Digitalization is revolutionizing industries like never before, and it is benefiting not just the businesses but consumers as well. If we talk about the insurance sector, it is not lagging behind in terms of incorporating digital technologies’ use to streamline the internal processes and provide exceptional customer service for high retention and acquisition.
Customer engagement plays a vital role in making customers stay loyal to your brand, along with winning the trust of new customers. Customers who are highly engaged buy and promote a brand more and one of the key components involved in engaging customers is the high-quality customer experience.
It is the experience of a customer only that makes him/her associated with a particular insurance brand for a long time. Firms that provide exceptional customer experience are able to engage and retain clients more than others.
The New-Age Customers
Now, due to the fact that customers of today are your digital customers who remain highly engaged over the internet using their Smartphones, it is time for insurers to focus on digital strategies more than anything else.
They need to engage customers in a very coherent and intelligent manner across the various digital platforms to cash on the opportunities learned from the use of integrated advanced analytics and artificial intelligence techniques to figure out what exactly the customer wants.
So, let us get started and know about the different areas where insurers can engage customers more with the help of digital solutions.
Top Customer Engagement Areas
1. Acquiring New Customers
Acquiring new customers was never easy until digitalization came into play. Now due to the fact that customers spend a lot of time on the internet, it becomes easy for any industry to collect behavioral data about prospective clients through the use of advanced analytics.
Insurers can use this data to profile and target different users based on their gender, age, lifestyle, etc. Most the people look on the internet when they are trying to buy something new, and if they are searching for a new insurance partner, insurers have a pretty good chance to cash upon.
Also, investing in the live chat technology will put an insurer ahead of the competition since new prospects have a lot of queries in mind, and the insurers who will be able to answer the same at the earliest using live chat will be able to acquire clients effortlessly.
2. Underwriting and Retention
We all know this pretty well that underwriting forms the backbone of the insurance company. Premiums are charged differently from customers after assessing their risk factors.
With the help of technology, insurers are able to better assess the risks associated with every person and offer premiums accordingly. With the support of digitalization, insurers gain better access to customer information related to health records, home history, driving skills, auto insurance, and more.
And with the support of advanced analytics and telematics, insurers are able to monitor the behavior of customers easily. With so much information available to insurers, they can streamline their underwriting process easily and offer the best solutions to their customers, leading to enhanced customer retention eventually.
3. Social Media Platforms
We all know about the importance of different social media platforms in our lives. In the past, insurers used to wait for the customers to reach them or used calling and email tactics. However, with the social media platforms’ rise, insurers know exactly where their customers are.
They only need to reach out to them and get them engaged through effective communication strategies. The customer engagement opportunities that come with social media platforms are large, and insurers cannot afford to miss out on the same.
This engagement can be in any form; from answering their queries related to different insurance products and services to offering them unique offers and discounts, taking their feedback, discussing ways of improving the processes, service, products, and more.
In other words, social media platforms give an opportunity for insurers to understand customer grievances and address the same at the earliest, adding to enhanced customer experience and engagement eventually.
4. Claims
If we talk about the insurance customers, one factor that creates the maximum impact on the customer experience is nothing but claims. The sooner and fairer a claim gets processed by the insurer, the more easily will an insurer be able to engage customers in the long run.
Digital overhaul of FNOL (First Notice of Loss) supports insurers in the same, making the claim process extra dynamic, leading to quick resolutions and enhanced claim metrics.Apart from this, with the help of pre-populated claim forms/apps, insurers can make the customer experience seamless by eliminating the need to answer repetitive questions.
So, if customers get to submit their information without any hassle, it makes a huge difference when it comes to customer experience.
5. Personalization
With customers becoming demanding with the passing of each year, there is a lot of competition amongst insurers to meet the evolving customer demands. The solution lies in providing them with personalized solutions that comprise multiple options to choose from.
Data analytics and machine learning help in understanding the preferences of the different customers and in preparing coverage that suits their requirements the best, modifying the quote-to-buy experience at large. So, in a way, customers become the ones who evaluate their own policy risks and select the most appropriate one for them.
6. The Rise of the Ecosystem
From offering products and services to customers, insurers are leveraging every opportunity that comes their way in retaining and acquiring customers. They are looking to foray into areas that do not cover their expertise.
Insurance firms are getting into the shoes of advisory roles where they are offering beneficial advice to customers on selecting the different products, taking precautionary measures, along with suggesting ways to lower the related risks.
This has been turned into a possibility with the rise of an ecosystem of products and services where everything is connected. Insurance firms are getting into collaborations with emerging communities of InsurTech, outsourcing insurance claims processing, technology giants, and other related industries.
Insurers need to be very careful as mutual collaborations cannot pave the way for their success until they take a unique path to brand in the eyes of customers with their own deliverables.
7. Automatic Execution
The ‘automatic execution’ strategy is fast gaining recognition in the insurance sector due to the fact that it offers customers help when they actually need it, making the insurance and customer relationship to be more customer-centric.
For instance, by making use of the Smartphone’s sensors, GPS, and various algorithms to calculate extreme and rapid accelerations, mobile or insurance apps can detect at the earliest if someone is going to get involved in a car crash.
Not only this, based on the app preferences of the customers, insurers can also offer assistance to the customers directly, fostering their mutual relationship in the long run.
8. Ongoing Engagement
Using IoT devices and technology, insurers can become a part of the lives of their customers and learn about the changing preferences and phases of the customers on a consistent basis. This can include any information with respect to customers like new cars, new babies, or a new home.
Insurers can use this information to offer additional services to their existing customers with a personalized touch. Also, consumers don’t have to worry about their data since the latest privacy laws ensure complete control of customers over their data.
Apart from this, customer feedback can be analyzed quickly using big data to improve the service and processes. Insurers must realize that customer engagement is an ongoing affair that needs to be addressed from time to time with new/exciting offers and services aimed at providing exceptional end-to-end experience to the customers, leading to a long-term association with the insurance brand.
Wrapping Up
Undeniably, the insurance industry is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to leveraging technology to strengthen customer bonding through enhanced customer engagement. It is not just insurance carriers who have to move with the pace of technology; this trend is similar in almost every industry today, and the reason is also very clear and common.
Since customers and their needs are evolving in the technological age, insurers need to evolve too. Yes, this new technology change might come with a few challenges for insurers, but the kind of opportunities that come along with it will simply outshine the challenges.
There can be a few instances when insurers are overwhelmed with core competencies and are unable to focus on digital transformation.
During such a scenario, it is recommended to join hands with a leading provider of insurance policy administrative services. This will enable insurers to free them from the unproductive back-office tasks and instead focus on devising digital customer engagement strategies. Lastly, it is all about improving customer experience, and technology is the only way through which customer engagement can be achieved in the present times
