In today's digital world, companies need to concentrate on customers and their experience. No longer could it be just about optimizing the company and processing the transaction; the general experience matters for retention and renewal. It is essential to create a seamless digital experience that is tailored and personalized, according to understanding customers and their needs.
The very first thing an insurer should do is define who the client is. Based on a company's channel – direct, captive or independent agents – the definition becomes not only complex but political as well as cultural and structural.
Historically, for a lot of insurers whose channels happen to be independent agencies, the agent or broker has always been the customer. But more insurers have embraced the reality that the policyholder is also the customer. There is often a debate as to in which the CX focus ought to be: on the policyholder or even the agent? In my opinion insurers have to consider both as customers – different customers, but both customers. In most cases, agents own and manage the connection with the policyholder, and the insurer provides services towards the policyholder. Insurers need to embrace both agent and policyholder and also the connectivity from the triad relationship, and how these relationships and connections fuel each other.
Ease of doing clients are the requirement for any insurance customer in today's digital, connected world. Agents choose where you can place the business based on easy conducting business (along with the relationship, product coverages and pricing).
There are a few key areas to focus on to improve the agent experience, like providing agents using the right technology solutions and tools to quickly and painlessly quote, bind, issue, endorse and renew. Agents expect it to be fast and easy to know each insurer's product and risk appetite and to have clear visibility in to the status of all interactions between the agency and insurer – as well as the policyholder and insurer.
While the agent could have a personal relationship with the insured, insurers do communicate with policyholders: paying, changing pay plans, asking questions around a final audit invoice, having loss control visits and, obviously, experience the whole claims process. The important thing to providing a really great customer experience for the policyholder includes providing a personalized touchpoint in any channel – whether it's paper, digital or face-to-face – and ensuring communications are easy, accurate, consistent and simple. Last, but not least, minimizing or even eliminating the necessity to call, maximizing the experience when customers do need to call to some one-call-resolution and providing the choice to visit the self-service portal are all goals of the transformed customer experience.
As we glance at the customer experience today, there's tremendous chance to transform not only the client experience however your company, as well. Once we work with insurers on their CX transformation journeys, the amount of low-hanging fruit with minimal costs and high impact for improvement to both the customer experience and the optimization of operations is incredible. But first, you must be clear as to who your customer is. Then, declare that your small business is on the CX transformation journey. Now, you are ready to move forward.
