Increasingly tech-savvy consumers have come to expect a smooth online purchasing experience for everything — including life insurance. A 2023 McKinsey survey found that insurance carriers with above-median customer experience scores also performed better when it came to revenue growth, indicating that a good customer experience is also good business.
While insurance companies are great at using data to assess risk, many still struggle to use their enormous troves of data to deliver exceptional digital experiences.
A massive digital transformation and transition is already underway with insurance providers moving from a reactive product-centric approach to a more proactive consumer-first approach. At the same time, insurers are at different levels of digital maturity, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. With this in mind, we’ve identified the top five things insurance companies can do to improve the customer experience:
1. Understand the customer journey
Today’s consumers are increasingly conducting research, developing shortlists, and purchasing insurance products online. This means the online customer experience needs to be easy to understand and navigate, to include options for getting questions answered quickly (online and off), and to establish trust.
The solution has to be a hybrid or omnichannel approach, enabling advisors and customers to have seamless conversations across channels and at every step of the buyer’s journey. And it doesn’t end when a policy is issued or a claim processed. Ongoing touchpoints between carriers, advisors, and customers, including value-added, personalized services, ensure your brand remains top of mind when insurance needs change.
2. Put data to work
Insurers already gather customer data to process applications and evaluate risk; the next step is using data to improve the customer experience. For example, any information that is already known should be prefilled so that customers don’t have to enter the same information more than once. Digital questionnaires and applications should be reflexive, so customers don’t have to answer questions that are not relevant to their unique situation.
More importantly, insurance companies can use data to create more personalized products and services. In particular, using third-party and behavioral data can help you build a more complete view of your customers and understanding of their needs over time.
3. Digitize business processes and workflows
Mapping processes and workflows is key to identifying opportunities to automate and use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to both reduce costs and improve the customer experience when appropriate. In addition to cost savings and speed, automation and AI also improves accuracy – eliminating errors that result from manual business processes.
The Zinnia AI contact center tool, for example, automatically transcribes and analyzes calls to reduce the amount of post-call work needed, allowing agents to spend more time delivering for clients and less time on administrative tasks.
Empowering customers to manage some elements of their journey on their own is also an important step towards better customer service — another Zinnia tool, The Policy Processor (TPP), makes the application and underwriting process easier for customers with a digital e-application process, automations for electronic document collection, and a user-friendly interface so applicants can check on the status of their policies themselves.
4. Make it personal
Generic products and experiences simply don’t cut it anymore. Modern consumer expectations include a high degree of personalization from the first interaction with your business. Quoting tools and customized policy recommendations are just the tip of the iceberg; it’s also imperative to make relevant information easily available online, to personalize communications across channels, and to offer value-added services such as health and wellness benefits after the sale.
Innovative insurance carriers and vendor partners are also creating bespoke products in near real time, a trend that is sure to increase dramatically over the next several years. A key step is empowering customers to access their policy information themselves, without having to go through a maze of contacts — Zinnia’s policy administration tool makes it easy for policyholders to see their life insurance products themselves, reducing call center touches.
5. Prioritize customer lifetime value
Understanding that it is more cost-effective to keep a customer happy than it is to acquire a net-new customer, insurers can’t disappear once a policy is issued. In competitive markets, where consumers have seemingly endless choices, brand loyalty and trust are earned over time.
Having a strategy for ongoing engagement is no longer a ‘nice to have.’ Using our digital insurance solutions, carriers give consumers what they want, when and how they want it – from lead to policy, claim, and ongoing engagement.
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