Case Study
Attrition & Renewals Research
Mutual of Omaha uncovers the Why behind customer attrition and how to best influence persistency. Mutual of Omaha is a well-known and highly-rated Fortune 300 insurance organization. Founded in 1909, they offer various financial and insurance products for individuals, businesses and groups. As a mutual company, Mutual of Omaha is owned by its policyholders and committed to providing outstanding service to its customers.
Challenge
Mutual of Omaha’s Group Insurance division (Workplace Solutions) was particularly interested in learning more about their customers’ decision processes for discontinuing business with the company. Secondarily, they wanted to look at customers who elect to renew coverages. There were often no obvious reasons or commonality among the attritors. Mutual wanted to focus on factors that impact attrition, influences on the process (internal and/or external to their company), why customers actually decide to leave, and how likely it is to ‘win back’ back the customer.
Details
Mutual of Omaha partnered with PeopleMetrics to tackle this goal. In order to ensure Mutual wouldn’t miss anything and/or bias results with assumptions, PeopleMetrics suggested a multi-phase approach. Phase 1 included approximately 20 qualitative 1:1 interviews with former clients that were open-ended and exploratory in nature. These results formed the basis for Phase 2.
Over the course of Phase 1, it was decided that current customers, or customers who choose to renew with Mutual of Omaha, should also be included in this initiative. This would allow evaluation and assessment of how responses to key measures differ by the two groups (attritors and renewals), as well as how the two groups differ. As a result, Phase 2 consisted of a large quantitative survey across Mutual of Omaha customers who had dropped or renewed one or more products with the company in the previous one to two months. A total of 576 HR decision-makers, both former and current customers, provided feedback.
For Phase 3, PeopleMetrics interviewed approximately 20 group insurance brokers who were influential in a customer’s decision to stay with or leave Mutual of Omaha. These brokers served to ensure a holistic view of attrition and/or renewal.
Outcome
Mutual of Omaha discovered there were several common sentiments and themes among attritors. They used this data to inform continued improvements in customer servicing. Mutual also learned more about the most important factors for those who renew, as well as differences in those based on size and type of customer. Moving forward, these can be leveraged in targeted communications.