LV= makes insurance simpler for 7 million customers with Salesforce

When a customer’s car and all its contents were destroyed in a fire, LV= General Insurance did more than just settle the claim. It arranged for a famous rock band to sign a CD to replace the one lost in the blaze. This is just one example of more than 1,900 caring gestures made by LV= through its Green Heart Support initiative since 2017.  

The scheme was set up by LV= to provide a bit of extra support to customers when they need it most - whether it involves sending flowers, vouchers, hampers or arranging bespoke gestures. “Our customers put a lot of trust in us and we want to provide them with a truly personalised service,” said Heather Smith, Managing Director for LV= Retail. “With Salesforce, we can empower our people to deliver better customer outcomes and encourage stronger engagement.”

From pets and cars to homes and holidays, LV= helps people protect the things that matter to them most. With more than 7 million customers, LV= is one of the UK’s largest personal insurers. It’s also one of the best loved: 99% of customers say they would buy from LV= again. “We know that life can be complicated, but insurance doesn’t have to be,” said Smith. “We place customers at the heart of everything that we do and work hard to make important financial decisions as simple as possible.”

But that’s not all. LV=, which is owned by Allianz, also wants to make the insurance experience as simple as possible - from sourcing a quote and making a claim to renewing a policy. “Customers’ expectations are changing - they want more self-service and to engage on multiple channels,” explained Martin Faux, Head of Digital Platforms at LV=. “With Salesforce, we can harness the power of digital to enrich consumer and broker interactions.”

LV= implemented Salesforce in 2019 to replace a number of existing fragmented CRM solutions. “With Salesforce, we can take a more holistic approach, which means we can have more informed conversations and provide more a personalised experience,” added Faux.

LV= uses a combination of Financial Services Cloud, Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud), MuleSoft, and Marketing Cloud. It was the first insurance company in the UK to blaze a trail with Financial Services Cloud, which has helped to digitalise customer services, sales, and claims across its direct business. “The insurance data model within Financial Services Cloud means policies, contacts, and entities can all be populated seamlessly,” explained Faux. “It made our implementation much easier and has accelerated our digital transformation.”

Every email message, live chat interaction, and web form is now captured in Financial Services Cloud. Live chat has become increasingly popular with LV= customers and helps guide them through the quote and purchase journey for car and home policies. It also provides LV= with insights into changing consumer behaviours. For example, LV= used live chat interactions captured on Financial Services Cloud to better understand customer needs around making vehicle changes on their policies, which enabled it to update self-service capabilities on its website.

The web forms integrated with Financial Services Cloud have also enabled LV= to make some customer-facing processes 100% digital. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, we introduced an option for customers to submit simple home claims via a Salesforce form,” explained Faux. “In the week we went live, we saw 25% of home claims being processed via this feature, which helped to free up our customer service team at a time when their working environment had changed and they were facing their own personal challenges as a result of COVID-19 lockdown measures.”

By integrating Financial Services Cloud with Marketing Cloud, LV= can provide customer service agents with visibility of recent communications while colleagues in marketing can see if there are any outstanding cases or complaints. “With Salesforce, we can provide a more consistent customer experience across different teams and channels,” said Joanna Lidgey, Head of Performance Marketing for LV=.

Thanks to Trailhead, a Salesforce online learning resource, LV= has been able to maximise the benefits of the integration as well as its use of different Marketing Cloud modules. “With Trailhead, we can organise group and individual training sessions that are tailored to different people’s interests and skills,” added Lidgey.

To connect with its customers and prospects, LV= uses a variety of marketing tools and platforms, including television adverts, search engines and email campaigns. “We need to stay highly visible in the market especially as the use of comparison website increases,” explained Lidgey. “With Marketing Cloud, we can demonstrate the value of building a direct relationship with an insurance company and ensure our customer communications remain relevant.”

The LV= marketing team uses a number of triggers and journeys to maintain this relevance throughout the prospect and customer lifecycle. For example, with Interaction Studio, it can send a follow-up email when a prospect saves or abandons an online quote. “We can now react in real time with emails built on agile ‘drag and drop’ templates,” added Lidgey. “With a single connected dashboard, we will soon be able to see the entire marketing sales funnel. From there, we can then bring in data from multiple sources to optimise our campaigns in real-time.”

A personalised and automated approach has increased open and click through rates for ‘trigger’ emails to an impressive 98%. These emails arrive now in customers’ inboxes within 30 minutes of them visiting the LV= website compared with two hours previously. But this is just the start of the marketing success story at LV=. The team has also helped the insurer win new business through its use of targeted journey emails. For example, a welcome journey email has contributed to a 128% increase in sales while a cross-selling renewal journey has resulted in a massive 500% uplift.

The emails are powered by Journey Builder, part of Marketing Cloud, which is also used to execute monthly campaigns. “Prior to deploying Marketing Cloud, we were reliant on external agencies, which impacted our agility. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were replanning almost weekly,” explained Lidgey. “Our communications and campaigns are now more responsive and relevant, which is key to winning and retaining customers.”

Agility was essential during the COVID-19 pandemic when the LV= marketing team had to replan its campaigns and communications on an almost weekly basis. “With Marketing Cloud, it is much easier to test new ideas and make changes, which helps to save us time and money,” commented Lidgey.

LV= can also maximise its marketing budget by using Marketing Cloud’s Advertising Studio to consolidate its paid search, social media, and display advertising activities. This will not only help to prevent duplication but also ensure that customers are targeted with consistent messaging across all channels. By integrating Advertising Studio with Google Ads, LV= can target existing customers with cross-selling promotions in paid search engine results.

Monitoring social posts from customers and brokers via Social Studio will enable LV= to bring even greater personalisation to its marketing communications and services.

Brokers are fundamental to the insurer’s business model and its future growth plans. To simplify collaboration, LV= has launched a new online portal with a range of self-service options, such as creating cover notes, issuing green cards, and updating customer details. “The portal is designed by brokers for brokers. We wanted to make sure it would meet their needs and make their lives easier,” explained Faux.

Built on Experience Cloud, the new portal provides around 3,500 broker users with real-time visibility of the status of customers’ insurance claims. “With Salesforce, we can empower brokers to work faster and smarter, which means a better experience for LV= customers,” said Faux.

The portal hasn’t just been transformational for the LV= broker community; it has also empowered LV= account teams to have more relevant conversations. “The portal will be key to growing our business and building stronger broker relationships,” added Faux. “We’ve already received lots of great feedback.”

The rich functionality of the broker portal is reliant on data, such as vehicle registrations and customer addresses, hosted in six other systems. With MuleSoft, LV= was able to establish these integrations in just a few weeks, making the data accessible in real time. “With MuleSoft, we can create and reuse APIs more quickly and easily,” said Dave Gardner, Digital IT Development Manager at LV=. “It is fundamental to our digital strategy and will enable us to establish new internal and external integrations that enrich the broker and customer experience.”

Thanks to MuleSoft, LV= has rolled out more than 60 APIs, which support a number of customer-facing processes, such as uploading photos to support a claim and accessing policy details. “New APIs are now ready for testing within less than a week,” added Gardner. “With MuleSoft, we can avoid complex and costly point-to-point integrations and bring more control, security, and consistency to the creation and reuse of APIs.”

With COVID-19 putting a greater emphasis on digital transformation, LV= will be continuing to use Salesforce to ensure it remains best loved by brokers, customers, and colleagues. For example, it’s looking at using chatbots for triaging customer queries, expanding its use of Advertising Studio to reach a wider audience on more channels, and exploiting machine learning to deliver even richer personalisation.

Digitalisation and personalisation have already helped LV= land a number of industry accolades; it came joint first for customer service in the insurance sector in the UK’s Customer Satisfaction Index for 2020. “We don’t just want to satisfy our customers, we want to delight them,” said Smith. “With Salesforce, we can deliver insurance from the heart and empower our teams to focus on the little things that make a big difference to our customers’ lives.”