Insurance customer service getting worse – survey

A growing number of people in the UK believe the insurance customer service is among the worst, according to a new survey by service design consultancy Engine.

The survey, which polled 1,025 adults online between 1 and 2 June this year, found that 27.9% of respondents had cited insurance as having the worst customer service, up 2.9 percentage points compared with last year’s study.

The result makes the insurance industry the fourth worst among 14 sectors for customer service behind public transport (cited by 38% of respondents), utilities (cited by 36.9%) and broadband/pay TV (cited by 33.5%).

The insurance industry also suffered the third-biggest increase in customers citing it as the worst for service, behind air travel, which saw a 4.3 percentage point increase, and broadband/pay TV, which saw a 3.3% increase.

By contrast, banks enjoyed a 1.5% reduction in the number of people citing them as the worst for customer service.

Engine co-founder Joe Heapy said: “Insurance firms could learn a lot from banking, which has done the most to improve customer service over the last three years of the survey.

“Obviously insurers don’t have the day-to-day interaction that banks have, so they need to find ways to make themselves more relevant to customers more often – developing the immediacy of their proposition and designing themselves into the routine of people’s lives.”

Heapy said banks have improved their mobile and digital service offerings, which has allowed them to gather more data and provide a more personalised experience. They have matched this with better interactions online and with call centres.

He added: “Greater customer segmentation abilities have also enabled banks to respond to differing consumer needs in a way that makes sense to customers individually. Insurers could do more to show that they are responding to customers’ requirements.”