Insurers are failing to engage with social media and technology-savvy consumers, a customer experience survey has shown.
Only half of basic online or email questions were answered satisfactorily by insurers, the Eptica Multichannel Customer Experience Study showed, while the number of questions answered overall online has dropped by 2% from 50% in the last year.
The study revealed insurers responded successfully to just 30% of emails.
On average it took insurers thirty hours and six minutes to answer emails with huge differences in performance; one insurer took more than two days while another responded in just one hour eighteen minutes.
The study found social media use had increased dramatically with 50% of insurers now providing links to Twitter and 30% to Facebook, yet overall lagged behind other sectors.
Dee Roche, vice president of global marketing at Eptica, said: "The insurance industry is at a critical juncture, faced by diminishing margins, rising costs and vanishing customer loyalty.
"Efficiently providing a superior customer experience across multiple channels is at the heart of succeeding in such a difficult market. However our research found that there is an increasing chasm between best and worst.
"Given the competitive pressures facing insurers they need to look at where they can improve their processes to increase customer retention and improve efficiency."
Eptica said the rise of price comparison sites had slashed margins, competition was growing, customer loyalty was at an all-time low and claim costs and regulation were both an increasing burden for insurers.
It added that insurers were hampered by legacy systems and paper-intensive, manual processes and were struggling to adapt to the multi-channel, customer-centric, low margin world.
The research evaluated 10 insurers active in the life, motor, travel, pet and household sectors.
