Consumers find insurer websites easy for policy services, challenging when shopping for coverage: report

Auto insurance customers find it easier to use insurance company websites to service their existing policies rather than for shopping around for coverage, according to results from a recent U.S. study by J.D. Power and Associates.

The study asked customers to rate their experience when performing shopping and servicing tasks on a scale of one to five (one being “very difficult,” three being “neither difficult nor easy” and five being “very easy”).

Those ratings of functional tasks were then used for an overall experience index based on a 500-point scale. The study included 7,000 evaluations of 20 different insurer websites and was conducted in March and April of this year.

Overall, the industry average for shopping experience was 347, and 414 for overall servicing, according to J.D. Power.

“More than one-half of all insurance shoppers today use the web to scout their options, and many further seek to obtain quotes online,” Jeremy Bowler, senior director of the global insurance practice at J.D. Power & Associates noted in a statement on the study results.

“Since policy shopping frequently includes the tasks of finding policy information and requesting a quote, it is understandable that customers who did not find those tasks to be particularly easy tend to abandon one brand in favor of others, often providing a low rating for that site,” he added.

When customers find it easy to perform servicing tasks, such as viewing their policies and changing contact information, they are also more likely to return to the site and recommend both the site and the insurer to friends and colleagues, J.D. Power also said.

The shopping evaluation also looked at requesting quotes, comparing policies, finding policy information, finding discount information, and finding company contact information. Those tasks’ ratings were then weighted to determine the extent to which they influenced the website’s overall usability.

The most heavily weighted tasks included finding policy information and requesting quotes were the hardest tasks to perform, with ratings of 3.6 and 3.8 respectively, according to J.D. Power. Finding company contact information was the easiest to perform, with a rating of 4.2.

Unsurprisingly, higher-rated websites that offered lower price quotes closed users’ business most of the time, although the company did point out that a higher rated site still closed business 60% of the time.

“Since customers indicate that finding contact information is easier than requesting a quote, at least some of them will use that contact information to obtain quotes by other means, such as contacting a company’s call centre,” Bowler noted.

“The cost of using human resources to address these questions and requests is much higher than an automated system on a website, which means that companies may be able to realize savings by improving the process through which shoppers request quotes online.”

For servicing, customers were asked to evaluate their current insurer on tasks including account log-in; profile management; paying bills; viewing policy information; researching claims processes; requesting a replacement insurance ID card; adding a driver or vehicle; and enrolling in paperless billing.

The easiest task was paying bills, receiving a rating of 4.5, while customers rated it slightly harder to print or request a replacement insurance ID card and add a driver or vehicle to a policy, at 4.2 and 4.2, respectively.

About 68% of customers who said they had a positive experience also said they “definitely will” return to the website, compared with only 21% of those who had a negative experience. A similar proportion (65%) who had a positive experience also said they definitely would recommend the website to others, J.D. Power noted.