Last week I got a call from a market research firm. They asked me about our company accident insurance. In great detail, they wanted to know how satisfied I was overall (5 out of ten), how much I valued the friendliness of their back-office (5 out of 10), their call-center (5 out of 10) and their sales agents (don’t know, we have a broker).
I realized how little I was connected to that insurance company. Two days prior, my broker called me and asked whether another insurance company could prepare a quote for us. I said yes. Because I don’t care where we are insured as long as the services are the similar and the price is the same or lower.
Our accident insurance company is living on dangerous grounds. They are competing on price and features.
What if they would offer me some emotional attachment to them? Maybe a face to my administrative contact would do. Maybe just a service that automatically send out birthday wishes and an accident-free year to our employees. It doesn’t need much to differentiate on experience.
Of course, my accident insurance could also go the entire way and instead of provisioning the same customer satisfaction study every year, go out and try to really understand their customers. Maybe they could then offer me a package that integrates all business insurance. One single point of contact, a consolidated invoice payable according to our financial planning, an easy to use online interface and maybe send out little cards with their emergency number on it, so I don’t have to print them myself for our employees.
I don’t think I’d switch easily if they enabled good experiences for us – even if they’d higher the prices.