How Listening to Our Customers Online Helps Us to Improve Their Experience

Reviews are the pinnacle of today’s trust in retail and commerce worldwide. If you see a bad review, and even worse, several, you’re likely not going to buy. Alan Lay, Digital Engagement Manager at LV= discusses below.

Financial services brands are working hard to build trust and are boosting consumer confidence by actively listening to their customers and not being afraid to make business decisions based on what they hear.

Re-establishing faith in the sector has not been an easy ride since 2008, but financial brands can better engage customers by demonstrating they listen and by responding to what they hear.

Blogs and customer forums have grown in popularity, so too has user-generated content (UGC) which is incredibly powerful. UGC has huge credibility because it shifts some of the positive brand building to a source that is viewed much more independently – the customer.

After all, real-life feedback from customers is much more authentic and reliable when making business decisions than third party reports on the state of the industry and surveys assessing consumer trends.

At LV= we make no bones about wanting to be Britain’s best-loved insurer, and arguably the best way to assess how people really feel about our brand is to collate authentic content from our customers.

We have gathered more than 100,000 reviews through our work with UGC platform Reevoo, for example, and have also gathered intimate and meaningful content from them through our Customer Moments section.

This new method of collecting content, which Reevoo calls Experiences, allows us to influence the kind of content we collect and align our UGC strategy with our wider brand goals.

This effectively means that instead of us having to comb through individual social media channels or trawling through everything uploaded under a specific hashtag, we are directly asking our customers questions that will result in the kind of content we want to collect (with a little help from Reevoo to get the right questions).

Customers are only too happy to share content that can often be both surprising and evocative, often doing the ‘selling’ for us.

These customer experiences reveal the full breadth of positive impact our insurance products can have on people’s lives – and identify where we still have work to do. We have featured them across various channels including our Instagram account, as well as our online lifestyle magazine, making our customers’ real-life experiences of our products an integral part of our online presence.

UGC provides brands with evidence of good and bad customer experiences and, with detailed analysis, the right actions can be taken to improve products and services.

For instance, positive reviews for LV= in November included: “My favourite part was the help that was given in helping me complete the application form. Thank you LV and in particular Demi!” said Francis in Norwich.

Meanwhile, Andrea in Nottinghamshire said: “I’m of an age where computer’s and web surfing unfortunately don’t come naturally to me, however, your website was completely easy to navigate. I particularly liked the pop ups throughout, advising me if I was perhaps making an error to leave me under insured; which if I’m honest was the single thing that swayed me to purchase LV car insurance. I also liked the fact there was always somebody available for free chat to guide me through the process.

I have also checked what my house insurance would be with LV and it’s considerably less than what I’m paying now so when I renew my house insurance it will be with LV. Thank you for getting it right!!”

One of the reasons we work with Reevoo is because they ensure that everything that gets published comes from verified customers and that nothing gets censored.

We don’t shy away from publishing negative feedback, as it helps us understand where we can improve, and gives us a chance to monitor and respond to our customers’ concerns.

The powerful brand building that comes from UGC only works if consumers have confidence that the content they read is trustworthy, uncensored and verified, and that we are truly listening to what they have to say.

Another benefit of UGC comes in the form of SEO- by publishing verified reviews on as many relevant pages as possible and making clever use of URLs, your brand can rise up the search rankings.

Google’s natural search feature even breaks out review scores in full and highlights them near the top of the page. Snippets of trusted reviews can also be featured by Google.

In fact, rich snippets allow us to squeeze every last drop of PPC and SEO benefit from our website content. They are part of Google’s ‘mark-up’ options that make search results more appetising. Imagine having extra guacamole on your burrito. A brand just needs to tag its content in such a way that positive and verified reviews feature in a potential customer’s search results.

Whatever part of the financial services industry your brand operates in your customers need to play an integral role in the way you present yourself. At LV= we ensure that every customer review feeds directly into our marketing strategy.

Financial services brands will only truly convince new and old customers that they are trustworthy, and even lovable, if they have a clear understanding of how people really feel about their products and services. Brands will often ask to hear from their customers, but the magic only happens if they actually listen to them.

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