Cutting costs, gaining pricing power and cross selling products is the Holy Trinity life insurers are after.
Digital is enabling insurance companies to deliver delightful customer experiences through journeys that are simple, quick and convenient. It eliminates misspelling, boosts transparency and empowers customers to get quotes and buy, manage, and renew policies online by themselves through self service.
How can life insurers get ready for digital?
1. Flexible omni-channel journeys:
End to end digital journeys is all about context, choice and continuity. With intelligent digital customer journeys, insurers will be able to provide flexibility to customers. Customers can start the buying journey from anywhere at any time and complete it across multiple devices without losing context seamlessly. A unified digital platform will allow customers and agents to frictionless move among or combine channels within the same conversation. They can talk, text, email and send documents simultaneously without disconnecting.
2. Balancing tech and touch:
Life is priceless. Automation and digitization of insurance processes does not take human element out of equation, but it helps to optimize human efforts in more value-adding tasks.Insurance firms can automate routine customer request handling with intelligent chat bots powered by AI. While some other AI empowered techniques like voice biometrics and sentiment analysis can help insurance agents in serving customers better.
3. Smart data capture and document
Insurance agencies should capture and view the customer data on a centralized locations. This data can be captured from email, website or self-service portal with minimal data entry requirements through auto population , smart document management, that data from customer documents through OCR capability.
4. Personalized insurance products
Cost efficiency through digital journeys can be passed on to customers in the form of low premiums, fees etc.
Lower premiums and special insurance products. There is increasing adoption of mini insurance based on actual customer needs, for example, fall injury covers and so on. Personalized insurance products based on in depth customer intelligence help traditional life insurers stay competitive against digital disruptors.
For instance, imagine an life insurance customer—we will call him Joe—has been a longtime policyholder with his insurance company. But after a previous negative experience, when filing a claim, he is considering switching. The insurer also knows that customers tend to start shopping for rates 60 days before their policies expire—and that one in three shoppers will switch insurers. The insurance firm also knows about Joe’s unsatisfactory service experience puts his account at risk. Taking the initiative, the insurer sends Joe a letter at the 60-day mark. It is addressed specifically to him, acknowledges the negative prior experience, and provides a dedicated account manager and telephone number that Joe can use to expedite future queries. The letter also offers a discount for renewing early.
5. Automated robotic underwriting
Underwriting is usuallythe most complex and time-consuming part of traditional insurance. However, digital journey designers with intelligent AI- driven analytics can perform risk analysis of customers quicklyvery quickly. This can help insurance agents in providing optimal insurance advice and quotations instantly.With automated workflows and decision making, insurers can deliver paper-less quick underwriting that boosts conversions.
To conclude:
The goal is to deliver best possible customer experience by making journeys simpler and customer friendly. This can be achieved with an agile, scalable digital journey designer platform. Putting customer experience as first priority will enable agents to build long lasting relationships and automatically bring in more profits.
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