Despite the substantial importance of trust (an improvement of one point out of five for trust would boost overall satisfaction by 118 points on the J.D. Power satisfaction scale), only 42 percent of customers feel they “strongly agree” that they trust their insurance company.
- Claim history has a substantial impact on loyalty. Whether using an auto insurance website
or human communication, the way a claim plays out has a tremendous impact on whether or not a customer will renew a policy.
