Bringing insurers closer to clients through digital channels

The past decade has seen insurance carriers regularly adjusting strategies to achieve greater profitability through a heavy focus on data, analytics, automation, and digitisation. However what has been particularly overlooked over ten years is the potential for connection to people, with an emphasis on empathy for the individual and their unique situation. Now is the perfect time for the insurance industry to focus on experiences, and how these events can impact their lives aka the human experience.

According to Duck Creek Technologies “Global Consumer Insurance Insights”:

44% of consumers would prefer to interact with a human, compared to 35% from the previous year.

While technology continues to play a critical role in consumer journeys there’s a definite demand for an overall human experience from insurers to their customers in order to stay ahead of the curve.

According to Anirban Bose, CEO of Capgemini’s Financial Services:

Today’s customers expect interacting with their insurers to be easy, and providers need to ensure their channels enable a convenient and seamless customer experience. By investing in the right technologies, insurers can win and retain customers while empowering their agents and brokers to deepen relationships.

Insurance remains comparatively old fashioned when compared to the overall financial services sector, this article acts as a starting point to build a human-centric approach to your customer service while adopting state-of-the-art technologies to streamline your strategies.

Online community building

Community building is the process of connecting with people in your local community to promote your products and services. It’s a way to build relationships with people who are interested in what you have to offer.

The Insurtech industry uses emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning to improve the customer experience and business processes. With one method being through SaaS.

What is SaaS?

Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a cloud provider hosts applications and makes them available to end users over the internet.

While SaaS insurance solutions provide many benefits for the insurance industry, like catering to client needs, reducing the money spent on hardware and software, and offering data protection; it is not enough to have everything automated.

It is without doubt that online insurance is not the easiest business to humanise, especially with the rise of insurtech SaaS platforms and AI, but you are able to build a community strategy with digital methods.

Social media

A lucrative method to increase community engagement is social media – an effective tool for any industry (including insurance) to engage with customers.

As an insurance business, you can utilise social platforms (such as B2B specialist; LinkedIn) to share informative content, answer queries from your customers, and showcase brand values. By actively engaging with your consumers on social media you can build stronger relationships and increase brand loyalty.

Although our article “Cultivating a community of brand advocates” focuses mainly on strategies for eCommerce businesses, B2B practices (such as insurance) can benefit greatly from the points made:

Recent data from Sprout Social revealed that 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them, with 65% of the same group feeling more connected to brands that have a robust presence on social.

AI can enhance the human experience?

Price comparison websites may direct customers to the best deal, but customers seek more than just a reasonable price — they demand a streamlined customer experience… this is where AI can help.

Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) cannot replace the empathy of human-to-human conversations, but they can resolve routine and administrative issues at speed. In doing so, they alleviate pressure from human agents, allowing them to spend time where they are needed most – interacting with customers. Automation needs to be a part of the insurance industry fabric to keep up with customer and employee expectations. Fortunately, with an AI-powered workforce, insurers can maintain their human touch while delivering frictionless service.

The introduction of conversational AI agents in insurance companies such as “Amelia.ai”, means that they can understand clients’ emotions and intents, and integrate with insurers’ back-end-systems, enabling them to conduct highly personalised and human-like conversations.

AI and automation can enable industries, including insurance, to bring the human touch back into their client relationships through a seamless integrated experience that puts the consumer first. Rather than taking away jobs, AI can enhance the workforce to be the best it can be.

Delivering a personalised experience through email marketing

Insurance companies must be agile if they want to keep pace with their competitors, and adding a personalised touch through email marketing is a fantastic way to pique consumer interest… and keep it.

By putting your people first, financial success will follow suit.

Your consumers view trust and security as non-negotiable, but how can they trust you if their sole interactions are with a bot?

80% of consumers say they are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalised experiences, and with emails generally being the go-to app we open as soon as we wake up, it’s a no-brainer but to target your prospects and clients in this manner.

Personalised emails are sent to your list(s) based on data collected and collated based on their personal preferences and behaviours. Ensuring relevant offers are provided at the right time, to the right person. A personalised experience, or one-to-one marketing, allows your consumers to feel appreciated and heard, and you can do this through machine learning and data-driven insights.

You could:

• Offer a review of the insurance coverage

Each client has very different and unique needs when it comes to the policies they choose. Life can change regularly, and so do expectations of their coverage. It is essential to review changes semi-frequently and regularly so that they are adequately insured for anything life may throw at them

• Explain any updates to policies

Policy terms and conditions are constantly in flux, and a great way to ensure the trust of your loyal client base is to keep them in-the-know whenever these updates and changes arise.

• Reveal product updates

Don’t let this annual/ biannual opportunity pass you by, and don’t solely focus on the products with the highest commission potential – by knowing your customers wants and needs you can make sure your new product (that’s a perfect fit for the client) shines through.

• To name a few…!

Final thoughts...

If there’s one key takeaway I want to sink in, is that the foundations of any successful digital strategy for the insurance sector lies with empathy. Through using social media platforms to talk to your customers with immediacy, to harnessing the power of artificial intelligence in order to gather intelligence about the customers you can then send hyper-personalised emails to; at the start (and end) of the cycle is empathy.