How to Minimize Complexity When Communicating with Insurance Customers
Insurance companies can elevate insurance CX by shifting to a consumer-first approach, which will also maximize loyalty and ROI and minimize attrition.
A recent report from the IBM Institute of Business Value (IBV) showed that 85% of insurers use CX initiatives throughout the customer journey, and 90% have a C-suite position dedicated to the consumer experience, such as a Chief CX or Chief Customer Officer (CCO).
One practical way for CX leaders to enhance the customer experience is to do a comprehensive survey of customer communications to identify opportunities for improvement. For insurance providers, the creation of customer communications is always a balancing act between providing all necessary regulatory information, and creating a communication that is appealing to read, and simple to understand.
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Recently, Doxim’s CRO, Mike Hennessy, sat down with a panel of industry experts to chat about insurance CX transformation. The topic of balancing customer communications between regulatory requirements and marketing messages was discussed at length.
The panel shared the following three recommendations for creating effective and appealing customer communications:
- If you don’t understand it, the customer won’t either. Warren Buffett once said, “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” Similarly, your communications team shouldn’t be sending anything to customers that they do not understand themselves. Evaluate your communication by asking your team if they genuinely understand the message that’s going out the door. If they can’t sum it up in a few sentences it’s time to revisit why, and to ask yourself what can be done to improve readability.If regulatory and legal messaging is too dense, it can cause call center spikes, as consumers request clarification, and CSRs can also struggle to explain the messaging. To avoid this, a concerted effort is required to simplify the messaging and mitigate the jargon.
- Never stop testing. The best insurance communicators ensure that a cross-functional team, including ethnographers, linguists, designers, and employees work together with customers to really dig down into messaging and how to make it understandable. By A/B testing a variety of approaches, they arrive at the best possible customer communication.
- You provide two types of communications, so address them differently. By maintaining a separate budget for regulatory communication like lapse notices, rate notices, and change of address forms, you acknowledge that your KPI for some communications isn’t ROI, just full compliance with regulations.Marketing and non-regulatory communications can then be addressed separately. For example, if your insurance company shares annual financial statements (which may not get read), rather than sending a booklet you could consider reducing costs by sending them a letter or an email inviting customers to review your financial statements on the website. These cost-saving opportunities, and opportunities to market your services, can come into focus when you differentiate between your communication types and the goals you have for each.
Doxim’s CCM Platform Can Elevate Your Policyholder Experience
Investing in a reliable customer communications management (CCM) platform is an essential part of providing the kind of omnichannel experience that insurance customers now expect. It helps provide a great customer experience, and builds engaged relationships, which in turn results in customers for life and a competitive advantage in the current marketplace.
Doxim’s experienced consultants and omnichannel CCM platform can support your CCM needs in several ways:
- Build trust with insurance customers via communication (via print, PDF, HTML, email, text, and online interactive experiences).
- Generate and deliver insurance policies, bills, statements, and any other customer documents via print and digital channels through a single provider.
- Leverage interactive video to drive personalized digital customer experiences, such as interactive statements, bills, policies, or reports, that offer visual engagement and real-time interactivity, and also help customers better understand more complex information
- Store documents securely online and enable customers to self-serve.
- Encourage customers and brokers to adopt digital communication channels.
- Gather and utilize customer data to continually improve the personalization of communications.
See how your insurance organization can leverage customer communications to achieve a great CX