A good sign that a technology has matured is when the promised benefits start to defeat the barriers to entry. In the far-off early days of the PC, the breakthrough point was around the availability of spreadsheets. With mobile insurance, there isn't such an obvious catalyst. This channel has come of age through simple evolution. And the barriers – on the consumer side – turn out to be illusory.
Research by Everquote suggests mobile insurance users are not so very different from other types of customer. In fact, they're somewhat more “normal” than people have assumed. For one thing, the belief that mobile users don't complete quote requests is wrong. And it gets better: “mobile consumers are actually 17% more likely to complete a full quote request form than desktop users.” Without a keyboard.
The research also finds the median age of mobile insurance customers is 29. This is higher than usually assumed, but still significantly lower than desktop users.
Everquote's findings undermine all sorts of easy opinions about today's consumers. One lesson I take from the research is that we should stop thinking in terms of separate groups like “mobile users” and “desktop users”. These days people use all kinds of devices to do all kinds of things. It's best to think of customers as being in different situations, rather than different demographics.
Organizations also need to be able to offer consistent, joined-up service across all their channels. Data standards play a big role in making multi-channel operations work. PC360