Borrowing a line from James Carville's presidential campaign advice, "It's the economy, stupid," we need to grasp the real source of sustained growth and say to ourselves, "It's the customer experience, stupid."

Can we wake up and focus on the customer experience? Do we truly understand what they want? Do we understand that customer experience isn't just about technology, transactions and 24/7 availability? Are we prepared to go beyond the processes and needs of the insurance company and look at insurance from the outside in?

Great experiences are now highly valued

As you may have noticed, we are increasingly living in an experience-driven culture as opposed to a possessions-focused culture. In May 2016, Groupon launched an ad campaign surrounding the "Haves and Have Dones." It's a funny lampoon of those people who seek luxurious things vs. those who are looking for adventures and experiences. This cultural focus on doing more and buying less isn't new; it's just gaining traction. The implication for insurance is that customer experience is more relevant than ever because great experiences are highly valued.

Insurers need to make their brand experiences into havens of ease, comfort and security that also fit into customers' desired lifestyles. To dig deeper in understanding, insurers need to create customer personas and develop customer journey maps that will bring empathy into experience design.

Personas — bridges to empathy

Customer personas synthesize real-life examples into one, easy to understand picture of a common role or person. For example: