In today’s hard insurance market, maintaining a competitive advantage is essential for insurers to win and retain customers. Prioritizing the customer experience by providing innovative technology and services can help insurers keep their current customers happy while attracting new business.
In the increasingly data-driven world of risk and claims, insureds expect sophisticated technical offerings from their insurance providers. Insurance companies can use technology to offer more accurate premiums and to provide better customer service through self-service portals or more interaction with tenured staff members.
In particular, insurance carriers can set themselves apart from the competition with these five technical offerings:
1. Devote more time to helping insureds with workflow automation.
Policy and claims administration can be highly labor intensive, with many manual tasks. Skilled staff can spend hours, days, or even weeks completing complex administrative processes. With workflow automation technology, insurance carriers can streamline these processes without sacrificing reliability or security.
Authorized users can generate renewals and quotes, issue new policies, and make changes to existing policies with customized workflows designed according to their organization’s needs. With this kind of technology in place, insurance carriers can spend less time on manual data entry and more time helping insureds. This shift in focus on providing valuable service can improve customer loyalty and staff job satisfaction.
2. Provide the ability for insureds to access key information quickly with a self-service portal.
With all the conveniences of technology today, customers expect quick responses and immediate access to important information when they have a request. While there will always be a time and a place for communication with an adjuster or underwriter, many tasks can be completed by the insureds themselves.
Rather than contacting an agent, requesting a copy of a policy, and waiting to hear back, an insured can download a copy of their policy directly from a self-service portal. This simple task saves a significant amount of time for both the customer and the insurer. With a user-friendly portal, insureds have key information at their fingertips, with the ability to manage policies, check the status of claims, and even pay bills directly in a secure system. With this capability, insureds can complete these tasks on their own time, which may be outside of standard business hours, and they can still contact their agent with higher-value requests as needed.
3. Enhance efficiency and user acceptance with mobile access.
A self-service portal is a highly valuable offering for insurance carriers to provide their insureds. To enhance the customer experience even further, carriers can use mobile-ready technology.
Both insurers and insureds can benefit from the ability to access information securely from a mobile device. Insureds can gain information securely and quickly without having to use a desktop or laptop, and insurers can be more available to respond to customer requests promptly. Customers will appreciate the convenience of being able to access information on their preferred device, resulting in improved satisfaction and retention.
4. Improve cost accuracy and create operational savings with powerful analytics and reporting.
Insurance carriers can mitigate the rising costs of premiums in a hard market with enhanced analytics and reporting. With fully embedded analytics and reporting, carriers can make data-driven decisions to provide the best value to insureds.
The ability to monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for policy and claims data can help insurers gain insights quickly. Along with improving cost accuracy, insurers can reduce manual work and enhance communication with reports and data visualizations. Advanced analytics and reporting can streamline access to information in formats that are easy to understand and act upon.
5. Elevate customer service by providing a full administration suite.
Policy and claims administration processes are complex and often managed with separate systems. Processing payments and managing billing cycles can add another layer of complexity and yet another platform to use. With a unified solution that fully integrates policy, claims, and billing administration, insurance carriers can generate a strong return on investment by reducing manual data entry, monitoring payments and due dates, and triggering key actions promptly.
When evaluating potential system replacements, carriers should look for a vendor that can provide the full administration suite but also integrate with existing systems. This will allow for flexibility to continue operations while replacing sunsetting products. By completing their unique administration suite, carriers can create a more seamless experience for colleagues and insureds, resulting in improved job satisfaction and better customer service.
By adopting new technology, insurance carriers can move beyond providing a product to providing a service. With workflow automation and integration with other systems, adjusters and underwriters can spend less time on manual tasks and more time on higher-value initiatives. Self-service and mobile capabilities can further reduce administrative burden and streamline access to important information. Analytics and reporting can help carriers make data-driven decisions that enable optimal outcomes for insureds and the business as a whole. Any or all of these elements can dramatically improve the customer experience and help carriers maintain a competitive edge in a hard market.
Next Steps
To learn more about how to attract and retain customers with innovative technology, watch this short webinar or contact Joe Masek, Territory Vice President.
