Is there anything worse than trying to sign up for a new service and getting bombarded with follow-up calls? When I switched phone providers, those calls made me feel hassled and rushed into making a decision. But they did keep it front of mind. We all hate it, but it gets results. So, companies keep doing it and alienating thousands of potential customers in exchange for a steady conversion rate.
This was an all too familiar situation at Hippo.co.za. Here in South Africa, everyone knows and loves our iconic Hippo.co.za puppet. But ask them what they think of our service, and they fall into two categories. One group loves us. They quickly and easily find the best insurance deal for them. Unfortunately, in the second group, words like ‘spam’, ‘annoying’, and ‘stop’ are too common.
Or they were…before we turned our sales and marketing strategies upside down.
“Hippo is the worst idea ever! One simple request for a quote and they NEVER leave you alone. Stay away people!“
“This is a death by calls! Please find ways that I can send the same info to all [insurance providers] and they don’t have to talk to me for so long, asking the same questions I answered on your website!“
“It would be fantastic if Hippo.co.za didn’t call like 100 times in a day.”
So, what went wrong, and crucially—how did we fix it?
Growing revenues, but at what cost?
Customers use our website to find the best insurance deals. They enter their details and we find them 12 quotes within minutes from our partners. Once they’ve selected the most suitable one, we connect them to the insurer to complete the purchase. Simple, effective, and a great customer experience.
When customers aren’t ready to buy, things get more complicated.
Leads are passed to our contact centre to call and close the deal. This gets results: a high conversion rate, which contributed significantly to our revenue. But the customer experience? Not great. People don’t love unsolicited calls. We were making 5.5 million calls a year, and in return, we were getting more and more angry reviews about spam calls annoying potential customers.
We know poor service is the biggest reason people don’t return to our website, so we needed to find a way to stay front of mind for prospective customers without spamming them with follow-up calls. In short, we needed to turn sales and marketing processes upside down to put the customer experience first—and retire methods that worked in the past.
Converting customers using digital channels
You know how it goes: if you need to radically shake up how you’re doing something, start small, test it, and adapt it. So to start, we focused on car insurance. Fun fact — fewer than 35% of cars on the road in South Africa are insured, despite the potholes, dangerous drivers, and unsafe vehicles we encounter daily. The more people we can help find insurance, the better — for everyone.
The key to not annoying customers is to meet them where they are. We mapped the customer journey to find out where they prefer to engage and designed a digital journey to give the right information on the right channels.
Surprising no one, customers don’t see follow-up calls as part of their ideal experience, so we replaced 5.5 million annual outbound calls with an automated digital journey built on Marketing Cloud Engagement.
Now, customers can choose when they respond to our messages, so they’re in control of how much they hear from us. The results have been astounding. The automated digital journey is 27% more effective than the call centre journey. That means we’ve given our customers a much better user experience, we now help 300 more customers find the right insurance policies each month, and have increased the business we send to our insurance partners as a result.
And the kicker; by stopping outbound calls, we made an annual saving of R4.2 million (~€217,000), whilst managing to deploy staff into other areas of our business. We’ve got happy customers, happy staff, and happy partners – the trifecta!
In stark contrast to the spam complaints, here’s just some of the positive reviews we received after making the shift:
“I asked for quotes on car insurance and the response was basically immediate. And not one, not two, but ten quotes with the relevant information I needed. I am very impressed, thank you for the speedy service! And I would definitely recommend Hippo to friends and family.”
“Would highly recommend, was able to get an offer allowing me to make a saving of over R500 on my car insurance. Amazing to have it all in one place!“
“I love that the options are explained in detail and as soon as you click “I am interested” a consultant phones you back immediately.“
“Thank you Hippo, I managed to save R500 :-D”
Striking the right note with customers
Our campaigns are true to our brand. We inject a little humour into our communications to make them memorable and engaging. For example:
- Hey [Name] 👋, Great news—we’ve saved your quotes! You’re a tap away from the best price on your [car brand]’s cover. 🚗 💰
- Remember, with Hippo, you’re guaranteed…
✅ The best prices from SA’s top insurers.
✅ No markup
✅ No hidden fees
- Hey [name], you’re this close to getting a great car insurance deal 🤏
Simply tap the one that’s best for you. Using Hippo is 100% free – we add no markups, and the quotes are obligation-free. 🦛
- Your favourite emoji must be 👻
We don’t want to keep spamming you, but we do want to help #SaveYourSalary👆so please let us know how we can help. 🦛
Next, we’ll launch hyper-personalised journeys to tailor the tone of voice, send time, and preferred channel for every customer. And because we can use Einstein to help do this, we can use all our existing customer data to shape it.
Customers trust us with their data. With Salesforce, we can use it to offer them a better experience at every touchpoint — the relevant products at the right time. We’re also launching more journeys to offer lifetime value to customers, making sure they always have the right cover when they need it. That’s great for partners, too — it means more opportunities to cross- and upsell their products.
Hippo.co.za provides a great service. Now, we’re confident we can give all customers a great experience every time. And as we no longer call customers, we know those bad reviews are a thing of the past.
Find out more about Marketing Cloud Engagement.
