3 Ways Insurers Can Prioritize Technology Investments to Improve CX

By: Neil Greathead,  CCO at Smart Communications

Having meaningful customer conversations has always been important, especially for insurance companies. But due to COVID-19, more customers are looking to insurers for security and guidance, forcing them to challenge the status quo in order to effectively respond to the drastic increase in customer demands. As a result, many insurers are questioning where they should prioritize their investments. Here are three important thoughts to consider to ensure you are focusing on the most important elements.

Determine Where You Want to Go First

Be realistic and pick your battles! When it comes to making technology investments to support digital transformation initiatives, remember it’s a marathon not a sprint. How do you need the investment to make a difference within your organization? Is the goal to grow revenue? Reduce expenses? Improve customer satisfaction? Knowing the answers to these questions will help identify which technology systems will bring the most value to the company – these are likely the systems you’ll want to get in place first. Investing in a modern customer conversations platform can move the needle on all of these priorities.  By enabling enterprises to engage in interactive, real-time conversations across multiple channels, and giving consumers choices when it comes to channel preference will lead to deeper customer trust and loyalty, and ultimately increased ROI.

Identify The Right Integration Approach

Now more than ever, insurance providers need to be able to take full advantage of insurtech and other CX-focused technologies to meet the growing needs of the customer. To create a more seamless customer journey, McKinsey & Company reveals it’s crucial that insurers build a flexible API-based architecture that supports a quick integration of offerings that are vital to providing a more cohesive customer experience.  By selecting a customer conversations platform that allows for key pieces of customer-facing technologies to be easily integrated, insurers can provide a more holistic view of the customer, quickly adjust and adapt to customer communication preferences and leverage data insights to break down silos in order to increase internal efficiency as well. According to Patrick Knight, Regional Vice President, UK Insurance at Salesforce, “Insurers need to leverage the wealth of data they have been collecting for all these years across all of their businesses and silos to make journeys that are easy, joined up and use the customer’s channel of choice.”

Consider The Entire Customer Lifecycle

Keep in mind that customer experience is informed at multiple points across the entire customer lifecycle. Look at the various reasons a customer interacts with you and identify all your customer touchpoints.  Are there interactions that are causing friction? This will give you a better idea of which interactions should you hone in on more urgently. For example, think about your forms processes. Are you still expecting customers to complete paper-based forms or fillable PDFs that are not mobile friendly and are prone to errors, or are you collecting information via more intelligent, conversational user experiences?  By selecting a conversations platform that can transform the forms experience and then use the information collected to deliver more personalized and relevant communications you can have a positive impact on customer experience from onboard to servicing and every interaction in between. You’ll also gain a better understanding of customer workflows and can identify which interactions can be done strictly via chatbots and virtual assistants and which require more in-depth, personal conversations.

There’s no denying that the increased importance on digital interactions has taken unprecedented priority for insurers. If you’re looking for more inspiration on how to overhaul your customer conversations strategy by capitalizing on new technologies, watch our webinar, Leveraging technology to drive the next phase of customer engagement:  from trust to hyper-relevance, or download the full summary here.