If there ever was a time when technology took center stage to make customers’ lives easier and less complicated, it is now. One field that has made a significant impact in this regard is the Insurance field. More and more customers today are embracing digital innovation in all its forms and glory. A recent study by PWC confirms this thought-process:
To top it off, the same survey reveals that around 71% of consumers used some form of digital research before purchasing insurance (e.g., price comparison or social media.
The moral of the story – If you’re not using technology to pivot your customers, innovate your offerings, and connect with users at a deeper level, you’ll find yourself falling behind the competition.
Top 4 Ways to Enhance the Insurance Customer Experience
1. “Live Chat” can Save the Day
Did you know that over 90 percent of insurers don’t talk to their customers throughout the year? – a big mistake. Establishing a channel for seamless communication – and maintaining it – is one of the best ways to keep your customer base loyal, happy, and satisfied. This is where a live chat tool, such as the one offered by Acquire, can help. Some of its amazing benefits include:
- The ability to create a conversational and personalized customer experience.
- Addressing customer’s queries instantly, effectively, and in real-time, throughout the year.
- Communicating with customers, keeping in mind the context, having apt knowledge (thanks to the availability of a Knowledge Base that you can tap into), and saying goodbye to chatting blind. This proves extremely useful since customers want insight-driven solutions and research-backed interactions:
“To make sustainable CX gains, insurers must become more rigorous in identifying where customers struggle, by leveraging research and insights.” – Forrester Report
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- Segmenting and sending proactive messages to your audiences based on visitor location, visitor page URL, device type, visitor behavior, etc.
2. “Co-Browsing” can become a God-Send on a Rainy Day
It’s no secret that first-time insurance buyers or even seasoned customers often face a plethora of issues concerning the services/features being offered. Take, for instance, issues related to filling out paperwork, engaging in fair and speedy settlements, or understanding the bills/claims in greater detail, among others.
Fun fact – Lemonade holds the world record for speedy claims settlement using AI (3 seconds and zero paperwork).
In such trying times, connecting with customers with greater levels of trust and transparency can prove to be a game-changer for companies. Enter Co-Browsing.
Here’s a quick snapshot of how this intuitive feature can help your customers in need in an easy and simplified manner:
- You can view and interact with your customers’ browsers when they get stuck.
- You can guide the way with visual cues and troubleshoot collaboratively.
- You can nudge the customers in the right direction by using highlighters and marker tools.
Key Takeaway: Using an interactive feature such as Co-Browsing can address customer queries in an instant, and more importantly, build greater trust in the long run. This ensures customers become voluntary brand advocates – the greatest advantage of them all. Data by Forrester revealed that of those customers who felt valued, 87 percent would advocate for their provider.”
3. With “Chatbots,” You’re in Good Hands
“The keys to CX quality in insurance stems from effectiveness, ease, and emotion.” – Forrester Report
Truth be told, chatbots have emerged as the lifeblood of businesses, especially insurance, that need to operate 24×7. And why not? These AI-powered chatbots offer a host of benefits:
- Automating routine requests, so your sales and customer service teams can prioritize the more pressing issues at hand and focus on improving the quality of customer interactions.
- Routing to a human agent when the bot is unable to address queries or finds key information missing. This ensures every customer is heard, and every query answered. Additionally, bots can fast-track customer onboarding as they’re capable of performing more time-consuming tasks such as anti-money laundering.
- Personalizing your customer messaging across channels with chatbot automation and workflows.
- Empowering customers to self-serve by giving them access to your knowledge base through chatbots. This enhances back-office functions and prevents delays in communication.
“Automated claims processing reduces the amount of manual work by 80% and improves accuracy significantly, cutting down the time necessary for the process by 50% — which allows companies to process twice as many claims with the same personnel.”
- Allowing bots to speed up the time-consuming claims process by validating the data and marking it as approved for payment. Additionally, the use of cognitive bots also eliminates critical pain points such as human error, and mismatched information, among other things.
Key Takeaway: Chatbots, a.k.a., intelligent virtual agents, can optimize the customer experience by freeing agents from tedious copy-paste and data-entry jobs, so they can deliver more hyper-personalized experiences.
4. Digitization along with Personalized Human Access is a Key
“Given the limited interactions, insurers must provide exemplary customer experience at every opportunity — and it’s equally paramount that those interactions do not center on selling. Insurers should instead strive to become their customers’ trusted advisor.” – Oliver Börner
Guess what? There are innumerable opportunities through which you can contact your customers, that do not involve talking about aggressive sales, pending bills, and boring privacy notices.
Instead, you can connect with them to educate them about your plans/products/services, offer support (such as offering digitized signups and claims verification), highlight incentives, and roll out rewards. Surprisingly, according to PwC, more and more customers are willing to provide personal information in exchange for getting access to relevant services.
In short, establishing a combination of digital innovation and human access can collectively act as a catalyst and take your customer experience to the next level.
Let’s take a look at some telling examples to understand this better:
- Providing a CTA option on the website/social media platforms like Geico does:
- Staying up-to-date with the latest global developments (think: Covid-19) and altering your platforms (website in this case) to inform customers of the same as Slice Insurance does:
- Eliminating all unnecessary, intermediate steps to enable customers to get access to quotes in a jiffy:
Bonus Material: If you wish to know about the current insurance scenario, read this brilliant report, “Insurance 2020: The Digital Prize – Taking Customer Connection to a new level,” by PwC.
Wrapping Up: Creating a Seamless, Connected, & Consistent CX
Get this – According to a survey by Accenture, “Competitive advantage (for Insurers) lies in delivering expected levels of customer experience and improving the effectiveness of distribution channels.”
To be a winning insurer, you must enhance your customer experience and boost engagement levels by using the strategies we’ve discussed above. Try them and give way to improved collaboration between empowered customers and engaged employees – the best of all worlds.
