Bizarro World: Where Buying Can Be Fun

In the Bizarro world of insurance, the product that people buy hoping they never use it is replaced with products that people buy via an interactive and engaging learning experience. Last Wednesday, Google opened its first retail store in London: a pop-up store within a British electronics retailer, called Currys PC World. The Google shop lets people play, experiment and learn about all Google has to offer. In a sense, the store is an interactive billboard that places profits at the backseat and lures customers in via a promise to entertain. This concept of "play over purchase" isn’t unique, and can be found in Apple's and Samsung’s business models. In fact, only two years ago, Samsung looked to emulate Apple’s success in the U.S. by launching its own chain of mini-stores in partnership with Best Buy. Surely there is some room for play, not just purchase, in our industry. To get a better idea of how this would work in Bizarro insurance world, picture a retail destination with insurance geniuses standing by, ready and eager to engage customers in the insurance experience all the way from consulting on insurance products to simulating claim-handling and the latest telematics gadgets. These insurance geniuses will welcome consumers and listen to them, to better understand the right combination of products and features to offer. Later, the geniuses will point consumers to different stations, such as "Seriously Real," sponsored by Cyberith, where consumers can enter the virtual world of operating drones for disaster support, or "Hot Quotes," sponsored by Bolt, where consumers can obtain auto insurance quotes faster than Jimmy John’s delivery guy can make a sub. The result will be a house of insurance brands that come together under one roof to clearly communicate the value of insurance for the sake of a branded customer experience. Yes, I'm referring to the two most overused words in this industry – customer experience - which until now were largely defined by an automatic renewal letter sent once a year or perhaps an unused, "downloaded and forgotten" app. We should also draw on the underused word "ecosystem": in this setting, defined as a network of carriers, vendors and insurance startups that collaborate to educate and engage around insurance products via a one-stop shop. To be continued when we revisit the Bizarro world of insurance....