Prudential and USAA Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings for Insurers

We recently released the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 331 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Prudential and USAA deliver the best customer experience in the insurance industry, according to the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings.

Prudential and USAA tied for the top spot out of the 16 insurers included in this year’s ratings, each earning a score of 76% and coming in 47^th place overall out of 331 companies across 20 industries. USAA has earned the highest score for insurers every year since the Ratings began in 2011, and this is Prudential’s first year included in the rankings.

USAA, State Farm, and The Hartford Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings for Insurance Carriers

We recently released the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 294 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

USAA, State Farm, and The Hartford deliver the best customer experience in the insurance industry, according to the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

USAA has maintained its position as the top-rated insurer for the sixth year in a row, earning a 73% rating and placing 28^th out of 294 companies across 20 industries. State Farm and The Hartford tied for second place, each with a rating of 68% and an overall rank of 69^th. While this is State Farm’s fifth straight year in second place, it is The Hartford’s first time in the top two. Of the 15 insurance carriers evaluated, Nationwide was the only one to improve its score over the past year, increasing from 63% in 2015 to 64% in 2016, which put it in 110^th place overall.

At the other end of the spectrum, 21^st Century and American Family tied for being the lowest-rated insurance carrier, each receiving a score of 47% and placing 264^th overall. This is 21^st Century’s sixth straight year at the bottom of the pack, while American Family found itself in last place after falling 14 percentage points, the most of any insurer, in the last year.

Overall, the insurance industry averaged a 61% rating in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings and came in 7^th place out of 20 industries. The average rating of the industry decreased by five percentage-points between 2015 and 2016, dropping from 66% to 61%.

Here are some additional findings from the insurance industry:

Report: What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014. The report, which includes 19 data charts, examines which companies and industries provide the most bad experiences, what impact those experiences have on spending, and how the negative impacts of bad experiences can be mitigated by good service recovery. The report also examines how consumers share their good and bad experiences with companies as well as with other people. Here’s the executive summary:

To understand the effect of good and bad experiences, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 268 companies across 19 industries. Results show that Internet services and TV services are the industries most likely to deliver a bad experience to their customers, while grocery chains are the least likely to. At the company level, Scottrade had the smallest percentage of customers reporting a recent bad experience with the company and Time Warner Cable had the highest. More than half of the customers who encountered a bad experience at a fast food chain, credit card issuer, grocery store, or hotel either decreased their spending with the company or stopped altogether. However, our data shows that a good service recovery effort can help mitigate a bad experience. Unfortunately, many firms—especially in the banking, Internet services, and TV services sectors—aren’t very good at service recovery. In addition to the consequences of bad interactions, we also examined which channels customers use to share their good and bad experiences and how these changed across age groups. We then compared these results to survey responses from the past two years. We also uncovered a negative bias inherent in how customers provide feedback. ING Direct, Residence Inn, and Fairfield Inn have the most negative bias in the feedback they receive directly from customers, while Hy-Vee and Hyundai have the most negative bias on Facebook. 

Click link to see full list of industries and companies covered in this report (.pdf).

Download report for $195

One of the most interesting analyses in the report is the look at how service recovery after a bad experience affects the spending pattern of consumers. Here’s a summary of one of the charts showing just how important it is for a company to recover well after making a mistake:

Here are some other insights from the research:

• Sixteen percent of consumers who have interacted with TV service and Internet service providers report having a bad experience over the previous six months. Next on the list are wireless carriers, with 12% of their customers reporting a bad experience. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3% of consumers report a bad experience with grocery chains and 4% report having a bad experience with fast food chains.
• The five companies with the most customers reporting bad experiences are Time Warner Cable (25%), Motel 6 (22%), Coventry Health Care (21%), and Comcast (21%). There were 10 companies with only 1% or less of their customers reporting bad experiences: Scottrade, Chick-fil-A, H.E.B., Whole Foods, ShopRite, ING Direct, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Vanguard, and True Value.
• More than one-quarter of consumers who have a bad experience stop spending with computer makers, car rental agencies, credit card issuers, hotel chains, and software companies. The impact of bad experiences is less costly for parcel delivery services, wireless carriers, health plans, TV service providers, Internet service providers, and grocery chains, as less than 15% of their customers with bad experience stopped spending.
• The industries that are the best at responding to a bad experience are investment firms, major appliances, retailers, and car rental agencies. The industries that are the worst at responding to a bad experience are TV service providers, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, parcel delivery services, and health plans.
• Thirty-two percent of consumers give feedback directly to companies after a very bad experience and 23% give feedback after a very good experience.
• Overall, 25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to share feedback about their experiences. After a good experience 57% tell a friend directly, 28% share on Facebook, and 18% put a comment or rating on a review site. After a bad experience, 60% tell a friend directly, 31% share on Facebook, and 20% write a review.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Make sure to recover quickly after a bad experience

USAA Leads And Citibank Lags In Customer Advocacy

Forrester just published Customer Advocacy 2008: How US Consumers Rate Their Banks, Brokerages, And Insurers which is an annual ranking of 41 financial institutions. For this analysis, customer advocacy is defined as:

The perception on the part of consumers that the firm does what’s best for its customers, not just the firm’s own bottom line.

It turns out that the customer advocacy ratings across all three groups of financial institutions dropped this year after increasing last year. And the overall rating across financial institutions is at its lowest level in five years.  Here are some other highlights of the rankings:

• Top five firms: USAA (was also #1 in 2007), Independent financial advisor, Credit unions,  AAA, and State Farm.
• Bottom five firms: Citibank (was also #41 in 2007), Regions Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and TD AMERITRADE.
• Largest decline from last year: A.G. Edwards in brokerage, AIG and New York Life in insurance, National City in banking. 

The bottom line: As I’ve written to Citibank’s CEO Vikram Pandit in the past, Citibank needs a customer experience overhaul!