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Customers expect to be treated fairly and require transparency

Insurance companies spend a great deal of time talking about their customer focus and being customer centric.

However, few companies have actually implemented this successfully, according to Abigail Boikhutso, CEO of Consulta, the company responsible for the annual South African Customer Satisfaction Index (SA-csi) for Life Insurance.

The index provides insights into the levels of customer satisfaction of SA’s major life insurers by linking customer expectations, perceived quality and perceived value to customer satisfaction. This, in turn, is linked to customer complaints and customer loyalty intentions.

“Two years into the pandemic and customers are no longer accepting excuses for delivering a lousy customer experience due to the impact of Covid-19 on operations and customer service,” says Boikhutso.

Far from providing any reprieve from customer expectations, customer expectations for the life insurance industry are at the highest on record, according to the latest SA-csi results.

“If anything, our lived experience has sharply highlighted the importance and value of life insurance during uncertain times and this has, in turn, driven up customer expectations of the performance of their life insurer, as well as their cover,” says Boikhutso.

She reveals that consumers are demanding simplicity, absolute clarity and transparency in terms of the conditions of their cover, have ditched overly complex and expensive rewards programmes that require high effort levels, and have become increasingly intolerant of bad customer experiences and slow responses from service providers.

From an engagement perspective, she adds, consumers expect to receive the same level of responsiveness of digital service integration as they do from their banks, and life insurers have been under immense pressure to bring their processes and systems into the mainstream of digitalisation.

The industry continues to see a hangover of the reputational damage caused by highly publicised claims repudiations during the pandemic. “Any hint of a blunder in respect of the trust and reliability of an insurer is likely to have a significant impact on customer loyalty and, in turn, the overall perception of satisfaction with the insurer,” says Boikhutso.

There is a commensurate increase in brand loyalty for those life insurers who show high levels of treating customers fairly, who have upped their game when it comes to complaints resolution as well as actively finding ways to reduce the incidence of repeat complaints, as well as reducing the complexity of benefits and rewards structures to make for more transparent and easier engagement, she adds.

Boikhutso says the past two years have clearly demonstrated that in an environment where insurance is largely commoditised and undifferentiated in terms of benefits and pricing, a firm commitment to outstanding customer service and centricity is fundamental across every channel and touch point.

To meet customers’ expectations requires that insurers become honed across every aspect of the customer journey, from product research, advice, purchase, administration and servicing to claims and renewals.

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2022-05-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

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