Customer Experience
In the insurance industry, investing in the customer experience is one of the keys to staying active and profitable. Providing a comprehensive, personalized experience to your customers will help them become more familiar with their insurance policies and reduce claims frequency. In addition, satisfied customers are more likely to use your company again as their coverage needs change.
In the third and fourth months of a relationship, the average customer spends 67% more than in the first six months. And 33% of Americans say they’ll switch companies after just one bad experience.
Retaining existing customers is far less expensive than acquiring new ones when it comes to cost. In general, insurers spend five times to gain a new customer as they do to keep an existing one. So, why arent more insurance companies putting more effort into creating a positive customer experience in the first place?
5 Ways to Improve the Insurance Customer Experience
Improving the experience of your policyholders should be a top priority. Whether you’re a carrier, agency, or brokerage, here are five ways to improve your customer experience with Salesforce technology:
Simplify the Experience
What are the stumbling blocks in your policyholder journey? Examine how simple it is for your customers to navigate your quoting process. These are the points in the customer journey where there is an excessive amount of complexity, which leads to frustration.
Simplicity is the first step toward a better customer experience.
Providing an entirely self-service online quoting-to-bind process can help increase conversions, especially for simple personal line products. Even if you can’t fully rate and bind a policy with straight-through processing, give customers the option to start the quote or request an estimate online.
Personalize the Experience
Policyholders want to work with an insurer who understands them. Nobody enjoys filling out the same insurance forms over and over again, so don’t make your customers do it.
If it were that simple, you’d think everyone would do it. However, demonstrating what you know about the customer and creating a personalized experience can put you ahead of the pack.
Check that your systems are connected, don’t ask for information that you already have, and pre-fill forms for your policyholders whenever possible.
Be Where Your Customers Are
Customers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get in touch with you.
Consider increasing the number of service channels available to you. For example, while traditional phone-based contact centers aren’t going away anytime soon, policyholders want more ways to communicate with you when they have questions about coverage, claims, or other service issues.
Chat and text channels are gaining in popularity. Live chat, or chatbot technology can help with call deflection and respond to simple customer requests such as payment date, claim status, and document requests, in addition to giving your customers more options for getting their questions answered.
Consider sending a text or push notifications to keep your customers informed about claim status and next steps.
Related article: Signs Your Business Needs an Answering Service
Efficiency and Transparency in Claims
More than 40% of policyholders who were dissatisfied with their claims experience said they planned to switch carriers within a year, compared to 90% of delighted customers who said they would renew.
While most policyholders are wary of receiving digital First Notices of Loss (FNOL), they welcome and expect it at other points in the claims process. Providing your customers with an app or portal to check on the status of claims, ask questions, and submit documents and photos is one way to improve your claim experience.
Invest in your Employee Experience
Your employees play a crucial role in the customer experience.
Many insurance service situations are emotionally charged, and some customers prefer to speak in a soothing tone. Many of your mid- and back-office functions rely on satisfied employees who can do their jobs efficiently, despite significant investments in straight-through processing, robotic process automation, and underwriting algorithms.
Having the data they need and being able to move through their workflow without having to re-key or ”swivel-chair” between systems allows them to provide the level of service your policyholders expect.
Related article: 7 Must-Have Customer Service Skills for the Company
Make Customer Experience Your Differentiator
Investing in customer experience is a sure bet for establishing new technologies and developing new capabilities. Salesforce’s abilities are designed to help you make the most of the wealth of data you already have on your customers to provide a truly unique customer experience. Callhounds Global experts can assist you in creating your ideal customer experience, prioritizing your investments to maximize return on investment, and implementing the technologies that will transform your policyholder engagement.
Find out how we can help your insurance company improve its customer experience.