Aflac’s approach to Gen Z engagement

The way customers make purchases and interact with brands is changing. Food, personal items and even cars are ordered through a screen. How do these shifts in behavior impact a more complicated service like insurance? And how does digital engagement connect back to branding?

We recently spoke with Keith Farley, a marketer with experience at big brands like Coca-Cola and Stanley Black+Decker. He’s currently SVP of individual voluntary advantages at Aflac, generally known as a force within the branding world due to its iconic Aflac Duck commercials (voiced by the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried), introduced a quarter-century ago.

Customers born just before or after the debut of the memorable Aflac Duck are generally known as Gen Z and are a much wanted medical health insurance demographic. If all goes well, they may very well be longtime clients and never make many claims for years.

Gen Z, though not a monolith, holds different expectations about engaging with brands than previous cohorts. That means the best message, or the best service, over the best channel impacts referrals and grows brand appreciation. For Aflac, the positive impressions are all connected across the client journey. And although Gen Z is leading a few of these changes, all customers have modified their behaviors in recent times, according to Farley.

“With Gen Z, there’s this assumption that all the things is digital and so they never want to talk to a human again — and that’s true in a variety of cases,” said Farley. “When it comes to ordering a pizza, or booking a flight, but not if you receive a diagnosis for cancer. Now, you wish to talk to a human. Sometimes, as a brand, we meet people on their darkest day.”

Mobile-first consumers

An essential metric for the relevance of mobile engagement for brands is the variety of consumers who make big-ticket purchases over mobile. It’s an indication of the high amount of trust consumers have in mobile channels as they use their phones to get more things done of their digital lives.

Sixty-two percent of consumers said they trusted phones over personal computers and tablets, according to a recent survey of two,000 consumers conducted by ecommerce software company StoreConnect. Twenty-five percent said they trust desktops or laptops essentially the most; under 12% trusted tablets essentially the most.

This doesn’t mean that Gen Z trusts mobile greater than older customers. In the identical survey, 64.2% of Millennials (age 25-34) said they trust mobile to book flights and vacation rentals, while 53% of consumers 18-25 said so.v

It is likely to be that Millennials have more experience than Gen Z in booking vacations generally, in order that they have more confidence in mobile and payment apps to complete these transactions. But it’s clear that buyers of all ages expect to have the selection to engage with brands, no matter whether it’s a straightforward product or a more complex process like filing an insurance claim.

Different channels for various outcomes

“With Aflac, we don’t have a physical product — you possibly can’t touch it, you possibly can’t feel it, you possibly can’t taste it, you possibly can’t hold it,” said Farley. “But we still have a look at it from the attitude of what a customer wants. Do they need all the most recent and best technology, or once they’re diagnosed with a dreaded disease, do they need to talk to a human?”

Aflac branding thrives on social media and thru mass-market campaigns. But there’s a firm line between marketing to latest and existing customers and customer support for incoming claims. From the patron’s perspective, it would all be connected. Internally, Aflac keeps these two operations separate.

“Obviously, the best way we market to people and the best way we reach them from a sales and marketing perspective is likely to be very different than on the back end,” Farley said. “When you’re being marketed to, things are running easily in your life. You haven’t had a stroke or a heart attack. What’s the medium and what’s the tone that they need when something bad has happened?”

To protect users’ privacy, Aflac handles claims over secure communications that include email, chat and phone.

“Sometimes we do have folks who want service through a social platform — although what you’ll find is due to the nature of the private health information, people don’t want to put it on the market, and clearly we’re required to not discuss your diagnosis on a social channel,” said Farley.

Boosting engagement and net promoter rating with customer experience

Gen Z and Millennial consumers are open to making purchases on an app, as we saw above. They are also working in a job market where direct-to-consumer purchases for insurance are more prevalent.

“The Consumer Markets division allows people to buy insurance directly from us and never through an employer,” said Farley. “That has all the time been a really small amount previously, but we see it growing now as you’ve got gig staff and people that will not be in traditional employment. That’s the fact. We know that individuals work in many alternative ways. It’s been a growing area for us.”

Aflac customers can undergo a complete digital flow to purchase insurance without ever speaking to a human agent. Customers answer the relevant questions, make a payment and receive a policy. And in the event that they prefer to file a claim digitally, they’ll follow the same digital flow through the identical Aflac mobile app.

“However you wish to access us, we actually have to be there in an omnichannel way,” Farley said.

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For younger Gen Z customers, that is likely to be the one time they engage with Aflac. But in an effort to promote good health, Aflac offers an annual wellness profit. This provides a minimal relationship with customers through the course of an otherwise uneventful 12 months. With this profit, customers are offered a money payout (the quantity differs from state to state) once the client visits a physician for a yearly checkup.

“Eighty percent of those (wellness claims) come through our mobile app, and we pay in seconds since it’s an automatic claim for us,” said Farley.

He added: “We don’t want anyone to get sick or hurt, obviously, but we do want people to experience the product. That’s why we encourage people to undergo the method (of the wellness claim) because we discover that once they do, they’re a customer for all times.”

This program is supported by email reminders, which offers one other channel over which Aflac get in front of consumers.

When people click through and make their wellness claim, net promoter scores improve, according to Farley.

Aflac isn’t wishing illness or injury on a customer, in fact, however the act of filing a claim, when an event does occur, “closes the loop on the promise the corporate made,” said Farley.

That means the corporate promotes its seamless claim process on social media by providing examples of minor claims customers could make. For instance, if someone sprains their ankle at work and sees a health care provider for treatment, that’s an accident that might be included under an accident policy. If the client heals quickly, they won’t take into consideration filing a claim. But Aflac wants them to.

Only when the client goes through the technique of filing a claim, or of constructing a purchase order for insurance, can this customer appreciate the superior omnichannel experience. So if something happens, nonetheless minor, the corporate wants to be top-of-mind and have the chance to deliver and achieve customer success.

“If you ever have a foul day, we’re going to be there,” Farley said. “Give us a likelihood to be there for you.”

In this manner, through marketing programs on social and within the inbox, Aflac can gently remind younger uneventful customers that the corporate is prepared to help.