Helping customers weather the storm
Technology is invaluable but so is good old-fashioned listening.
Two years ago, a cross-functional team at American Family Insurance was asked to answer two simple questions: “How do storms impact our customers?” And “How can we better serve them?”
An initial finding was that customers were concerned about hiring a reliable building contractor to make repairs. But since another program was already focused on answering that question, the team pivoted back to something else customers frequently said during interviews: They wanted more information and guidance about the claim process after a storm.
The result, which has now become a standard business practice at American Family Insurance, involves immediately sending highly targeted email notifications to customers in an area hit by hail. The email contains:
- Photos and links to information on evaluating hail damage.
- The Claim Customer Care Center phone number.
- Information on the company’s Storm Chatbot reporting feature.
- The link to file a claim online.
- Tips to avoid contractor fraud.
The research process
As part of their work, the group gathered extensive customer feedback. Specifically, they analyzed data from more than 57 experiments and 203 customer empathy interviews, as well as surveys of email recipients. In short, they took the time to really listen to what customers had to say. They also used behavioral experiments to validate what was most valuable, which is foundational when it comes to applying Lean Innovation principles.
Lean Innovation combines the creativity of Design Thinking with the rigor of Lean Startup and the working cadence of Agile. Our goal at American Family is to understand customers deeply, run experiments to test our riskiest assumptions, and allow data + insights to inform decision-making to ultimately discover and deliver significantly more value to our customers.
So far, the approach is paying off in results and more satisfied customers.
“I’m an AmFam customer and also a claim adjuster with 40 years’ experience. I wanted to express my sincere respect for your professional approach,” wrote a recipient of a hail-damage notification email.
Another customer wrote, “I thought it was informative even though we did not have damage … I was pleasantly surprised, felt it was forward-thinking on AmFam’s part.”
Last year, the company sent 16,300 such emails to customers. Surveys show that customer satisfaction was higher than 90% after receiving a hail-damage notification email.
What your company can do
- Focus on defining problems before diving into solutions.
- Establish consistent customer feedback mechanisms, finding ways for people doing the work to directly talk to and hear from customers frequently.
- Explore new ways to resource exploration efforts, getting creative with team building, budgeting and time commitment.
- Experiment weekly: identify hypotheses and put them to the test, mitigating risk as necessary to iterate your way to a solution that clearly solves your defined problem.
- Collaborate as a respectful partner — leverage the experts and capabilities in-house, being transparent about your team’s goals, process, and timing to gain buy-in, appropriately set expectations and identify potential operational conflicts to work through upfront.
By giving employees permission and encouragement to use Lean Innovation to get creative and really listen to customers, we’ve come up with a new way to reach them when they need us most.
And the beauty of this is, it’s not limited to helping customers after a storm. Any organization that’s truly interested in delivering what customers want should ask them — and be ready to act on their answers.
Jan Kittoe is vice president of talent development and Ignite,an area focused on driving the use of Lean Innovation and other customer-centric approaches throughout the company, at American Family Insurance. In establishing Ignite, American Family partnered with lean innovation consulting firm Moves The Needle.
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