ANWB.nl is considered the best by potential customers in the WUA research on online travel insurance orientation. In this interview, we speak with Ivonne van den Heuvel, commercial director of ANWB Verzekeren. About the use of data, artificial intelligence, omnichannel challenges and wanting to overperform in the area of 'helping'.
Ivonne van den Heuvel, congratulations on winning this WUA research, you lead the rankings. Are you getting used to winning? How important do you find it to be the best in the digital arena and what role does having a winning mentality play?
"To begin with: it's incredibly important for us to win, that goes without saying. Our members and also consumers who aren't members yet mostly seek contact with us through digital channels. They can also call of course, or come to our stores, but digital is the dominant channel. Most insurance products are concluded online and if you come out best in a consumer study then that's important. We also find it very honorable, the competition is fierce and doesn't stand still!
"We never get used to winning: you start at zero every time because consumer trust must be earned. For me this is really a prize that relates to the past: it gives me no guarantee for the future, unfortunately. Developments in the digital market are incredibly fast. Continuous alertness and doing your best to stay ahead is very important to us."
What is your approach, what goes so well? What can other CCOs and digital leaders learn from your approach?
"First: we have a very professional and talented team. They are all really very skilled people who distinguish themselves both as a team and personally. Second, we work very closely with our members to implement improvements. We actually do it together, we have many members who actively contribute to improving our digital domains: user experience and innovation lead our development where customers give direct feedback. The third thing that goes well for us is the speed with which we can implement changes. I can't really judge how my competitors do that, but it's all about making development and development processes more flexible. We've been following the agile methodology for years and we've seen that it's very important to organize everything so you can actually CHANGE things."
From a consumer perspective, there should be no (more) difference between service and sales. Are you able to break down the silos at ANWB or: do you plan to do that?
"Everything at ANWB revolves around contact with members and we want this contact to be experienced as pleasantly as possible. Whether you're buying something, have damage or ask something in the store: it's all contact where we want to help you further.
"For our members too, we really want to be 1 company, 1 ANWB. We have many different products within ANWB. An example: you go on vacation to Spain with your family, you can book the trip with us, you have your travel insurance with us and you've had roadside assistance Europe for years. Organizationally, from ANWB's perspective, we deal with multiple departments, but for a customer it's one company. A company like ANWB is particularly focused on making good on being your customer even after the sale. It's one experience we want to give you and in that respect we set the same high standards for every contact moment. The difference between us and other insurers is that they don't have that other lineup of products: they only focus on the insurance aspect. In our product portfolio, we focus much broader on the journey people are going to take. The most important thing is: in every contact we want to deliver on what a customer or member expects from us, and we'd rather exceed that expectation. Within all of ANWB we strongly focus on overperforming in terms of 'helping'. Every fiber of the company is infused with this. Sales and service are not separate worlds at ANWB."
What role does customer research and putting the customer at the center play in your daily work and with the teams under your responsibility?
"Customer research leads everything we do. We do that in many different ways. We gauge satisfaction, we let members look along, we do a/b tests on clarity and transparency. We are a company that lets itself be strongly guided by what our members feel most comfortable with. A lot of energy is put into researching basically everything. Members are involved in innovations, but we also actively involve our members in ATL campaigns or actions. So we really benefit from the feedback we get.
"Very important: a lot has been organized to unlock that feedback. If comments come from customers at the claims department, they come through in the organization, a lot has been invested in that infrastructure in recent years. It couldn't have been otherwise: you have to structure and streamline feedback to be able to do something with it. I see it as a kind of polder landscape: different feedback streams, brooks and rivers must eventually drain into a broad river of feedback that we steer on, take action on and improve on."
What KPIs do you use in the digital area, which knobs do you turn especially to excel digitally?
"Specifically for the digital domains we have continuous measurements on findability, ease of navigation and speed with which people go through the pages. The latter can also tell us something about comprehensibility. We also measure the drop-off percentage and loading speed is very important. The omnichannel interaction is also a KPI: the way people use the contact button to still get someone from the service center on the phone. We also steer completely on NPS. With that we are perfectly comparable with all other parties in the insurance landscape, it's a common measurement that almost everyone works with."
What are your (digital) challenges for 2017 as commercial director?
"What's distinctive about ANWB is that we have 4.5 million members about whom we know a lot. We want to recognize you as a member as well as possible and thereby improve individual service. It's a continuous challenge to organize this well. An example: a member books a trip to America with us but only has coverage for Europe in his travel insurance. If someone goes to the US but has no medical coverage on his travel insurance, that could cost him very dearly in this specific country should something happen. We want to make this adjustment easy for the customer and inform him of our possibilities. So we need to unlock our internal data across multiple departments even better to generate more meaning for our customers and members and that's in details that seem small, but are very important."
What digital innovations are you working on now and what developments are on the roadmap?
"We just launched a new innovative product: the ANWB Safe Driving Car Insurance. Your driving behavior determines the premium you pay. Our goal with this is to stimulate safe driving in the Netherlands. From December we're launching a try-before-you-buy principle. If you take out this insurance with us now, you don't know what premium you're heading for: everyone thinks they're a safe driver, but is that really the case? That's why there will soon be a trial version available. You then see how safely you drive and get an estimate of your discount. With the Safe Driving car insurance you get feedback on how you can improve your driving safety; there's a whole program behind it. Every three months you get paid out what you've earned in discount. That's stimulating.
"When people drive more safely, less damage occurs, which means the premium can also go down. It really makes the roads safer. We're the only major insurer working on this, and it's an important and innovative development that's strongly based on data. That data, by the way, always remains the property of the member."
What do you think is The Next Big Thing in digital in your market?
"More and more data is emerging everywhere and through the enrichment of customer data, new forms of data emerge. You and I can no longer interpret those large amounts of data; there's too much information. Artificial intelligence is increasingly used for interpretation. This makes it even better possible to offer individual service to the customer. Whether that's for marketing or for processing claims, it doesn't matter. Every form of contact will be provided with data."
What is your ultimate goal and dream to achieve in business?
"My ultimate goal... We have many people who know ANWB from Roadside Assistance and use it. My ultimate goal is to have these roadside assistance members also experience the service we provide to our insured. As ANWB we can help our members even better this way. Particularly in the area of mobility and recreation, we are experts in the insurance field. We work on that every day. What I also really want is that we keep exceeding the expectations our members have of us time and again. That you manage to surprise them every time with the quality of service and really know how to help them when it matters. Great profession!"
