Insurers Need to Become More Customer Centric
Many organisations across different industries have been working hard, for several years already, to improve customer relationships and customer engagement. Things have been a bit different in the insurance industry though. Up until now, insurers have struggled to develop ongoing, long-term customer engagement. This is mostly due to the nature of insurance – engagement with insurance customers has been limited to onboarding, policy renewal and claims. This is a problem for insurers, as they need to remain competitive in an ever more digital landscape that is shifting to meet customer expectations.
The bottom line is that insurers need to build and maintain a digital relationship with their customers. This will help improve customer engagement in insurance as well as enhance customer experience, which leads to customer loyalty and ultimately, business success.
Insurers can meet evolving customer expectations by championing customer centricity
It is no surprise that digital innovation in other industries has fueled significant shifts in consumer expectations. Customers want the same customer experience from all their service providers – an experience shaped by personalisation of products, services, as well as communications that they can access instantly on any device and via their preferred channel.
This translates into the fact that insurers need to become more customer centric, with a focus on delivering a great customer experience and in turn, effective customer engagement. They can do this by using highly personalised digital customer communications that connect with customers at every touchpoint along their customer journey.
Research from McKinsey shows that if you deliver a better customer experience, you’ll get more customer engagement and retention.
Personalisation drives better engagement and business results
Drives Interest
71% of consumers say a personalised experience influences their decision to engage.
-Dynamic Yield
Motivates Action
202% of companies see an increase in conversions when calls-to-action are personalised.
-HubSpot
Increases Loyalty
28% of consumers have increased brand loyalty when communications they receive are personalised
-SmarterHQ
Boosts ROI
95% of companies that saw 3x ROI from their personalisation efforts
-Monetate
Leverage digital customer communication to improve customer engagement in insurance
Insurers can leverage the many opportunities provided by digital customer communications to engage with customers on a whole new level – superseding physical interactions.
Technology today enables organisations to collect significant amounts of customer data, which helps them better understand customer behavior and thus better serve their immediate needs. Processing this data through an intelligent decisioning tool, will produce a hyper-personalised communication that is highly relevant to the customer at that very moment. Customers can also be ‘nudged’ to take an action – sign a document, accept an offer, renew a policy, or pay their bill – depending on what action of theirs prompted the communication.
Here are 5 ways a customer communications management platform can improve customer engagement in insurance
1. Enables hyper-personalisation
Hyper personalised communications triggered by a special date/event, or customer action, play a vital role in achieving good engagement and a great customer experience. The full power of hyper-personalised communications is in the ability to build a powerful relationship with your customer, from onboarding and then throughout their lifecycle with your business via constant touchpoints.
2. Streamlines customer experience – omnichannel
Digital communication can help connect and drive engagement across multiple channels, including physical ones. The omnichannel capabilities of a CCM platform will ensure that customers can interact with your insurance organisation seamlessly across these different channels and devices. This is also key to achieving a great customer experience and effective engagement.
3. Enables customer self-service
Enabling customer self-service is an essential part of providing a great customer experience and it becomes easier when making use of effective digital communication tools. Important customer documents such as insurance policies, bills, statements, and any other customer correspondence, can be stored securely online and made available for customers to self-serve. They can access them via an online portal or mobile app.
4. Enhances the customer journey
A great customer experience (CX) begins by understanding the customer journey with your brand and ensuring effective engagement at the key touchpoints. Innovative technology tracks end to end journeys – this information can be used to develop hyper-personalised journeys that drive engagement and prevent customer churn.
5. Improves the bill-to-payment CX
In insurance, it is not uncommon that billing and payment is the only regular interaction with customers, so providing them with a customer-centric payment experience is key. Enhancing CX in the bill-to-payment journey will not only build better customer relationships, but it will also lead to more loyal and engaged customers.
One way you can improve the customer’s experience is by offering customers the ability to choose how they want to receive their bill, as well as their preferred payment method. For example, a billing and payments platform that offers an omnichannel experience will allow customers to receive their bill by mail or via a selection of digital formats and channels.
Finally, a customer communications management (CCM) platform that enables great customer engagement in insurance
The goal of having a comprehensive customer communications management strategy is to service customers quickly and efficiently via both digital channels and human teams. A CCM platform supports this by recording every communication with a customer, including their personal documents.
Doxim’s omnichannel CCM platform can generate insurance policies, bills, statements, and any other customer documents, and distribute these communications through multiple channels (via print, PDF, HTML, email, text, and online interactive experiences).
Documents are stored securely online and made available for customers to self-serve via an online portal or mobile app; as well as supporting customer service teams by providing the information they need, at their fingertips.
The omnichannel capabilities of the platform are such that when a customer calls in to speak to a service representative or engages with a chatbot, both human and machine can provide immediate assistance by calling up the communication or document that the customer received.
When it comes to providing a great customer experience in insurance, allowing customers to select the preferred channel on which to engage is vital. Doxim CCM enables this through both digital channels and digitally enabled humans.
