Do UK life insurance companies know, or ever try and understand, how their customers feel?
Following a recent family bereavement, I’ve been dealing with several product providers trying to make claims on life policies dating back to the 1980s. Of course, I know how the industry works, and yet even I was unprepared for the array of phone options, hoop jumping, running around, passing the buck and general lack of empathy I experienced.
Can you imagine what it must be like for a bereaved person who is not used to dealing with insurance companies?
First hoop
My Dad took his policies out in the early 1980s. The original companies don’t exist anymore. Another insurer either bought up the back book of business or bought the company entirely and changed the brands. It took me a while to track down who was responsible for the policies today over 30 years later.
Second hoop
Once I’d found the right contact details I picked up the phone.
I sat on hold for 45 minutes listening to some bland music, interrupted by a recorded voice telling me they were experiencing a higher than normal volume of calls.
Are you like me? When I hear this message, and it seems to be every time you phone an insurance company, I wonder why they don’t employ some more people to answer the phone.
46 minutes later I get through to a bored-sounding “customer service agent”. He expresses a little genuine sympathy for my loss and then takes me through the expected security questions.
Him: Policy number?
Me: 12345678X
Him: Cool. Your Dad’s date of birth.
Me: It’s day, month year.
Him: Excellent. Now, what’s his address?
Me: Well this could be difficult. Since my Dad took out the policy he’s lived at 7 different addresses. I have no idea which one you’ll have on your system.
Him: Well you’ll have to give me one address otherwise we can’t continue with the process.
Me: What do you suggest. Should I just guess?
Him: Yes. But if you give me the wrong address I’ll get locked out of the system. It’s to prevent fraud. You know phishing?
Me: Can I email you the addresses?
Him: We don’t accept emails. Only written letters by snail mail.
Me: Okay let’s go with this address (and I give him address number 5).
Him: That’s the wrong address. I’ve now been locked out of the system. You’ll have to write to us.
Now I know this is all to prevent fraud or money laundering but there has to be a simpler way to do this surely? I ask him if he can help me.
Him: Well you could phone again and get a different agent and try a different address.
The thought of another 45 minute wait to listen to more crap music followed by another 1 in 6 chance of guessing the correct address didn’t fill me with much enthusiasm.
Me: So I could try phoning you up to another 6 times until we get the right address.
Him: Basically yes.
So I wrote to them. And waited 10 days for the claim pack to arrive. Filled in the forms and sent them in along with the death certificate, my Dad’s Will, and other necessary documentation.
In all the payment process took over a month.
Each claim provided a similar experience. One company even lost the death certificate and Will and asked me to resend them. (They’ve since found the first originals I sent them and have returned both sets – but this added two weeks to the process).
Another company kept quoting it’s KPIs at me, “We aim to transact each transaction within 5 working days.” After waiting 10 days I phone them up to chase (and waited 30 minutes on the phone) only to find the policy was in the actuarial department and the KPIs don’t apply to them. “Actuarial just reply when they can”.
Well, that’s alright then.
Again, can you imagine what it must me like for a bereaved person who is not used to dealing with insurance companies?
Where’s the empathy?
Whilst all this was happening I came across an article by my friend Alasdair McGill of customer experience experts, Ashton Mcgill. It might have been one of the times I was on hold because the insurance company was, as always, experiencing particularly high call volumes.
Alasdair’s article laments the lack of empathy displayed by companies in all industries not just financial services. He mentions communications providers like BT and BA as examples of big corporates that just don’t show any sign they understand how their customers feel.
The experience made me think about empathy and its place in customer service and indeed marketing.
Empathy is, “the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.” Do we understand how our customers feel?
I worked in the protection industry for many years on the marketing side. Company sales consultants talk about death disability and disease all the time. And you become immune to the actual enormity of what you are saying.
I’ve done it myself over the years. Standing up in front of an audience of financial advisers and quoting stats at them about the likelihood of a person getting cancer in their lifetime. It’s a marketing pitch. Giving them a reason why they should talk to their clients about critical illness cover.
Having a real work colleague discover they have cancer, or losing a loved one is when the enormity of what we are talking about hits home. That’s when you realise just what a big deal it is.
It’s not numbers on paper or stats on screens. It’s real people facing life changing illness or dying. As big a deal as there ever can be.
How does the customer feel?
Do the CEOs of life companies know what it feels like to hang on the phone for 45 minutes waiting to report the death of a loved one whilst being reminded by a pre-recorded voice how important our call is to them? Can they imagine how upsetting it must be to have to jump through all their hoops and deal with a bored employee who sounds like they’d much rather be at home playing on their XBOX?
Many people in the financial services industry talk about the need to do more advertising to grow the protection market. To make the products simpler. To educate the customer.
The reality is they need to empathise more with their customers.
They must understand how customers feel about insurance companies and protection products.
How they feel about having to fill in a 32-page application form?
How they feel about being told their claim will be declined on a technicality?
Now, many companies just don’t get it. Granted some delegate empathy to external providers like Red Arc (a provider of emotional and practical support), if customers choose to use them, but the general experience is poor.
At a recent conference, some senior industry figures said financial services providers should stop publishing claims statistics. Perhaps this is because they don’t want customers finding out how bad their stats are?
Again, this shows a complete lack of empathy.
Customers think insurers don’t pay claims. They “feel” companies will find any way they can to weasel out of paying. Publishing claims statistics and trying to overcome those perceptions is one of the most important things insurance companies can do to convince the public what they do is good.
Suggesting they stop publishing demonstrates a worrying lack of empathy with customers and will do more to convince them they were right about financial services and the industy does have something to hide.
Alasdair’s article reminded me many companies across many industries lack empathy with their customers. But financial services companies deal with such emotional, deeply personal issues they cannot afford not to fully understand how their customers feel.
Finding real empathy is the only way they’re going to change the what consumers think of them.
Now it’s your turn:
A bit of a rant that. What do you think companies could do to better empathise with their customers? Please leave a comment below or share this on social media and invite your colleagues or friends to join the debate.
Cover Magazine published a shorter version of this article in 2016 – you can find it here.
Ruth Gilbert
This is exactly the sort of thing that is at the root of the deep distrust insurers have earned from the public. We need to turn the tide of opinion by getting things right if we are to grow the protection market again.
Thank you Roger for publishing your more detailed story. It would be great to be read in all insurance companies where treating customers fairly and “customer-centricity” is taken seriously, to learn the simple and obvious steps that could be taken to ensure the worst elements of this should never happen. For the sake of the industry’s reputation and getting more families protected, the rest should be receiving some extra attention from the FCA on how things are handled when it really matters…i.e. at claim.
Roger
Thanks Ruth. Hopefully this article will get some important people thinking a little more about what they can do to make things better.
Andrew Gething
100% agree Roger. What baffles me is why companies don’t value empathy – the only conclusion I have come to is that the industry is mostly full of logic people, and measured financially. As you can’t measure empathy, then companies fail to manage it. We can’t measure service – yet ironically we refer to ourselves as “Financial Services”.
For claims – we use nurses to speak to claimants to hear their story, and to empathise with them. For me this is the most important part of a claim process, and the most valued by the consumer. To sell the service we have to sell on reducing fraud, and reducing medical evidence – as these have tangible cost benefits. In this case being nice and empathetic saves money too.
Roger
Thanks for replying Andrew.
I think you’re spot on about the industry being run by “logical” people. They need to get out more and talk to customers. And spend time listening to claims calls so they get an understanding for how their customers feel.
David Mead
A really interesting article Roger. The claim is of course the moment of truth. This experience will stay with the person registering the claim for many years, and the impressions we create will last (and the experience will probably be shared). It is easy to become detached from the realities of what we do. Frankly there should be no excuses why someone making a claim is left waiting on hold or in a queue for more than a few rings, let alone 45 minutes.
At Future Proof we encourage everyone to deal with each and every person as they would treat a member of their family. This attitude creates empathy, which as you say would engender much better client experiences and outcomes.
It seems to me that Insurance companies should (if they don’t already) ensure that every executive spends a day or two in their claims department (ideally actually dealing directly with clients). Maybe this would help humanise what is often just seen as another ‘process’?
Roger
Thanks, David. I agree executives should spend time on the phone. Let’s hope this article gets some of them thinking.
Andrew Wilkinson
Hi Roger,
In our opinion its a mixed bag. It also depends partly sometimes on the individual on the other end of the phone. Life insurance companies do some things really well, so for example we always feel pleased when we are able to help our customers obtain peace of mind because we have been able to arrange life cover for them despite their medical condition. For example if you have a heart attack and you have a family and a mortgage but no life insurance you feel worried and exposed because you are aware that another heart attack, without having insurance, could be fatal and you know that the financial consequences for your family could be devastating. You feel guilty and responsible and it becomes a problem which causes worry which in turn is usually not helpful for the person’s health either. Its a viscous circle. So we are proud of our industry when we can help people sort out problems like this. Another example of insurance companies thinking and acting in the right way is the added on services like Best Doctors and Helping Hands. We have a client right now who is has found this type of service an important source of support at what is a difficult time for their family due to a serious illness.
But unfortunately the insurance industry has some real blind spots which work in the opposite direction. I have this week received an email from some potential new clients that we are trying to help and in the email the writer speaks of how unfair it is that they have an unprotected mortgage and are unable to obtain any form of critical illness or cancer cover or any long term income protection cover for her husband who has well controlled type 1 diabetes. They have been abandoned by an insurance industry (as have millions of others) that shows the exact opposite of empathy. Interestingly in the letter the writer said this ” We have just found out this information and everybody we have told cant believe it ! ” The information that the writer refers to here is the fact there are no critical illness or longer term income protection options available for her husband, which affects her whole family. But imagine that….they have discussed their abandonment with other people, spreading the word……..
So there is a lack of consistency within the insurance industry. Sometimes it cares, sometimes it doesn’t. Its a great starting place for the industry to begin the work that needs to be done, making a list of caring things that the industry does and then a list of the uncaring things. Then we need to start addressing the issues on the second list. Its important, because if we don’t act then ‘spreading the word’ will continue to damage our potential relationships and trust in our industry. CEO’s should think of the role of insurance companies as paternal and their customers as families under their responsibility. When considering what changes to make they should think about what a good parent would consider fair bearing in mind that a good parent would not abandon a weaker child. Empathy is so critical to what we do that it should be absolutely central across all departments, from claims to new business to product design and it should be enforced. Empathy should be the number one key value across the whole organisation, its that important!
On the issue of claims I would simply say that it should be obvious that the experience you have had is totally unacceptable. Indeed one would hope that the CEO of the company in question, upon reading your article, should instigate a major review of how the claims department works and interfaces with clients with a view to making some important changes and quickly!
Finally we don’t know the identity of the firm you mention although the description about the holding message referring to ‘lots of people are contacting us today’ will immediately bring up the name of one insurance company in particular in the minds of all whole of market protection staff as it is industry knowledge that this company has been using the same holding message to keep callers on hold for far too long. Its been going on for months and months, I would even guess a year or two now, a fact that would bother me a lot if I was the CEO of that particular company. The same thinking permeates some of the other working practices in the same company as well and action from the top is required.
Roger
Andrew, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed and insightful comment.
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