Best Insurance Companies: 2014 Customer Satisfaction Rankings

USAA, State Farm and Farmers earned the highest scores from both auto and home insurance customers in Insure.com's annual customer satisfaction study. It is USAA's third year as the highest-rated auto and home insurer in the survey.

Use the tool at the right to access complete scores and rankings.

Insure.com's 2014 survey spanned 3,835 current customers of 15 large insurers in auto, home and health insurance, and 14 in life insurance. Ratings are based on five measurements:

• Customer service
• Claims satisfaction
• Value for price paid
• Percent who plan to renew
• Percent who would recommend the company
  (Life insurance ratings did not include claims or renewal measurements.)

In the auto insurance category, USAA scored well across the board but did particularly well in measurements for renewal (95 percent of customers surveyed said they planned to renew) and recommendations (84 percent have or would recommend USAA). The insurer sells only to members of the military and their families.

State Farm and Farmers also garnered strong scores in all auto insurance measurements but were outpaced by USAA in renewal and recommendation ratings.

USAA core values
Eric Vaith, assistant vice president at USAA, credits the company's core values for its top rankings. "All employees live by our core values of service, honesty and integrity.  These core values are also key influencers for every interaction our employees have with our members," he says.

Vaith notes that USAA keeps its finger on the pulse of customer satisfaction at many points of contact. "We focus heavily on member satisfaction scores, where members rate the experience they had with our member service representatives and claims representatives," he says. "At the end of a phone call, our members are able to provide voice response feedback on their experience with USAA. 

Also, "throughout the life of a claim, our members are proactively 'pinged' via email to ensure they are receiving the level of service that they expect," says Vaith.

Making decisions
We also asked customers their reasons for deciding to buy from their insurers. Flo is paying off: Progressive has the highest number of customers who made their decision based on seeing a TV commercial (18 percent), followed closely by Allstate (17 percent) and Geico (16 percent). USAA had the lowest percentage of customers (4 percent) who chose the company based on a commercial.

In the home insurance category, USAA was slightly dinged in price satisfaction but made up the difference with strong scores for customer service and recommendations. AIG and The Hartford, while not in the top three, had the highest percentage of customers who say they will renew, at 96 percent each.

Life & health insurance scores
Life insurance: Jackson National, Prudential, New York Life and State Farm Life topped the rankings. The high number of customers who would recommend Jackson Life helped propel it to the top.

Health insurance: Kaiser Permanente, Humana and BCBS of Florida are the favorites this year. Kaiser Permanente also held the No. 1 ranking last year.

Methodology
Insure.com conducted surveys of 3,835 insurance customers nationwide in February and March 2014 to collect 9,586 company reviews. Only current customers of the insurers on our lists were surveyed. The survey was not open to the general public on the Insure.com website. We collected reviews for auto, home, health and life insurance carriers. Consumers answered questions about their levels of satisfaction with their insurers, and each answer was assigned a point value. Points were then averaged and totaled for each company.

A.M. Best ratings do not affect the scores but are provided as a supplementary resource. The "discounts" and "coverage options" information for auto insurance carriers also does not affect the scores.

We collected data for 15 large companies in each category, so not all companies are represented in the study. The companies for which we collected data were then ranked. The top three companies in each category earned Insure.com's "People's Choice Award." In the life insurance category, a tie for third place resulted in four insurers receiving the award.

Insure.com makes these ratings freely available via this site. The views and opinions expressed by users do not reflect the views and opinions of Insure.com. Insure.com expressly disclaims any and all liability in connection with the ratings.

The original article: Best insurance companies: 2014 customer satisfaction rankings appeared on Insure.com.

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