Managing customer expectations has become an important part of the insurance industry’s response to post-disaster recovery operations, according to Gallagher Bassett EVP International Jon Winsbury.

Today’s consumers are accustomed to Amazon-style service standards, where at the click of a mouse they have their orders and delivery dates confirmed, and have by default assumed this would be the case with other non-retail industries such as insurance.

But this is near-impossible for insurers to replicate simply because so much more is involved when it comes to customer service after a natural catastrophe event.

“Getting a claim approved is one thing,” Mr Winsbury told insuranceNEWS.com.au today. “Getting the work done is another and setting those expectations early is very important.

“So if you are not managing those expectations and they are changing, you need to understand how to manage them.

“Being clear in expectation-setting early is a key task of any insurance carriers managing a catastrophe and combine that with an increase level of empathy required by frontline troops.”

Frontline troops, the staff who are the first point of contact for clients impacted by a catastrophe, need to have empathy as they walk customers through the “journey” of going through the claims process from start to finish.

“They need to be empathetic. They need to understand what they’re going to tell customers and you need to set that expectations early,” Mr Winsbury said. “They don’t understand that a tradesperson may take time to get to their sites.

“Therefore its very important set expectations early around that because it’s not like we can fix the number of tradespeople that are required.”

He thinks this coming summer is possibly one where the industry will need to pay even more focus on customer expectations. With COVID restrictions still in place and the prospect of above-normal rainfall and floods because of La Nina, disaster recovery operations may be affected.

“Mother Nature doesn’t care about COVID-19,” Mr Winsbury said. “So at the moment we’re restricted in our response rates because of government restrictions and that is going to be a challenge for the entire industry as we head into the storm and cyclone season.”