Customer Experience

At the heart of who we are is our promise to take care of our customers. In the best of times, our products and services provide our customers with the security to grow and thrive: another truck for a growing business or an addition to the house for a growing family. When disaster strikes, that promise can mean replacing a totaled vehicle or making sure a roof is repaired in time for the holidays or a special occasion. In every case, a Travelers policy means a trusted relationship that can last years, even generations, and brings value to our customers, our enterprise and our shareholders.

We recognize that to deliver on our promise and to produce industry-leading returns over time, we need to understand our customers’ changing needs and expectations, which are increasingly shaped by their experiences both inside and outside the insurance industry. Meeting and exceeding those expectations require us to keep the customer at the heart of everything we do and collaborate with our agent and broker partners to provide a seamless and consistent experience across all interactions and touchpoints.

Our Head of Customer Experience, a member of our Operating Committee, leads our enterprisewide efforts to enhance our customer experience. We regularly conduct customer research to gain a real-time understanding of our customers’ needs. We also rely on our data and analytics expertise to develop intelligent models that help us predict and provide for their needs throughout the customer life cycle. We use these learnings to strategically invest in technologies, capabilities and talent that enable us to become faster, easier, nimbler, more digital, more mobile and more personalized. Through these efforts, we continue to drive one of our three innovation priorities – to provide great experiences for our customers, agents and brokers.

From a claim perspective, customer experience is both a core value and a business discipline. For the overwhelming majority of claims, we do not contract third-party claims adjustors, but rely on our own staff; in 2020, we were able to adjust virtually 100% of our claims with our own employees. This structure sets us apart in the industry, allowing us to process claims more quickly and accurately, enabling a consistently high standard of customer service. Our claims handling capability is at the heart of our promise to our customers and proved again in 2020 to be a significant competitive advantage that results in a better outcome for our customers and a more efficient outcome for us. In 2020, we were able to resolve more than 92% of our customers’ property claims arising out of catastrophe events within 30 days. This was a particularly remarkable result, when, during the pandemic, we responded to a record number of catastrophe events and a more than 50% increase in catastrophe claim volume as compared to 2019. The capacity to service virtually all our claims with our own employees also provides us with valuable insights and data, which helps us continually learn from our customers and refine our service processes to optimize their experience with us.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying challenges also gave us an opportunity to deliver on our promise to our customers in new and meaningful ways. To ease the financial burden on individuals and businesses, we provided billing relief for all our U.S. customers by temporarily suspending cancellations for nonpayment. Though that initial relief period ended, we continue to work with customers who are facing financial hardship on an individual basis to offer bespoke solutions. In addition, we returned nearly $250 million in premiums to our customers by voluntarily providing Personal Insurance auto customers with a credit to account for fewer miles driven.

This year, to ensure everyone’s safety without missing a beat in taking care of our customers, we adjusted our claim inspection process to rely more heavily on state-of-the-art digital and virtual capabilities. When customers filed claims, we worked with them to select the virtual claim options that were best suited for their individual situations. Among other things:

• Our virtual inspection tools enable us to effectively “see” damage without physically being on-site.
• Our real-time video chat and apps guide our customers through the process of assessing property damage or discussing a workers compensation claim via a “virtual visit” with a Travelers medical or Claim professional.
• Customers can share receipts, photos and invoices with us through Travelers.com or via the MyTravelers® customer portal.

Additionally, we have been able to leverage our technology to conduct premium audits virtually and, in our workers compensation business, provide telemedicine options for injured employees, including a temporary telerehabilitation program for those who are concerned about attending or unable to attend physical therapy visits in person.

In 2020, we handled 40% more auto appraisals and wind/hail claims and 70% more water claims virtually without the need for a live inspection, as compared to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, we expanded our workers compensation telehealth capabilities throughout all stages of the recovery journey, with usage up dramatically year over year. All of this resulted in a better experience for our customers, a safer experience for our customers and Claim professionals, and a more efficient outcome for us. For more information on our digital and virtual capabilities, see the Innovation section of this site.

We pride ourselves on delivering for our customers but are pleased when our customer experience has been recognized by others. For example:

• J.D. Power identified Travelers as a top-10 carrier for digital service and among the top three carriers with the most improvement in this area year over year (2020).
• CMO Club Customer Experience award finalist for leadership in creating high-impact experiences (2020).
• Clarabridge Customer Experience Luminary Award as a leader in customer experience innovation and achievement (2019).
• Newsweek named Travelers as one of America’s best companies for customer service (2019).
• U.S. News rated Travelers as the second-best car insurance company (2019).
• The Marsh ProBroker network of 65 UK-based commercial insurance brokers named our Travelers Europe team “Insurer of the Year” (2019).

Ultimately, the results of our customer experience efforts are reflected in our very strong customer retention rates.

Customer Retention Rates

At Travelers, we strive to exceed our customers’ evolving expectations and work hard to provide them with compelling experiences. We understand the importance of a human connection when a customer experiences a “life event” – such as buying a new home or investing in their business. At the same time, we understand the growing importance of technology as our customers increasingly desire the ability to interact with us digitally. By continually enhancing our digital and virtual capabilities – throughout our business segments and within our Claim and Risk Control organizations – we are better able to help our customers protect what is important to them, keep themselves and their employees safe and well, and get them through a covered loss. Our Innovative Products & Services section provides detail on the many innovative ways in which we take care of our customers every day.

We remain committed to maintaining the human touch while delivering this exceptional digital experience. Here are some of the ways we work hard to do that:

Leveraging Data and Analytics to Enhance the Human-Centered Experience

We leverage company data and analytics expertise to drive informed and thoughtful design and human-centered innovation. For example, Personal Insurance visitors to MyTravelers.com are now able to interact with a virtual assistant for simple requests, freeing up customer service representatives to apply their expertise to more complicated matters. This capability enabled us to respond quickly to thousands of customer inquiries with automated messages about billing relief and our Stay-at-Home Auto Premium Credit Program, allowing us to provide our customers with important and timely information while also significantly reducing our call center volumes. Our Virtual Assistant technology also enabled us to manage the high volume of incoming inquiries and requests that specifically related to COVID-19; when the pandemic started, we trained the chatbot in a matter of days with COVID-19-related questions from customers to make sure that we were addressing these new and unique concerns.

Treating our customers, claimants and business partners with the highest degree of integrity, professionalism and empathy and paying what we owe are core to our mission. That’s why our Claim organization has a deliberate focus on attracting, developing and retaining a high-performing workforce that shares our values and embraces our culture. We offer our Claim professionals comprehensive training designed to drive alignment with Claim’s values and vision and drive the ethical, empathetic and effective claim handling that is critical to our success. Employees are regularly recognized for their ability to leave our customers feeling secure, respected and cared for at every interaction.

Our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics clearly establishes Travelers’ policy to handle claims fairly by paying what we owe and following the terms of the applicable insurance policies and all claim handling standards contained in the applicable statutes and regulations. The Code specifies that Claim personnel are expected to act promptly and in good faith when handling claims. These principles are frequently reinforced by management at all levels within the Claim department through regular training, communications and measurement. Among other things, our claim handling staff are provided with good faith claim handling training that specifically walks through different situations Claim professionals may encounter in their work. Claim professionals’ core technical training addresses coverage determination and customer communication, and our internal quality review of Claim files includes determination of whether all coverages were correctly identified, applied and communicated to the customer. In addition, all Claim employees are required to annually certify compliance with a Claim-specific compliance plan that goes above and beyond the company compliance plan to specifically address good faith claim handling.

The diversity of our workforce also helps us provide empathetic and effective claim service. For example, on average, when we provide Spanish-language workers compensation Claim and medical professionals to Spanish-speaking customers, we see a reduction in lost time and claim, legal and medical expenses, with improved medical and return-to-work outcomes.

At Travelers, we understand the power of listening. To that end, we aim to provide our customers and agent and broker partners with the ability to quickly and easily give us feedback on our products, services and interactions. Our Customer Experience teams, which span across all Travelers business lines, regularly monitor and analyze that data to respond to customer and agent concerns while using root cause analysis to continuously improve our processes. Our goals are to ensure that we understand our stakeholders from the start, and that we use the valuable feedback we receive to develop the products and services that our customers want and need.

We are always taking steps to expand our ability to receive and act upon customer feedback, including through the use of “after call,” “chat,” and “after transaction” surveys; feedback buttons or active surveys on our digital properties; and deep quantitative research and in-depth interviews with our customers, agent and broker partners and employees.

In response to our customer and agent feedback in 2020, we regularly delivered information to our customers and agent and broker partners on how we were responding to the pandemic and how they could connect with us and utilize our digital offerings. And we ensured we had the resources in place to respond effectively and with empathy around the clock.

We also utilize data from third parties such as J.D. Power, Forrester, NICE Satmetrix and Gartner and agent and broker feedback mechanisms, along with our customer feedback, to monitor customers’ needs with the goal of providing an exceptional experience. Due in part to our deep analytics from hundreds of listening programs, we improved customer satisfaction in all business areas. Ultimately, by listening to our customers and evolving our processes and strategies to align more closely with both customer and agent and broker perspectives, we aim to continuously improve customer experiences and loyalty.

Here are some of the other ways we advance our goal of listening to our customers and agent and broker partners:

• 24/7 Customer Advocacy Help Line. With one of the most comprehensive suites of Commercial and Personal product offerings in the marketplace and over 30 businesses and approximately 30,000 employees, it could be difficult to reach the right person at the right time. To make it easier, our Customer Advocacy team of trained specialists is available 24/7 to help our customers, agents and brokers navigate to the right person at Travelers. Customers can find the Customer Advocacy telephone number and email address by clicking on the “Contact Us” button on the front page of Travelers.com.
• Social Media Response Capabilities. Many of today’s customers prefer to interact through social media. To address this trend, we have established a social media scanning and response capability to quickly respond to customer inquiries through social media. Any time a customer posts on a Travelers social media property or tags Travelers in a post on their social media property, we have a process to quickly review and direct that comment to the right business partner to determine if a response is needed.

Our partnerships with our agents and brokers are a key competitive advantage for us and an important driver of our long-term success. We aim to be their indispensable partner; together, we deliver on our promise to be there for our shared customers.

This is why, in 2020, to support our independent agent and broker partners – many of whom are small business owners – and help soften the liquidity impacts on those businesses from COVID-19, we accelerated over $100 million of commission payments to eligible agents and brokers. In addition to these accelerated payments, we adjusted exposures downward for workers compensation and general liability as our commercial customers temporarily furloughed workers or experienced lower sales and receipts. Beyond financial relief, we moved quickly to help our agent and broker partners operate in new environments, including by offering state-of-the-art digital and virtual claim inspection tools, virtual premium audits, discounted technology including laptops and monitors, and instructional webinars. For us, this was an easy call. When you manage the company for the next quarter century, not just for the next quarter, supporting your most valued partners in a crisis is simply good business.

We are also continually enhancing our digital marketing and sales tools to better support our agents and brokers and to help them identify and capture new business opportunities more effectively. For example, we support our independent agents and brokers in Personal Insurance by providing them with social media, marketing and customer relationship resources. These resources allow them to leverage our communication platforms and our extensive product and safety content to engage with their local markets and communities. We also work closely with our agents when designing new products, such as Quantum Home 2.0®. Quantum Home 2.0 provides greater customization, fewer steps to complete a quote and simplified customer communications – all of which increase efficiency for agents while helping them to deliver better service and drive new business. We work with our agents and brokers to provide our shared customers with clear and accurate information, which can guide them toward the products and services they need.

Travelers Institute® educational programming also offers unique value to our network of 13,500 agent and broker partners, providing a distinguished thought leadership platform. Over the past 12 years, the Travelers Institute has hosted more than 500 events in collaboration with agents and brokers, enhancing these relationships while providing education and risk mitigation strategies to thousands of consumers. The programming leverages our agents’ knowledge of how issues such as cybersecurity, distracted driving and natural disasters directly affect families, businesses and communities. Agencies and agent associations regularly co-host programs with the Travelers Institute, invite customers and provide expert speakers, showcasing their risk management expertise and reinforcing their value as trusted advisors for critical insurance decisions. In addition, the Travelers Institute offers presentations on the economic outlook and political landscape at agent conferences and events and provides educational content, including publications, social media campaigns and videos, for agents and brokers to share with clients. During the pandemic, the Travelers Institute has continued to foster these relationships and provide educational programming through its new Wednesdays with Woodward® webinar series. The series launched in June 2020 to explore personal and professional issues impacting our agents, our brokers, our customers, our employees and the communities we serve. Topics included the race to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, leading and managing teams during the pandemic, maintaining resilience and emotional well-being during times of stress, and employee safety and COVID-19, among many others. Notably, the Travelers Institute hosted a webinar, The Changing Landscape of Insurance Distribution, highlighting the pace of today’s business world, as well as the evolving distribution strategies and ongoing consolidation in the insurance industry. The Travelers Institute’s programs are a great example of how our efforts to strengthen our communities also enhance our relationships with our agent and broker partners and drive our bottom line.