Get ready for voice search in the insurance industry
Yext research indicates that one in three consumers prefer to use voice search to book insurance agent appointments.
Insurance is one of the oldest professions in the world, but according to a McKinsey study, “it lags behind other sectors in digital maturity.”
As a result, 93% of digital insurance leaders have stated that advancing their digital agenda is very important to their business over the next three years.
The consumerization of insurance has forever changed the insurance market, as customers are voting with their wallets by taking their business to organizations that can satisfy their digital expectations. This has caused a paradigm shift in how insurers conduct business — moving from a product-centric strategy to an experience-led model that puts the customer journey first.
In the past, insurance companies had fragmented data, silo-ed teams, and focused only on developing new product offerings, often without the end-user or big picture in mind. But now, insurers are developing harmonized content across channels with a focus on customer needs and education.
However, insurance organizations are still struggling when it comes to three big trends playing out, including emerging entrants in the market, changing consumer expectations, and the rise of micro-experiences.
Related: 3 technology trends impacting insurer success in 2018
Consumer behavior and insurance
Yext recently conducted a survey of 1,000 adults to give us insight into consumer behavior and how this will impact insurance organizations, including the role of voice search on the customer journey.
The results show that search is very important to prospective insurance clients, and that there is a major opportunity for agents and companies to leverage search and intelligent services (including social, maps, chat, and voice assistants) to meet them during key moments of intent throughout their digital journey.
One of the biggest takeaways we found was that nearly half (46%) of those polled already use voice search devices at least once a day. And when it comes to the insurance buying experience, many respondents indicated they’d like to use voice search. In fact, one in three would prefer to use it to book an appointment with an insurance agent and 25% would like to use voice search to request reviews on insurance agents. If you saw the recent Google IO Duplex keynote, imagine how this could forever change the insurance customer journey.
In addition, several respondents indicated interest in using voice search to complete tasks such as locating the nearest insurance agent, evaluating the quote process, or determining the most appropriate type of insurance.
Why it matters
It’s estimated that 50% of all searches will be completed either via speech or image search by 2020. In addition, the use of voice-enabled speakers is expected to grow by 120% in just the next year. With adoption climbing rapidly, voice search will continue to transform the way consumers search for and choose insurers.
For example, when conducting a traditional search today, consumers receive a list of results that match the query and can select the one that is the best fit. With this scenario, a consumer likely scrolls through the options presented, evaluates each, and then makes a decision. With voice search, there is no longer a list as the voice assistant chooses what it feels is the best fit. If your business is not the first result when a potential customer asks a question, you’ve likely just lost out on a potential sale.
Having accurate and up-to-date information on your business is the key to staying in the game. For example, if a potential customer asks, “What insurers near me offer flood insurance?- in order to be “the answer” your business must not only have its digital knowledge readily available for Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa to interpret but you must also present details of all of your coverage offerings. Even if you offer flood insurance and are in close proximity to the searcher, you likely won’t be the voice assistant’s first answer if that information isn’t available or accurate on the web.
Get ready
Insurers can start preparing for the rise of voice search now by following three key steps:
- Organize your data: Start with identifying where all of your information lives and then work to centralize and organize it. This includes information like agent names, locations, contact information, hours, certifications, etc. that could exist in anything from Excel spreadsheets to CMS platforms.
- Make your data readable: After you’ve organized the data, determine where the data will live moving forward. Data must live in a format that can be structured in a way that intelligent services like Amazon or Google can “read” it. This enables your data to be accessible by the public knowledge graphs voice search relies upon.
- Syndicate your data: Finally, you must syndicate your data to the places where potential customers are looking for answers.
The insurance industry has typically been slow to adopt new technology, but with the rapid adoption of voice search and voice-enabled devices, this is a trend that is sure to have an impact. Insurers need to hone in on how and why a potential customer would be searching for their business in order to stay relevant with voice search. Insurers should begin taking the steps now to get their business voice-ready, so they’re not scrambling to do so down the line.
Shane Closser (sclosser@yext.com) is the head of industry and general manager at the business technology company Yext.
The opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
See also: