Insurance Customer Satisfaction Is High, But Accenture Survey Finds Significant Gap Between Expectations And Reality

There are significant gaps between what consumers want from their insurers and what they feel they are receiving, even though overall satisfaction levels are high, according to an Accenture (NYSE: ACN) survey of 7,000 people from 13 countries.

The survey found that the great majority (84 percent) of respondents say they are satisfied with their insurance provider but there is an expectation gap across the range of customer service issues. For example, nearly two-thirds (62 percent) said it was very important for their insurer to provide clear and easy-to-understand information on their policies, but only 27 percent of respondents said they were very satisfied with their insurers’ efforts to do so.

Edwin VanderOuderaa, global managing director of Accenture’s Analytics group for financial services, said: “This gap suggests that consumers have low expectations rather than that they are delighted with the experience they receive. But this means there is an opportunity for insurers to differentiate themselves and gain market share by leveraging analytics to assess which products and services are working best and which need to be changed to deliver a better customer experience.”

The survey revealed that younger consumers and those from emerging markets are much more interested in innovations such as mobile services, much more likely to shop around, but the most promising market segments.

More than three-quarters (76 percent) of respondents below 35 years expressed interest in using mobile devices to text insurers to receive updates on claim requests, or to interact with agents and brokers through smart phones equipped with video capabilities, compared to less than half (46 percent) of respondents over 45 years.

In China 96 percent of customers said they were interested in new mobile services and there are similar high response rates in India (91 percent), South Korea (88 percent) and Brazil (83 percent). By contrast only 63 percent of respondents on average were interested in mobile services, and in Germany the figure was only 41 percent. The pattern was similar regarding use of social media networks and blogs when purchasing new insurance. These appealed to 49 percent of Brazilian respondents compared to the average figure of 30 percent and just 14 percent in France.