What Does The Digital Customer Experience Look Like For Insurance Companies?

With brand loyalties becoming a thing of the past, increased options available to consumers, and the ability to have information, solutions, and results with the touch of a button, the time is now to improve your insurance company’s customer journey through utilizing digitization, online information and interaction, and self-service opportunities to increase the insurance customer experience and satisfaction. In order to stay competitive, insurance companies must adopt digital tools to create a positive and efficient customer experience.

Keep reading to learn what your customers want from a digital insurance experience and how to make that happen.

Enable Customer Self-Service Opportunities

Insurance is something that exists in the background of your life–until you need it. If you get into a car accident or sustain property damage to your home, insurance suddenly becomes central to your life. When customers file a claim, they begin a wait for their claim to be resolved. The longer that takes, the more their life is on hold (waiting to be paid out for a total less so they can buy a new vehicle or waiting for their home to be repaired so the kitchen is useable again).

Unfortunately, customer satisfaction with the property claims process is at a five-year low, according to J.D. Power. One highlight from the survey is the importance of digital tools in submitting and processing claims:

“Customers who used digital tools throughout the claims process saw their repairs get started nine days sooner and their satisfaction was rated 33 points higher than their counterparts who didn’t use digital tools.”

Insurance companies that can provide a smooth digital experience and minimize the number of digital and in-person hybrid claims will have happier customers. So, let’s look at how to bridge the digital divide you may currently be grappling with.

• Personalize the cross-channel experience. For the first time, email exceeded phone calls as insurance customers’ most frequent communication method. Whether your customers are emailing, calling, or communicating through your app, you should deliver a positive and personalized experience across channels.
• Deliver a connected customer journey. Use data to create a marketing strategy and measure the return on investment. Data can also help you customize the customer journey for different segments. Stay in touch throughout the customer journey, even after a policy has been purchased. Insurance needs can change from year to year, so there is always an opportunity to add coverage.
• Emphasize security and privacy. Customers who are hesitant to adopt digital tools may be concerned about the security and privacy of their data. Address their fears and explain your cybersecurity practices. For example, at PrintMail, we conduct quarterly penetration testing and an annual SOC 2 audit to ensure that all customer-sensitive data is always secure.
• Offer chatbots and a mobile app. Your human agents can’t be available 24/7, but these digital tools can answer FAQs and guide customers through the process of applying for a new insurance policy or submitting a claim. Usage of mobile apps is on the rise, so don’t get left behind in this trend toward efficient digital claims.

In summary, remember that digital doesn’t mean hands-off. Your digital customer experience should make the claims process more efficient, while still offering personalized guidance and help when needed. Improving the customer journey in the insurance industry means striking the balance between digitization and personalization.

Building Trust Through Communication

In our information-saturated world, we may have all the answers at our fingertips, but we can also suffer from a lack of true communication. To build trust with your customers and prospects, create a communication plan that includes:

• A variety of communication methods such as print, email, video, interactive website features, and old-fashioned text and pdfs.
• A single provider for all policies, bills, statements, and other customer documents.
• A dynamic and predictable publishing schedule on all social media platforms. Utilize as many social media platforms as possible to ensure that you reach a wide age range of customers and potential customers.
• Content about the issues your clients and potential clients are interested in. As any good marketer knows, you need to understand the pain points your customers are facing and tell them how you will solve that problem or relieve that pain point.

In summary, you can reach your customers and prospects wherever they are with a combination of digital and traditional marketing tactics.

Personalization For The Win

With a data-driven digital marketing campaign for your insurance company, you can create a highly personalized and unique experience for customers and prospects interacting with your products, information, and educational offerings. Create personalized digital customer experiences through interactive video and leverage this to create real-time interactivity. All the while, continue to gather, compile, and filter customer data to aid in the improvement of personalized communications.

In summary, personalization helps to drive brand awareness and gain more quality leads. You can use Google Analytics to see what your most popular content is and create more of that to help your customers conduct the research that kicks off their customer journey.

Remove Friction

There is a famous restaurant in London, Bob Bob Ricard, that takes the removal of friction to the highest level. With a button at each table to request more champagne without having to catch the waiter’s eye or wait until the server gets around to checking in, Bob Bob Ricard removes the friction from getting a refill and results in copious amounts of champagne sales.

Whether it’s drinking champagne, making a doctor’s appointment, or obtaining insurance, the aim of any company is to create great customer experiences by removing anything that slows down or impedes the action you want your customer to take.

Insurance companies can reduce friction by adopting digital tools and encouraging customers to use the mobile app as much as possible, especially to start a claim and submit supporting photos and documents. A good customer experience is one in which claims are processed as quickly as possible so they can get the repairs or funds they need.

A Complete Package

All trends in the insurance industry’s customer experience point toward digitizing and creating self-service opportunities, while still maintaining personalized human-interaction touchpoints. Need help improving your customer experience and satisfaction? PrintMail Solutions has been driving innovation and delivering customer satisfaction in communication management solutions for more than 20 years. To learn more about our communications solutions for the insurance industry, including statement processing, eStatements, digital marketing services, and more, contact us today!