Paying fealty to the king through customer experience

The insurance business is one of the most competitive industries in the country and faces multiple challenges. In today’s insurance environment, where features and premiums can be quickly matched by competitors, customer experience and high performance are becoming the primary drivers of differentiation.

Evolving technology is pushing distinctive customer experience even further, providing more relevant ways for customers to interact with insurers when and how they want.

Most insurers struggle with how best to create exceptional customer experiences while also tackling increased product and service complexity, as well as the need for integration across a growing number of distribution channels.

Customer experience is king

The insurance industry is commoditised to a large extent, and customer experience is central to a company’s growth strategy.

However, many insurance carriers fail to meet customer expectations. With the exception of some countries, the percentage of customers reporting positive experiences is also less in insurance than in banking.

The insurance sector is struggling with expanding customer expectations from consumers who are not brand loyal. Customers have gone multichannel and are looking towards the web for purchasing, service, and support. Companies are using any number and combination of channels such as social, mobile, the web, and contact centre, as well as cataloguing with their customer service expectation having been set by their experiences in other sectors, such as retail and telecommunications.

Deliver or die is the dilemma facing the insurance sector. As a result, this industry has evolved its business models to ensure a high-touch, interactive and engaging customer experience. It is no longer about how to sell the best policy at the cheapest rate. Instead, it is about how to provide the best holistic policyholder experience and convenience.

Service

Every moment of hold time, hunt and search time or interactive voice response frustration will put customer loyalty to the test. Today's smartphone customers expect on-demand access to phone, web, apps, social media and video.

Before developing a customer service app, consider the customer experience journey from start to finish and consider ways to give customers every opportunity to get help or help themselves.

In addition, insurers are starting to provide concierge-like services to its policyholders using mobile apps and social media. This is a great strategy because a good customer experience is essential to ensuring loyal, repeat customers.

Customer service has historically been viewed in a reactive way. When a customer has a problem, they call customer service. Rarely does customer service proactively reach out to the customer. However, it is known that deep relationships are formed over a long period of time, through two-way communication. Thanks to social media, this is possible.

Claims

Technology has revolutionised the claims process. Armed with smartphones, policyholders who get into motor vehicle accidents can help reconstruct the incident.

They now have the option to take photos of the car damage, video the location and traffic signs in the area, make notes of the other person's license plate and VIN number, capture the police officer's name while showing them their mobile insurance ID card, and lastly, call or email their insurer all in real-time.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is critical to assessing the current customer experience and how it is improving. It is important to hear first-hand what customers think of your company, its employees, and insurance plans. With social media feedback, market research is easier. Use a social media monitoring platform and capture the voice of the customer.

Start gathering perceptions, impressions, and real-time consumer reactions to various issues arising in the insurance space and start devising proactive strategies. Once all of the feedback has been gathered, fix the issues immediately because in today's technology driven society, customer experience has become the new key driver for profits.