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Measuring Satisfaction: Who, What, Why, How

Carrie Burns July 1, 2008

Ask insurers about the importance of good customer service, and you’ll likely get similar responses: “It’s very important, and we pride ourselves on good customer service.”

And it may, in fact, be more important than ever. Heightened competition and more-informed and demanding consumers are causing insurers worldwide to rethink their technology strategies, according to a new report from London-based independent market analyst Datamonitor. Insurers can no longer afford to provide poor customer service, nor can they continue failing to understand each policyholder, says Datamonitor’s report. The report, “CRM in Global Insurance,” concludes that in order to remain competitive and maintain profitability, life and non-life insurers globally must expand beyond their core competency of risk management, and focus on customer management.

By focusing on the customer, Datamonitor points out, insurers will be able to identify and grow the most profitable ones, while minimizing the resources spent on the less profitable customers.

But how do those insurers really know they’re providing good customer service? The answer is metrics. And with the growing avenues of customer service—Web sites, call centers, agents, third-party providers and e-mails—insurers may struggle to keep all of it straight.

CALL CENTER ACTIVITY

The age-old source of customer service, the call center, sees a lot of action from customers, and insurers have different views of what makes a call center “good.”

“Speed remains a core quality metric for many organizations, but that is just one important facet of customer service,” says Joe Heinen, VP of corporate marketing at Daly City, Calif.-based Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc.

Efficiency and accuracy when addressing the customer’s issues are just as important. In fact, a recent Genesys survey of C-level executives in a variety of industries, including insurance, shows that most executives underestimate the emphasis their organization places on efficiency, and overestimate how easy their organization makes it for customers to purchase during interactions. For example, 55% of the C-level executives polled believe their operations use the average speed to answer as a critical metric, compared to 70% of customer service professionals. On a worldwide basis, 67% of all organizations considered this a key metric.

The Genesys report, “The Executive Disconnect, The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service,” also discovered that among C-level executives, 41% think they measure the experience in self-service by quality rather than just cost savings, but only 35% of customer service professionals think so. At the same time, 36% of the executives think their customer service is measured on revenue per call, when in reality only 28% of customer service professionals validate that notion. Amongst global respondents, 30% say they measure revenue per call.

Technology platforms, such as automatic call distribution (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR) systems, can provide a wealth of data, according to Heinen. But a critical strategic element that focuses on the metrics that actually predict success is missing. “Call centers often treat ACD reports like an accounting system,” he says. “If they’re off by two calls, they spend time and effort trying to figure out why they’re off by two calls. However, the goal is to generate additional sales, drive down costs, build strong relationships or achieve whatever goal is vitally important.”

While customer satisfaction remains the most measured metric (70%), others measured are operational in nature: 68% measure call duration, 67% measure average speed to answer and 56% measure first call resolution rate, according to the Genesys report.

The measuring process does make a difference in the outcome, assuming the insurer continuously monitors the process and acts on its results. Making meaningful performance improvements will require a cultural transformation and a new measurement and analysis paradigm, according to Heinen. This means creating a more strategic focus of measuring what’s truly important—switching the call center’s mindset from meeting arbitrary efficiency metrics to maximizing the value of each interaction.

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Data Management

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