Part 1 – Your claims process and systems are a customer-experience issue.
What is the most important task of the life insurance coverage company? There are many answers to this question. It all depends in your role or paradigm of the company. When you break it all down, I believe there's one task that's most important within a life insurance company. It's to pay claims! Consider it. If a life insurance coverage clients are bad at paying claims, then what's its purpose?
A current article inside a.M. Best's journal shared market research that indicated the top two items that needed technology improvement are:
- Improving the client (and agent) experience.
- Legacy administrative and claims systems.
Let's discuss #1 first. If you have never browse the book called “Delivering Happiness,” by Tony Hsieh, I recommend it to everyone inside your organization. Stop reading this article and go buy the book or audio version. The concept is, if you focus your attention on customers as well as their experiences, the business will thrive. Of course, you have to begin with a strong culture and hire the best people. You need to give them the climate, tools and freedom to tackle the work. Happy employees will lead to happy customers! We believe that 96% of carriers have decided that claims transformation and digitization is imperative. We feel the 85% of carriers' executive teams are dedicated to claims excellence and good customer experiences.
You must design your claims process using the customer in your mind. Here are a few questions to keep in mind as you and your team evaluates the claims process:
- Do customers want to go through an old procedure for jumping through hoops?
- Do customers want to go to your website, download a PDF claim form that's not even fillable, print this form, fill it out and then mail it in, simply to get a five- to eight-page claim packet two weeks later that they feel will require an attorney to accomplish? YUCK!!
- What type of experience are you currently presenting with a process such as this? Can you wish to undergo this experience?
- More importantly, do you think you will have an opportunity to sell this customer any of your products later on?
- What is the customer acquisition cost if you could retain this client with a great customer experience?
The point is, you must be on the pursuit to create a better customer experience. Your customers demand it! Today's consumers have a much an easy experience. They expect multiple resources to boost that have. They would like to be able to complete these processes on their time, not the company’s. Updating and looking after technology is essential to an insurer’s ability to capture and retain these technology-savvy customers.
Stay tuned for next issue – Part 2 – You are able to reduce your claims expenses and enhance the customer experience.
