ACORD Digital Customer Experience Study For U.S. Personal Lines Highlights Value Of Effective And Engaging Insurance Websites

Ongoing trend toward digitization of insurance processes reinforces that delivering quality digital customer experience is key for continuing success in this market

ACORD, the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry, today released its Digital Customer Experience Study: US Personal Lines 2021. This most recent version of the ongoing study examined more than 1,250 carriers, InsurTechs and aggregators to assess the industry’s overall performance and identify the key strategies and capabilities for delivering a successful digital customer experience.

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“Delivering a superior digital customer experience is a critical imperative for insurers,” said ACORD President & CEO Bill Pieroni. “The digitally mediated consumer habits developed during the pandemic are likely to persist, particularly as they reflect a previously existing trend toward digitization of insurance processes. It has become increasingly clear that delivering a quality digital customer experience is key for continued success.”

ACORD screened over 1,250 websites, assessing candidate sites through a unique, persona-driven approach built around a comprehensive portfolio of demographic and psychographic factors, providing a more detailed and insurance-specific view than typical customer experience surveys. Each of the sites was scored on Engagement (providing a compelling and “entertaining” customer experience) and Enablement (ability to satisfy customer needs).

Among the findings of the study were:

• U.S. personal lines websites are better at Engagement (with an average score of 70.8) than Enablement (58.9), highlighting a need to improve website functionality.
• Aggregators – which were added to the pool of websites surveyed for the first time in this installment of the study – ranked relatively low compared to carriers’ sites.
• While the industry as a whole has improved in delivering an effective digital customer experience, the gap between the top and bottom performers has widened.

“While we have seen many websites improve relative to previous iterations of the study, the laggards have fallen even further behind,” said Pieroni. “As in almost all other facets of the insurance industry, investing in digital capabilities – and adopting a new digital mindset – has become a prerequisite for insurers trying to stay relevant and competitive.”

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