• Introduction 
• What’s on offer? 
• What was good at Ditto Insurance? 
• What could have been better?
• Our Verdict

Their website says - “With Ditto, you don't just compare insurance. You understand it. Narrow down choices. Avoid pitfalls and make better decisions.” 

Pegged as a new-age alternative to traditional insurance comparison platforms such as Policybazaar, Bankbazaar, or Coverfox - Ditto aims to support insurance customers with product comparison as well as advice in one place. The website showcases an interesting design, with fresh, 3D elements as well as very visually appealing motion graphics - making it a good start for a good user experience. 

But - does the positive experience go all the way - or does it fall flat in the face of its core offering of insurance advice, guidance, and handholding. We set out to understand, in this edition of Beshak Test Drive: Ditto Insurance Review. 

This article showcases all our learnings and experiences as our research team interacted with the Ditto website, product interface as well as human advisors - in the guise of simple health insurance customers. 

Did they get good service? Were they enabled with the right information to make an informed insurance decision - let’s find out! 

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Beshak Test Drive: Ditto Insurance Review.

• The main offering of Ditto is a one-on-one advisory service that you can book, through their web interface. The promise is to help you understand the policy in detail over a Google Meet call, and then guide you to buy insurance, as the advisor walks you through the multiple stages of buying the policy online. 
• There are two ways to get in touch with the Ditto team. As soon as you click on either the Buy Insurance or Ditto Hotline options, you see a pop-up that allows you one of the two actions. 

• You can book a call with them: Through a Calendly application, you can choose a timeslot for when you’d like to speak to an advisor they will allocate to you. This is Ditto’s attempt at ensuring that they do not need to spam the user - and the user decides when the conversation happens. 
• You can WhatsApp them: Through a simple WhatsApp integration, you can reach out to the Ditto team and ask your questions, doubts through chat. You can do so at your own pace, and can completely avoid speaking to someone. 
• Meeting booked: Based on your choice, a time slot for a conversation with the team is booked. We chose the Google meet conversation option as well as connected with a representative on WhatsApp, and received a link for the meeting quickly after choosing the time slot. 
• Connect with an advisor: At the stipulated time, you get on a call with the financial advisor, who will provide one-on-one advice for your term insurance or health insurance requirement. They will take you through the options available across multiple insurance companies, and help you understand the policy offerings in detail before you make a decision. 
• Check out products on the platform directly: With a listing of multiple top health and term insurance plans from the market on one platform, it becomes easy to gather all the information you need from one place. No need to visit multiple websites to get product brochures. 
• Go ahead with the purchase: Through the same Google meet interaction, they will handhold you as you go through the several stages of the policy purchase on the insurance company’s website. You can ask them questions about how to fill the form, or what a specific feature means - and get insights before moving forward with your purchase. 

So, that’s what Ditto has to offer - and promises throughout their journey. 

But, then the question arises - was it actually as seamless as that? What hiccups did we face? What was good, and what could take a lot of improvement? Coming up, in the sections below. 

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• No spam: The main promise that comes with the platform is the fact that you will be saved from spamming and unsolicited calling - which is commonplace amongst most insurance vendors whether they are marketplaces/ aggregator platforms or insurance companies call-centers. The fact that Ditto doesn’t push you for a phone number is a great start. 
• Seamless user interface: Overall, the website’s interface was smooth and user-friendly. Not just pleasant colors and quirky visuals - the design was also well-thought-out and made it easy for us to find any specific product that we might be looking for. 

• Easy access to product brochures & descriptions: You can go through a simplified version of the product brochure and get a gist of the features and benefits right on the Ditto website. Then, you can download the brochure and policy wordings documents - without leaving the page. This is very convenient.

• Prompt revert on WhatsApp: There are many brands that offer to engage through WhatsApp, but come short when it actually comes to delivering the experience. Not so with Ditto. We got a prompt and proper response from the team on WhatsApp. 
• Timely follow-up: A promise of no spam will only really work if it is efficiently backed with a system to offer timely support when the user actually needs it. Given the push-nature of sales in insurance - following up at the proper time, to ensure the user doesn’t just drop off and give up on the purchase is of paramount importance. And Ditto delivers. 

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• No option for product comparison: Every plan that’s listed on the website comes with a summary and downloadable brochure, but there’s no option to compare products side by side. This is especially important in a product like insurance, as people would want to compare, assess features and benefits and only then make a decision about the product that is right for them. 
• Only 3 products in each category at the max: Ditto currently holds a corporate agency license for health and term insurance - meaning they can only sell products from 3 partner insurance companies, directly on their website. This is a major constraint as there are over 20 life insurance companies and over 30 health insurance companies in the country (over 80 health insurance products) - so the set of options available for purchase on Ditto is very limited. 

At the moment, for term insurance, they’re partnered with HDFC Life, ICICI Prudential, and Max Life insurance companies, while in health insurance, they’re selling plans from HDFC Ergo and MaxBupa directly on their website. 

• No toll-free customer care: Sometimes users just want to be able to quickly connect to a human, talk, and sort out a few details. In fact, most times users decide they want to purchase a policy over the weekend - and are seeking support immediately. For Ditto, there’s no toll-free number available at the moment. 

This might become a challenge, especially if the user is in a hurry. To add, there is no dedicated customer-care support at this point to help out. You will have to wait several days - and might not have the patience or leisure to do so. 

• Contact number not reachable: There is a contact number provided on the website, that we tried to reach out to - but could never get through to. Mostly, the response was that the number was out of the network area. 
• Delays in getting the time slot: When our auditors tried to book a timeslot for a conversation with Ditto - they found that the earliest available time slot was a week later. 

This could be attributed to the high volume of requests that the website is seeing, and the company prioritizing quality over quantity. But, this can soon become a bottleneck, and in turn customers away from the website entirely - if they have to wait many days to speak to a customer service representative.

• Lack of well-trained advisors: One of the major challenges we faced during our audit with Ditto was finding reliable advisors on the call. 
  1. Firstly, our representative was surprised to see that three different advisors had logged on to the call (to make the purchase) - when they were expected to get a one-on-one conversation with one advisor. This was not informed to them previously - so came as an absolute surprise. 
  2. Secondly, there was more than one instance where the advisors wouldn’t know the right response to a situation and would squabble amongst themselves, without a consensus. This can make the user super uncomfortable - especially if they come with little to no knowledge, and are seeking dependable advice. 

This caused confusion and discomfort for the Beshak auditor and is likely to be very intimidating for an insurance newbie. 

• Post-issuance follow-up wasn’t up to the mark: When you buy a health insurance policy, it is possible that you have questions and doubts even after you make the payment. In our interaction with Ditto, we found that the post-issuance follow-up process was not easy. 
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Ditto offers a fresh experience for young insurance seekers, who are otherwise bored with the same old call-center-based insurance purchase portals. With its new-age look, user experience, and seamless navigation - the front-end is attractive for the aforementioned target group. 

Having said that, their corporate agency license puts a major limitation on the options users can explore and buy on the platform - allowing only 3 health insurance and 3 term insurance tie-ups. In addition to this, there’s no opportunity to compare product benefits - a feature that gives other portals like Policybazaar, a huge upper hand.  

Taking into consideration our team member’s end-to-end experience with Ditto to purchase a health insurance policy, we think that the platform is built with good intentions, but has a long way to go. The no-spam promise is likely to attract users who value their own time and prefer keeping their phone numbers private. 

Having said all this, the main reason someone would want to use a platform like Ditto would be to get good advice - and at the moment, that system seems broken and dysfunctional. With advisors not being adequately trained and experienced - users will soon find it difficult to trust in the platform - and make a financial decision that can impact them for a lifetime. 

Ditto Insurance would need to really focus on its core capabilities, and build a team of qualified financial advisors, to be able to pull it off. 

We sincerely hope this review helped you understand the pros and cons of the Ditto experience, helping you to make an informed decision while working with their team to purchase your insurance. 

Did you like this Beshak Test Drive: Review of Ditto Insurance? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

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