Leveraging Digitization to Drive Customer Experiences in Life Insurance

Digitization is changing the face of all industries across the globe, and the life insurance space is no exception. By leveraging emerging digital technologies, life insurers can improve their business models, stay ahead of the competition and offer better customer experiences. Let's take a look at how digitalization enables life insurers to enhance their market reach and meet the ever-increasing expectations of modern customers.

In a traditional insurance setup, the onboarding process is long, complex, and involves a lot of paperwork and back and forths with customers. In comparison, digital customer onboarding helps life insurers optimize time, resources, and costs while offering personalized customer experiences.

The adoption of customer-facing digital apps or websites paired with Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) solutions for onboarding offers unparalleled agility, and accessibility to customers and streamlines the entire process for insurers.

The information provided by the customer is automatically uploaded to business systems such as CRM. This data can be harnessed for personalizing policies, upselling, and cross-selling. Such a seamless onboarding experience is a sure-shot trick to starting off a fulfilling and long-term relationship on the right foot.

The mushrooming of multiple insurer-customer touchpoints is one of the most significant by-products of insurance digitization. As a result, insurance businesses will have to bear the responsibility of managing the various channels of communication. Naturally, it is not something one can conduct manually. As such, a centralized communication hub such as a CRM is a must-have in the life insurer's tech stack. The resulting unification of channels will introduce consistency in the customer experiences regardless of the channel through which they have come across the life insurer. Such omnichannel customer experiences make the entire customer lifecycle customer-friendly. Now, whether a lead is exploring a policy on the landing page or interacting with a PPC ad, whether a policyholder is raising a claim on the website or doing it on the mobile app, whether a customer is registering a complaint over email or through the chatbot - everyone will have the same customer experience.

Digitalization helps life insurance businesses personalize products and services to meet the varying needs of individual customers. For example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics technologies help insurers analyze customer data across all interaction points of their journeys. The insights extracted from the data allow insurers to identify what the customers want. As a result, insurers can ensure that the customers get tailored products that are in line with their requirements. AI-powered data integration programs also improve the data flow across disparate systems, and helps businesses obtain a single source of truth.

Apart from product development, digitization also helps life insurers offer personalized services. Insurers can offer personalized recommendations and guidance to clients based on their requirements and preferences. This paves the way for improved customer satisfaction and helps insurers build an army of loyal brand advocates.

Data analytics has been heaven-sent in the field of insurance. It has enabled the elimination of guesswork and formed cold, hard facts as the basis of all policy-related decisions.

It performs a cross-sectional analysis of high volumes of customer data sourced from multiple locations, from their profiles to behaviors to preferences, to offer a 360-degree view of their requirements. Such a holistic overview of the customer allows underwriters to perform a detailed evaluation and work out life insurance policies that match the customer's expectations. Naturally, such an approach to creating life insurance policies will enhance customer experience and earn businesses a favorable reputation.

Moreover, the application of data analytics far exceeds policy underwriting or risk assessment. It can even act as a window into the customer experience as life insurers can track, measure, and benchmarks customer experience metrics using data analytics. Apart from service delivery, it can come in handy for life insurance product improvement and discovery. All in all, it is an effective ingredient for improving customer experience.

Digital assistants have become ubiquitous in all customer-facing industries, and the same goes for insurance too. Life insurance businesses are turning to digital assistants for carrying out myriad activities - from helping leads find a life insurance policy that suits their needs to accepting payments of premiums and generating receipts to resolving basic customer queries.

Chatbots are one of the most popular digital assistants available. These simulate intelligent, human-sounding conversations over text. Depending on the digital maturity of the chatbot, customers can interact through pre-configured menus or interact in their natural language. Some leverage technologies like AI and ML to add a dash of personalization and establish a one-to-one connection.

Regardless of the digital assistant type, they can help with end-to-end life insurance business processes and boost customer experience while at it.

Customer experience is highly dynamic. As such, insurers must be prepared for constant innovation and action. Digital platforms and technologies like life policy administration software allow insurers to transform the customer experience and meet the ever-growing expectations of modern customers. All in all, a cross-organizational digitization strategy will unlock new opportunities and help you build long-lasting customer relationships.