UK insurers performing well on email, not social, for customer service

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Multichannel customer interaction management software provider Eptica has looked into the ability of ten leading UK insurers to answer routine questions via the web. The research, which has been repeated annually since 2011, looks at insurers’ speed and accuracy in responding to queries across email, Twitter, Facebook and web chat.

The findings show that email is the channel insurers focus on for customer service. All the insurers offered email and 80% successfully answered the question sent to them, compared to just 50% who managed to do so in 2015. However, Eptica found that the average response time has increased from 20 hours in 2015 to 28 hours and 4 minutes this year.

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Insurers are not performing too well on social media. While all had a presence on Twitter, and 60% on Facebook, just 50% and 40% respectively responded successfully to queries. On Twitter, the average response time was 58 minutes – significantly faster than last year’s 8 hours and 52 minutes. Facebook response time was faster than email at 1 hour 33 minutes on average.

According to Derek Lewis, Eptica’s UK and Ireland sales director, in order to drive loyalty insurers must be prepared to converse with consumers on the channel of their choice.

“The 2016 Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study found that insurers are still struggling to adapt – performing well on email, but answering less than half of all questions asked online and via social media,” said Lewis. “This should be a wake up call – at a time of greater competition and pressure on margins, insurers that prioritise the customer experience are likely to gain business over their poorer performing rivals.”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
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Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.