Sharing Platform Retention: The Ultimate KPI

If you want to know how your platform is doing, you need to crunch the numbers. The question is – are you looking at the right numbers? When it comes to claims, there are a lot of KPIs that you can consider: frequency, severity, average cost per claim, average time to settlement … the list goes on and on. You can get so caught up in the data that you forget to focus on the ultimate KPI, the one number that really matters. That number is your retention rate.

Why Retention Matters

According to Harvard Business Review, studies show that acquiring a new customer might be anywhere from five to 25 times more costly that retaining a current customer. Once you spend all the resources needed to attract a new owner or user, you don’t want to lose them to a bad experience. 

To boost retention, you’re probably already focused on the owner and user journeys. You may have audited your touchpoints to ensure that it’s fast and easy for an owner to add an asset to your platform. You’ve probably also invested a lot of time and money into making the user experience as seamless as possible. After all, convenience is the reason owners and users choose your service.

However, if the process is difficult or less-than-perfect in any way, your owners and users will try out competing platforms – and they may never come back – which, of course, is a waste of all the time and customer acquisition dollars you’ve invested. 

One Point You May Be Overlooking

What many sharing platforms may overlook when auditing their customer journeys is the claims experience. The claims experience is often referred to as the moment of truth – and in the insurance industry, it’s recognized as the moment of churn. 

Let’s face it: You’re engaging people when they are stressed. The claim team’s response usually results in one of two things: 1. A raving fan or 2. A blown opportunity. 

Unfortunately, claims happen. Someone gets into a fender bender while renting, or accidentally starts a small kitchen fire in RV they’re borrowing. 

If you offer a fast, easy and empathetic claims experience, your owners and users are more likely to come back. They might tell their friends, too. This can create momentum that helps your business grow. 

On the other hand, when insureds are not happy with the claims response, they might not give your platform a second chance. According to PwC, 32% of customers say they would stop doing business with a brand they loved after a SINGLE bad experience. There are no do-overs.

So, What Do Claimants Want?

According to McKinsey & Company, five key factors drive claimant satisfaction: 

1. Employee courtesy
2. Ease of communicating 
3. Employee knowledge/professionalism
4. Transparency and ease 
5. Claim settlement speed

These wishes seem reasonable and easy enough, but here’s the tricky part: Claims are not usually managed by your own team members. 

The claims handler assigned to your customers may or may not be committed to creating raving fans. In fact, in many instances, claims handlers are just getting through the day and checking the boxes on an overwhelming caseload. The file handler may be responsible for 125 claims, or even 200 claims, and speaking with customers from 10 different companies on any given day. There’s also a good chance that the file handler has no familiarity with the type of asset involved in the claim.

Can you imagine the potential issues?

How DigiSure Can Help Boost Your Retention

If you want the claims journey to be an extension of the ideal customer journeys you have planned, you’ve got to choose your claims partner wisely. In the sharing platform space, there is no better partner than DigiSure.

• Our claims adjusters only evaluate claims for sharing platforms and they only receive claims for the types of assets they know firsthand. For example, our motorcycle adjusters know motorcycles. They can talk the talk. They know the parts and can envision the claim scenarios.
• We deliver the fastest, easiest claims process because we support every step of your process from property onboarding to user screening and insurance for both owners and renters. This means we already have all the information needed about the asset, the owner, the user and the insurance policy. This gives us a running start so that we close 50% of claims in less than 3 days without hassling your customers for information.
• We communicate in the channel preferred by your customer. Surprisingly, a high percentage of sharing platform customers prefer to resolve their claims using text messages, and for them, that’s exactly what we do. Also, most people today won’t answer the phone unless they’re expecting a call. If we need to call a claimant, we send a text first so that the other person knows to pick up. This one extra step has increased call pickup rate by roughly 30%, minimizing phone tag and enabling us to resolve claims faster.
• Our process enables us to keep pending claims low. In an industry known for 120 to 150 pending claims per adjuster, our current pending case count is less than 10% of that per adjuster. Our goal is not to diary the claim forward. It’s to resolve the claim immediately, and that’s often what we do. 
• We think our way through every claim and empower our team to do the right thing. Although we leverage data for fast resolution, we know that automation and flow charts cannot replace the need for human input and critical thinking.
• We humanize the experience. We treat your customers like our neighbors (the good ones). We’re empathetic and helpful, and we always take the time to educate and explain. In one example, a malfunctioning toilet in an RV led to a claim. Although the claim wasn’t covered, our adjusters shared the information they’d uncovered on the underlying mechanical issue and recommended maintenance, helping the owner understand the reason behind the denial and maintaining the relationship.
• We work with full transparency. When your platform partners with us, you’ll get access to a portal that lets you see what’s happening. We also involve you in claims decisions to the extent you want to be involved. We consider ourselves to be an extension of your team.
• We offer the claim payment options your customers want. Lienholders get a check, but other recipients get to choose the payment method. About nine out of 10 choose ACH so they receive their payout almost instantly. 

If you’re committed to facilitating an exemplary customer journey, it’s time to focus on one KPI that really matters – your retention rate – and it’s time to take a closer look at how claims can make a difference.

Want to learn more about how DigiSure can help your sharing platform retain more customers?