The customer experience has shifted online across almost all industries. While many insurance companies are lagging behind in modernizing their CX, insurers run the risk of losing business to competitors if they don’t make enhancements to meet these evolving consumer expectations.
As insurers invest in self-service functionality for their customers—from purchasing policies online, to paying bills digitally, to submitting claims through a carrier’s mobile app or website—aligning the customer interactions to these digital experiences becomes critical.
Meet Policyholders in Their Preferred Channel
Meeting policyholder expectations around communication is about channel choice. Some policyholders may still prefer to call when they need to make a change to their policy, while others prefer to receive billing reminders via email.
As carriers invest in digital, traditional channels such as phone and email won’t just go away. Carriers must augment their communication choices with more modern, digital options that many insureds prefer while maintaining traditional options.
For example, SMS can be a great way to provide claim updates or to provide bill pay notifications. Giving your policyholders the chance to opt in to these types of communications, while providing other alternative options as well, can help increase engagement rates, keeping policyholders better informed and ultimately more satisfied.
When policyholders have a quick, simple question, offering chat on your website, portal, and/or mobile app is a great way to assist them without bogging down your phone lines. By shifting the mix of interactions, you can begin assisting customers in the channel that is best suited for their need.
Unifying the Employee Experience
As carriers introduce new interaction channels, managing these communication methods can become challenging if they’re provided through separate systems. For instance, customer service reps (CSRs) for a carrier may only handle incoming phone calls today. What happens when chat or SMS are now available options? Who is responsible for answering those customer inquiries?
Some companies have approached this by staffing these channels separately; One group of CSRs answering the phones, another group handling digital engagements (and potentially, even more distinct segments among these two groups).
While carriers have now aligned their support channels to meet customer expectations, they’ve also introduced staffing headaches and challenges. With the staffing model referenced above, carriers can easily be over or under-staffed for a particular channel depending on volumes of digital and phone engagements. Even the best forecasting can’t accurately predict how many CSRs you’ll need at a certain time on a particular day for phone vs. digital.
The solution to this challenge for carriers is unifying their interaction channels with a single vendor. In doing so, CSRs work from a single platform and can take the next interaction, regardless of whether it’s a phone call, chat, or any other digital channel offered.
This not only leads to improved staffing efficiencies, but it also creates a better customer experience. Without siloed channels, employees and customers are no longer bound to the channel the interaction started in.
The Value of Seamless Transitions
Text-based digital interactions are great for quick, simple needs, but it can be an inefficient channel for more in-depth, complex conversations like explaining the details of a claim or discussing coverage needs.
With the ability to seamlessly transition between channels—from chat to voice, for instance—carriers can ensure they’re always able to assist policyholders in the channel best suited for their needs. This eliminates the all-too-common frustration we’ve all experienced when you’re chatting with a company for assistance, and when they’re not able to resolve your issue in that channel, you’re told you need to call a different number.
This means waiting on hold again and re-explaining your issue to a new CSR: A waste of the policyholders’ (and your) valuable time.
It’s time for insurance carriers to modernize their interaction channels, but companies must avoid the trap of simply bolting on these new channels. Finding a vendor that enables you to unify the customer and employee experience, rather than create new silos, is vital to successful modernization.
This is our latest article on the interactions in the insurance industry. We previously explored AI-powered interactions and insurance agent interactions. Check out the links to those pieces if you missed them!