"We see a real pattern of small business insurers missing the mark on soft skills, such as interaction with agents and proactive outreach—both being areas in which commercial insurers have historically thrived," said Robert M. Lajdziak, senior consultant of insurance intelligence at J.D. Power. "There’s also a trend in which small commercial customers spend three times more effort interacting with their carrier on the website, on the phone or with agents. The largest declines in the study are among customers who had workers comp coverage or commercial auto policies. Carriers will want to pay particular attention to customers with these types of policies."
Following are some key findings of the 2021 study:
Interactions drive decline: Customer satisfaction has declined 15 points in the past two years—a 7-point decline from a year ago and an 8-point decline in 2020 from 2019. These represent the only declines in the study’s history. Satisfaction with interactions shows a 20-point decline from a year ago.
Customer effort to interact with agent is three times higher than 2020: Customers who say they had to exert a great deal of effort to interact with their agent increases to 32% from 10% a year ago. Digital interactions were no less immune, increasing to 34% from 10% year over year.
Proactive outreach too little, too late: In 2020, only 19% of customers indicated their carrier proactively reached out to them to discuss business needs related to COVID-19. While proactive contact significantly increases to 45% in 2021, the positive effect it has on customer satisfaction declines 31 points, which indicates insurers may have been too late in providing support to their customers.
Mixed messaging in communication: While proactive outreach still has a positive effect, carriers need to ensure the information being communicated is accurate across channels and documents. Among customers who received proactive outreach from their insurer are citing more problems and/or billing issues in 2021 (46%) than in 2020 (26%).
Scrambling to get answers: Customers experiencing problems and/or billing-related issues are using multiple channels—such as mobile app, online chat and text messaging—to get answers to their questions. These customers are nearly twice as likely to use four or more channels than those who don’t experience problems.