Like many industries, the insurance sector has to compete by responding to real-time events and needs to be just as fast as their competitors.
In addition, an industry like insurance is held to a high standard. This can be challenging because there is no room for error (which sometimes happens when experimenting).
There’s a financial reason for this too. A report by professional services company Accenture found that €435 billion is the amount of competitive share that fast-moving incumbents ‘steal’ of annual premiums [from more traditional insurers].
Perhaps traditional insurers lag because of established processes or legacy systems, but even if that’s the case, they need to adapt to the customer journey that people go on today. And that doesn’t mean that the entire process should be automated. While an industry like insurance will likely continue to need to have agents and representatives for their customers or prospects to talk with, there’s also room to embrace new technologies and ways of attracting, engaging, and retaining customers.
Accenture also found that just 22% of those surveyed feel loyalty to their insurance provider. This shows an incredible opportunity and room for improvement to create the experience that prospects are looking for, which can then improve retention.
There’s an opportunity for insurance companies to use a gamification strategy to improve the customer experience. According to IT consultancy Infosys, “Customers perceive insurance to be a complex product that involves a tedious process of purchase….To overcome such issues, most insurers, especially those in the advanced markets, have been following a business model that leverages insurance agents. Traditionally, agents play a pivotal role in educating customers on insurance. They also perform need analysis for customers before pitching the right product.” Rather than depending on agents throughout this process, insurers can use game campaigns to educate their prospective customers or help select the correct product for what someone is looking to have insured.
There’s a need to adapt to how we look for information, and insurance companies are included in this. Today, many of us would agree that when we start looking for a product, we are more likely to go to Google than to pick up the phone. This means that we, as consumers, end up selecting products ourselves rather than relying on a 1:1 interaction. Gamification can help both engage potential customers, and the right campaign can help them feel confident in the decisions they make.
Gamification can be used throughout your customer journey
Using gamification in insurance means knowing how to navigate your customer journey. Here is our approach.
Tryg, the largest insurance company in Denmark, created a quiz about dental health. The Quiz was a way to generate leads for their outbound team and also raise awareness of their dental insurance offering. It consisted of five teeth-related questions like if white wine stains teeth the same way red wine does, and whether soda water is as abrasive as soda (it’s not).
The campaign was a success for Tryg — they gathered 595 leads at ~4.50€ per lead. The average time engaged was 51 seconds and the conversion rate (players who filled out the registration form) was 29%. Those who filled out the registration form were told beforehand that they would receive a call from Tryg’s Outbound Team. This campaign enabled Tryg to spend time with their target audience, inform them of the upcoming phone call, and gather leads.
British insurance company Aviva gamified the process of saving on car insurance. They created an app, Drive, where people could film their driving and earn a score. If the driver/app user gets a certain number of points, they save on their insurance.
This taps into competition in two ways:
This is a great example of making a routine, or potentially even boring, process more fun. It’s also sustainable and scalable — rather than have to figure out a way for Aviva to own this process of scoring a person’s driving ability, it puts the onus on the individual. Plus, it sounds like fun!
Above are just two ways that gamification can help insurance companies connect with their audience. Each example started with a different pain point to solve — find a way to gather new leads for the outbound sales team and figure out which customers can save on their insurance — and gamification helped accomplish that goal. We look at these examples and see just the beginning of this opportunity. Insurance companies can stand apart and be more relevant by embracing gamification as a technique. Game on!
Check out our webinar with Tryg, Gamifying Marketing In Traditional Industries.