Rob van Beers (DAS): “Each day, we do a little better”
DAS is the undisputed number 1 in The Netherlands (article in Dutch) when it comes to preference for taking out legal insurance. Being market leader and maintain that position is not an easy task. A conversation with Rob van Beers, team leader online at DAS. About being the best digitally, about research, and about sales funnels: “We try to do better each day, on all fronts.”
Congratulations, Rob van Beers. With DAS you are the winner of this study of legal insurance. How important is it for you to be the best with DAS?
“We are pleased that we are the best in this research, we want to be. We are market leader, so we want to maintain that position. We work very hard for that every day. It’s nice that this is reflected in this WUA! study. In the online profession you keep optimising. With DAS we do that with our services, our website, arranging sales funnels; each day we do a little better on all fronts.”
You don’t just score high on findability, but also the other topics of the WPS model. What is going so well for you?
“We have a lot of campaigns. People know our brand. People associate DAS directly with legal insurance. The downside is that it makes it more difficult to offer other products. On the other hand we try to present our products in such a way that they make sense. Independer.nl scored high in the rankings of the WUA! study, comparison sites are becoming increasingly popular. These focus heavily on quality and on price, so then it becomes all the more important that you offer a decent product. When looking at a comparison, most people don’t look beyond the top 5.”
What is the role of customer research and customer focus in your daily work?
“The key to being able to optimise something well is having the right insights, and for that we use many of different resources. We have our own visitor numbers, we look closely at click paths; what do people click on, where they are going, and where do they come from. Those are just the basics, which ensure that we can carefully guide each group of visitors through our website to get them to the right place.
“The WUA! studies can help with that, a group of potential customers gives you new insights rather than dry visitor numbers on your website. One possible disadvantage of the type of studies WUA! carry out, I think, is that they do not always offer the same experience as in real life: for DAS context is very important because we offer a complex product. Few people wake up one morning and say: “Right, I’m going to take out legal insurance”. There is always context, a legal dispute or an experience, it is nothing like buying a television or a book.”
What is your biggest digital challenge?
“We try to offer our products as effectively as possible for optimal conversion. But a challenge that’s also part of it, is that we do not just sit on conversion but also offer the right solution for the situation. The last thing I want is someone taking out insurance and then it turns out that they aren’t covered for something they need. At DAS we also offer solutions to people who need legal help immediately. These different solutions we offer need to be clear, and we need to help these people make the right choice. A legal conflict occurs once every seven years on average, and people often do not know what to do. We need to support them in this the best we can.”
How do you view service in relation to sales? Could service eventually become the new sales in your sector?
“Yes, we see this in a lot of services. We take appraisal and ratings from customers more and more into account, especially for service provision this has become more important. People are looking for confirmation that they have the right solution, and our products are often complex means which customers need more certainty. We currently aren’t selling much via the DAS service environment, but we are working on it. We ensure that people gain more control and get more opportunities to do more things themselves.”
Are there any other interesting things happening, what digital innovations are you working on?
“It might be nice to let you know that we are working hard to secure our market leadership more from content. We have a knowledge base full of legal matters. You can see that this draws a lot traffic towards our website. That benefits the overall rankings in Google, but of course such a knowledge base also helps guide visitors toward products that are relevant to them.”
