June 7, 2020 | 4 Min Read
CX takes centerstage within the new normal for insurers as generating new customers gets harder in the current economic climate and amidst the comms clutter of discounts and offers that may even sway existing loyal customers through the way.
Our series mind the gap, attempts to highlight crucial gaps that if fixed, could turn the tide for all the stakeholders.
Part 2- user research is ‘real’
User research has often been a ‘nice to have’ initiative for most businesses, considering the significant amount of time or money required to hire a research agency. But are these the only showstoppers for companies from investing in research? There are a no. of beliefs and myths that surround user research.
It is a continuous, honest, test & a learning process
User research is a crucial step in understanding customers and in the insurance business, this is only starting to gain significance. With the growing trend of investing in digital transformation initiatives, platforms, and tools, businesses find themselves at the crossroads of a huge shift towards building for customers.
Let’s debunk some of the myths and misconceptions related to user research:
1. User Research is optional
Unless you know how your users think, behave, and understand their expectations, you would not be able to build products, solutions, services, or experiences that appeal to them. If you don’t stay on top of their ever-evolving needs, you may be building products and journeys that are not engaging or much worse, irrelevant to them. You may not have to engage a large team/company to conduct research, there are an ample amount of tools and options available to do this at a smaller scale (we’ve listed a few of them later in this article).
2. Research needs to cover your entire user-base
Whilst this could be ideal – it’s not always practical! A simple way to arrive at an optimal sample size is to use a variety of online sample size calculators available for free. A good example is a calculator from qualtrics. Make sure to be ready with a few user-centric variables to compute including:
- Population Size- what is the total size of the targeted user base?
- Confidence levels- according to you, the confidence level you have of the survey results’ accuracy
- Margin of error- this is a calculation of average confidence you would have in your data to reflect a particular sentiment and is calculated by a formula and is normally available as part of the calculators. If the margin of error is too high, then it’s best to increase your population size to reduce the error margins
3. Surveys, one of the easiest method to gain user insights, are restricted to only existing customer database lists
Users today could be a wide variety of people including:
- Web visitors
- Social Media Followers
- Employees
- IVR callers
- Email survey could be run in partnership with commercial databases available from media companies
- Online polls (paid polls) across channels such as Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn/Snapchat
- Office & kiosk visitors
4. Surveys take time and they tend to be a lengthy process
The most effective surveys typically are:
- Short and sweet- should not extend more than 5-7 questions and should not take more than 2-3 minutes to fill up. Survey questions should be designed with an aim to achieve 1- 2 objectives only. Make sure to involve team members across functions to create a robust set of questions.
- Provide multichoice responses- use of choice modelling techniques allow the surveyor to understand the underlying preferences of the customer, be it price or product features.
In our next mind the gap series, we will explore different user research methods businesses can employ at a given time.
At FWD, one of our greatest strengths is the understanding of the impact and power user insights have on creating a successful financial service organization. Get in touch with us, if you need the support to unlocking user behaviour relevant to your target market.