Driving growth with better service for insurance customers

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Customer service is the last major piece of rethinking the entire customer experience that insurers can use to drive growth. The pandemic has reduced face-to-face contact, making personalized customer service more important than ever. Several studies showed how much people need and value social connections. But beyond that, customer service plays a big role in keeping insurance companies connected with their customers. 

Sales Research shows that 69% of executives across industries are allocating budgets to modernize customer service, and 63% are expecting a budget increase. This is good because our research what consumers expect shows that 50% of rethought consumers (those who have rethought their values and goals in the last 18 months) say that many companies have disappointed them by not providing them with enough support and understanding of their needs during difficult times. 

For insurers, this means rethinking customer service models. Transactional, episodic and reactive models fall short of customer expectations. Instead, you need to meet explicit and implicit customer needs and add value to customers at all stages from purchase and registration to maintenance, claims and renewals. This means a better understanding of the needs, intentions and preferences of customers, as well as the ability to actively participate in the development of their needs. 

I recommend to insurers: 

Redefine the way you serve customers. Find ways to help customers in more meaningful ways, such as through automated self-service and communication. 
Deliver a personalized omnichannel experience. Ensure seamless and uninterrupted communications across channels—live, digital, and physical—with quick access and escalation to live agents to meet immediate needs. 
Transformation of service organizations. Enable service organizations to work purposefully, quickly, scalably and flexibly with new data-driven ways of working and technology solutions. Take advantage of behavioral mating and Help an agent with artificial intelligence improve the quality of service for agents and customers.

One company that has done this well is AXA Assicurazioni. An insurance company has created a centralized content delivery system and Salesforce workflows that are fully integrated with their website. This provides the necessary foundation for a digital and intelligent customer experience that can proactively manage customer needs through dynamic FAQs, chatbots, and a feedback process for both internal and external users. 

While such services will never completely replace personal customer service, they can free up customer service agents to help with more complex requests. A man + machine An approach and a holistic view of the customer means that agents and contact center representatives will be better prepared to answer questions and be able to offer the next best actions and proposals that are consistent with the goal. Don’t forget to make sure you connect the agent, call centers and digital mailing without any problems. 

In my next post, I’ll explain how technology can be used to leverage all four growth drivers. While you study make each customer feel like the only customer. 

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