Striking a balance between self-service features and live agent assistance is key for insurers moving forward, according to Duck Creek’s Global Consumer Insurance Insights 2023 paper.
Customer experience is a term well known in business and for good reasons. In today’s world, which heavily involves completing tasks digitally, it has become vital to ensure customers are not left feeling unsupported and alone when purchasing products or services.
Balancing Digital Channel Needs for Policyholders
Humanizing the consumer experience through digital channels is, according to the data collected in the Global Consumers Insurance Insights 2023 paper, a priority for consumers. While they appreciate the speed and empowerment that digital self-service brings, they also don’t want to feel as though they are talking to robots. So, it’s important that insurers strike a balance between self-service features and live-agent assistance to the customer on the other side of these online features.
Insurers can strike such a balance by exploring the use of cloud-based digital customer service integrated with their core insurance systems. This includes features such as screen-sharing, co-browsing, and audio and video conversations – allowing an employee to interact directly with the customer in the context of the customer’s immediate need, creating a continuous, humanized and positive experience for the customer.
Empower Employees with AI-powered Insurtech
Increasing the humanized aspect of customer experiences will require more dedicated time from employees. This can be offset by equipping employees with AI-powered tools to increase the value that core systems provide to the employee with assistance and productivity offered by the system along the way. For example, providing an AI-powered claims investigation assistant, or intelligently interpreted images uploaded to the file and indexed automatically. Allowing the system to take forward more administrative tasks for the employee frees up their time for greater interaction with a customer.
It is also important to highlight that communicating with policyholders outside of claims and renewals enhances the human experience and insurer-to-policyholder relationship.
45% of policyholders surveyed said they didn’t hear from insurers over a typical claim-free year, which would suggest that improvements in this area can be made. Especially given that 82% of consumers surveyed said they wanted to hear from their insurer about new services, with 75% also saying they’d like to hear about other products at some point throughout the year.
Overall, when it comes to interacting with their insurance providers, most respondents would prefer to speak to a human, and 96% said they would like to be kept abreast of the status of their claim.
The tools are there for insurers to take advantage of, and striking a balance between a digital and human experience would lead to increased consumer confidence and retention.
