Case study: Liverpool Victoria (LV)

Aims

Liverpool Victoria (LV) describe themselves as the UK’s largest friendly insurance society. Established in 1843, they sell a wide range of financial products and have more than 1.1 million customers.

LV wanted a way of learning more about their customers, their decision making process and their purchase drivers. LV's key aim was to become the biggest and best financial services brand in the UK, so they wanted to educate people about their products and increase engagement with their brand.

Solutions

LV were keen to investigate the behaviour of both their customers and non-customers in order to gain an understanding of how to increase their conversion rate.

LV already had an existing online community that was failing to deliver the insight they required, so we started off by doing a full analysis of the existing community. Instead of a closed, private community we recommended that they should move to an open community in order to increase the online conversation about the brand and to open up new communication channels.

We recognised that it was vital to give LV the ability to carry out both quantitative and qualitative research within their online community. So after we migrated all the data from the old site into the new site, we integrated a number of research modules, including structured surveys, areas for unstructured idea generation and sections for customer feedback. These modules provide in-depth insight about LV, their customers and their lives, based on what community members were saying about the LV and their products.

We also created different sections on the site for members only, giving them access to extra areas of the community. This also gave LV a semi-private area to test new products.

We also ensured that any sales resulting directly from the community could be easily recorded and allocated to the site, providing immediate and straightforward analysis of community's success.

Results

LV’s new community has enabled them to understand their customers on a deeper, more relevant level.

The LV community has almost 7,000 members and nearly half the visits to the community are from return visitors. The community is home to hundreds of different discussions about LV, their products and their brand, proving that the community has managed to engage both current and prospective customers.

As we ran several research projects through the LV community, LV's research costs have been reduced by two thirds, giving LV amazing customer insight and understanding at a fraction of their previous costs. In fact, the community pays for itself from the savings gained from conducting unincentivised surveys.

Using online communities for customer insight also avoids wasting money on research that becomes out of date by the time it gets analysed. LV’s community gives them up-to-the-second access to exactly what their customers are thinking and doing on a daily basis.