With Professor David Soberman, Canadian National Chair in Strategic Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
It’s no secret that business of all stripes has been moving online—it’s only sped up in recent years. As brokers know, even businesses traditionally relying on face-to-face interactions aren’t immune to this development.
“We’ve seen the acceleration of an upward trend that was already happening—for example, online shopping now accounts for about 20% of all retail shopping, up substantially from before the pandemic,” said Professor David Soberman, Canadian National Chair in Strategic Marketing at U of T’s Rotman School of Management.
Further to Prof. Soberman’s point, in 2019 that number was closer to 14%. So the full return to in-person activities since Covid hasn’t slowed the move online. But this change isn’t without trade-offs.
“What’s lost in this shift is different for buyers and sellers. For the buyer, the loss is one of a relationship with a person who deals with you and knows you—this is especially significant for products where trust is important. For the seller, what’s lost is the personal relationship and knowledge of the buyer. This tends to make buyers less loyal and more price sensitive.”
These trade-offs will be all too familiar to brokers. For brokerages who previously did a lot of business face-to-face, there are strategies that Soberman recommends for retaining that personal touch while working online.
“When trying to emulate face-to-face relationships online, make sure your client is dealing with the same person all the time. Can online interactions include more than exchanging emails? Telephone calls are good, but the best in this context are Zoom or video conferences—much better than a dry email. Try to learn details about the client and record them, even if they aren’t directly related to the insurance contract.”
To give clients the feeling of being cared for by an actual person, a brokerage will have to work to build these interactions into their customer journey.
“The customer journey starts from the minute the customer finds out about you until the minute they make a decision to buy, and this journey continues with repeated purchases for relationship products like insurance.”
You can create a customer journey map to analyze what kind of customer experience you deliver by writing down every touchpoint your company can expect to have with a client throughout their lifetime.
“The company has to make sure the consumer goes through each step of the journey smoothly and without a pain point—those are the moments where the customer says this isn’t working and leaves. For example, if a prospective customer calls and presses four on their phone to speak to the next available agent, but for some reason, the system disconnects, they’ll say forget it and won’t call back. Typical pain points include not responding, making a person wait too long, recording information incorrectly, and the consumer not fully understanding what they’ve selected.”
After creating a customer journey map, you’ll want to test it out. Run through it as if you’re a prospective customer. Ask others to do the same, ideally, people from outside the business. As you find places in the journey that need improvement, use those as opportunities to engage them with human interaction. By carefully cultivating the customer journey, even in purely digital business relationships, you can create a sense that a person is available to help.
“Many online retailers have added customer service with chatbots to answer easy questions, and these quickly get switched to a live agent if the questions are too complex.”
You’ll want to be sure you’re giving the client several options to connect with your business, so they can select the one that’s most convenient for them. Convenience is among the most important factors to consumers. Even a minor inconvenience can turn into a deal-breaking pain point.
Whatever technology you use to support your human interactions, you want to create a seamless experience. For example, if your business is on social media, it has to be ready to engage. Posting content is great, but you’ll want to make sure you have a person dedicated to responding to any comments and replies that come through those channels. These one-to-one engagements demonstrate to that particular client, as well as others who may be watching, that there are people ready to answer questions. And unanswered @replies sent to your company have the opposite effect. This is why you’ll want to be deliberate in the technologies you implement. Think of them as extensions of human interactions rather than replacements for them.
One of the best things you can do to improve client feedback is one of the oldest techniques—ask clients for their feedback. Read your Google and Facebook reviews and identify the places where transactions have derailed. Since it’s their experience you’re looking to improve, they’ll ultimately be one of the best data sources for what needs to be done differently.
“While the behaviour and expectations of clients regarding how they want to interact with insurance providers have changed, some things haven’t changed at all,” said Soberman. “A provider that better understands the needs of its clients and learns how to add a personal touch to a relationship that is increasingly digital, will thrive. Going that extra mile and doing things just a little better than your key competitor is worth its weight in gold.”