Battling the ‘fire and forget’ effect in customer experience

Building memorable customer engagement strategies

Gardner’s experience in the industry has taught him that when customers buy insurance products they often “fire and forget”, meaning they “buy a product and forget they have it for most of the time”. He explains: “It sounds crazy, but our research shows that in most South East Asian markets only 50 per cent of customers remember hearing from their insurance company of choice.”

This may be due to customers forgetting about emails they received from their insurer or the agent that called them nine months ago. However, Gardner adds that brands need to remember that “perception is reality”.

“If we are not making memorable contact points with customers, then, quite frankly, we are not making contact at all,” he says.

Read also: Five CX trends to watch in financial services

This disconnect is often caused by the lengthy lifecycles between natural contact points with insurance products, Gardner explains. For instance, due to the renewal cycles with quasi-investment insurance products, some customers may not need to speak to their provider for seven to ten years. He says: “It is one thing for insurers to focus on providing fantastic service experience, but if your customer doesn’t experience your service for seven years, then your brand needs to find a new ways to engage with them.”

This is why useful content and resources are very prominent customer engagement strategies in insurance. Gardner says: “You have got to find relevance, use content, evolve your products, boost your customer understanding and know their journeys really well.”

Fintech and wearable devices are valuable touchpoints, especially in health and wellness fields, as the data generated from them helps customers get the most out of their purchase and can even allow them to access more competitive pricing and products.

Gardner notes that thanks to the engagement campaign behind one of Generali Asia’s 2020 product launches in Vietnam which focused on increasing touchpoints and creating memorable moments with content, the insurer saw an increase in customer satisfaction metrics “a lot more customers remembered they had a product with us”.

A word of warning with proactive customer engagement techniques

When it comes to proactive customer engagement, brands should tread carefully, warns Gardner. Poorly targeted customer retention attempts can actually lead to an erosion in customer value. He explains: “If you approach a customer who is incorrectly flagged in your data as a churn risk and give them an offer to stay at a discounted price, then you will have reduced that customer’s lifetime value unnecessarily, whereas if you left them alone, they would have stayed anyway while paying the full rate.”

To access more insights from Gardner view his session at the recent CX APAC online.