Customer research: a must-have for successful product development

Using research methods grounded in quantitative and qualitative research, we can proactively understand our insurance customers so that we can build products and services that meet their needs and create digital, or hybrid, insurance experiences that delight them.  

So, does customer research mean just surveys or focus groups? Far from it! Customer research means bringing together findings from all the various touchpoints throughout the customer journey. This includes data from customer experience, satisfaction metrics, verbatim comments, feedback on claims, surveys, and interviews with existing or prospective customers.

Feedback from customers can and should be incorporated at every stage of buying process. Our customer research experts are involved from the very beginning in our relationship with partners to ensure we're building the right insurance products for the right target audience. That way, we can support partners through every step of the way – from developing and defining the product all the way to providing tools for measuring customer experience post launch and utilising our expertise in behavioural science to optimise and help grow their insurance business. 

By regularly conducting research, we are able to:  

• make confident decisions about the insurance product we’re developing: There’s a lot of expertise and experience that goes into building products to get the details right. However, without research there is always uncertainty on how the product will fare in the market once launched. Customer research helps reduce this uncertainty by increasing your confidence as we incorporate audience perspectives into the process.
• de-risk the product development process: Embedding customer insight from the beginning of the insurance product development process will reduce the level of risk closer to launch by identifying the potential pitfalls and issues at an early stage. 
• reduce bias: Speaking with customers allows us to check for our own biases that may have creeped in as we design a product. It acts as a reality check for the team before we commit organisational resources to the product. 

Insurance partners and customers benefit   

We pride ourselves in working with partners who are leaders in their own markets and industries. While we have teams of experts within iptiQ that help our partners with technical support, our behavioural experts bring to the table the voice of the customer to help partners make informed decisions about the product and journey they're looking to build.

More specifically, for our partners this means: 

• Bringing an in depth understanding of the target audience to help partners understand their customer base and identify the need for an insurance offering
• Conducting bespoke research for our partners to help answer the crucial questions they have about their target customer:  
  How do our customers prefer buying insurance? 
  How much are they willing to pay for this product? 
  What add-on benefits would customers value? 
  How can we differentiate our proposition in the market?
• Using insights from our research to help design digital journeys for B2C distribution channels 
• Developing marketing campaigns based on the psychological triggers customers have when looking for insurance 
• Designing experiments and A/B tests grounded in behavioural science to improve and optimise success metrics such as conversion rates 

With all our partners we have a clear focus on the customer from the very beginning. We keep listening on every step of the way to build partnerships on a deeper, emotional understanding of your customers and how they interact with your brand – that’s how we drive success together.