ITIC UK 2024 | Customer behaviour and UX insights
Anna Angell shared her insights into what customers want, and asked what our industry can learn about customer behaviour in other sectors that can be applied to insurance purchases
The ITIJ team have been reporting live from ITIC UK in Bournemouth this week (May 2024) sharing the discussions that took place at the conference. Read all the reports here.
Anna Angell, Associate Director at Shift Consultancy, started her session by saying the customer is not always right, and added that most thoughts, feelings and behaviours are driven by unconscious processes.
Angell said that when understanding customers, you have to understand the large gap between what the customer thinks they want and what they actually want.
She then talked about ‘leverage framing’, and said that the way something is presented to us can significantly influence how we think and feel about it.
Angell said that online delivery services present a good way of framing things. They provide clear timings – and they frame those timings positively. She added that online wait bars are good too – they provide customers with an illusion of control.
She said to first think about whether you should provide positive/negative framing. She advised to then remove uncertainty (customers are happier when they know why there is a delay). She said it’s also important to provide an illusion of control – simple things like a choice of music when people are on hold can improve customer feelings.
Angell said it’s vital make things easy for customers, and added that behaviour is often shaped by our innate drive to conserve energy. She said that things that put customers off in the buying process are:
- Additional steps
- A complicated checkout process
- Creating an account
- Re-entering information
- Slow page loading
- Choice overload.
She added that it’s important to identify existing points of friction, and said that, where possible, ask if you can:
- Make things easier to understand
- Minimise time
- Minimise effort
- Simplify language/information
- Remove ambiguity
- Remove unnecessary steps
- Improve familiarity
- Offer popular options.
Angell said sometimes a lack of friction is not good. For example, it’s vital to ask customers to verify a purchase.
Finally, Angell said that businesses should focus on the peak and end of the journey – that experiences are not judged on the whole experience.
She said our brains are risk adverse, so:
- Focus on the most intense moments and end touch points
- Address negatives before building positives
- Consider the biggest wins
- Consider the easiest wins.
Angell added that businesses should use behavioural and psychological insights, and internal expertise. Once you have that you can then explore potential solutions.
If you can, test – use live trials, online experiments, specialist behavioural insight work (or best judgement), then, when you have identified what you want to do, launch (and review).