Banking Review

The interactive interface is compelling. The content includes some thoughtful features including ‘Plan your next ride’ feature. This allows customers to create recommended rides for their area all mapped via Google Maps. You can watch the AllState Garage mechanics build a bike or build your own. All the while “frequently asked questions” are appearing on screen to encourage customers to think about their insurance.

Video content covering how to choose a bike, what to look for in safety features are delivered by the Allstate Garage mechanic team. The videos are interesting, professional and set against the grimy garage backdrop of the site’s interface.

However, everything falls apart at a critical transition point; when a customer decides to get a quote. No online quoting is available, something that the Australian motorcycle insurance providers do offer to varying degrees. After delivering an interesting, interactive and insightful site to this niche community, no online quotes are available. The company has demonstrated that they know about these customers, understand what they like and then send them out of their immersive experience into a call centre queue.

Customers can go to the standard Allstate site and request an email quote within 24 hours. This is possibly a worse customer experience than being directed to the call centre. The disconnection between the targeted website and corporate offering intensifies the fragmentation of the customer experience. The Allstate corporate site with its smiling motorcyclists is in stark contrast to the gritty Garage just for bikers.

Great time and effort has been placed into developing the Allstate Garage microsite content, interactivity and interface. Yet when it comes to the crunch; converting browsers to customers, the site does not deliver. A customer can make an appointment to see a local broker but again, this lacks the immediacy of the online channel. Surely a ‘click to call to your local broker’ function would have been closer to the mark. Implementing interactive functionality to connect customer with provider should have seemed logical at this critical point in the sale process.

Forrester Research indicates that an integrated, multi-channel customer experience will be critical to the acquisition and retention of customers, particularly insurance customers this year. Allstate Garage has gone part of the way yet stumbles at the final conversion hurdle.

How can integrated multi-channel customer experience be implemented when companies seek niche engagement with their customer segments? Can offline and online work together seamlessly when entrenched core systems and services are aimed at the broad market and online can target the individual?