Sharper data collection is key to better insurance CX

Digital transformation has become one of the key priorities of insurers these days. The potential of big data and analytics for citations, risk analysis and underwriting efficiency is immeasurable. Still, many insurers struggle to take advantage of the wealth of customer data they have access to.

This issue is not as relevant to infrastructure needs as it is to the data acquisition process. As evidenced by a survey conducted by EY, modern customers are digital natives. Two in three customers prefer digital interactions, and about 80% of respondents say they bought insurance online.

Social media, wearables, telematics, agent interactions, and smart homes are just a few of the data sources that insurers can mine. Still, manual processes and outdated workflows prevent insurers from designing a memorable customer experience (CX).

Insurers have the potential to transform their business by redesigning data collection methods as follows:

Accelerate customer onboarding for insurance

The onboarding process for a typical insurance customer is tedious. Customers fill out multiple forms, request a quote, provide a large amount of medical paperwork, respond to additional paperwork requests from insurance agents, and finally manually sign the form before mailing it to the company.

This process can take weeks or a month to complete. It is not possible to compare prices in such a process, as insurers struggle to provide comparisons without the necessary paperwork. Consumer demand for aggregators has shown a thirst for facilitating online comparisons, and insurers have been unable to fill this void.

The digital onboarding experience eliminates these hassles and seamlessly connects agent needs to consumer data. For example, online forms can collect relevant consumer information, centralize data storage, and automatically screen applicants for further information requests.

Companies can identify risk thresholds based on customer input, request documents, and issue quotations within a few days. All customer data is centralized, allowing underwriters to make quick decisions. Therefore, not only is the customer experience seamless, but it also benefits the backend process.

For business-to-business (B2B) insurance, the quote timeline is even longer, taking 3-6 months. Digitally upgrade your data acquisition process to reduce onboarding time from months to weeks, increase profits, and create scalable digital processes.

Offering agile plans

Recent customers also lack patience. With a wealth of options available, consumers are very accustomed to receiving non-ideal services from insurance companies. From an insurer’s perspective, the easiest way to guarantee stable underwriting income is to increase loyalty.

Most insurers rely on price discounts as a means of building loyalty. However, this is all about forcing the customer to consider insurance as a commodity. Insurers often struggle to convey the underlying value of their insurance policies due to the lack of data surrounding their customers’ value drivers.

The data offers enterprises the potential to create highly customized and agile products. For example, healthcare insurers can leverage wearable data to segment customers and assign risk parameters. These datasets can transform fine-grained processes, such as filling out forms. Insurance companies can pre-populate the data and collect only what they need.

It is important to stay away from manual data collection. Nurnberger insurance faced challenges in this regard. Their customers demanded flexible products, but the company lacked the insight to provide value-driven and profitable plans.

By centralizing customer data and collecting relevant information, companies can increase brand loyalty through highly agile policies. You can suspend, adjust, or cancel your insurance plan to suit your needs. The company used the data to empower customers, allow them to enter their needs, reduce the workload of agents, and automate tedious underwriting risk analysis.

Therefore, there are two benefits. Not only will it increase customer loyalty, but it will also reduce Nurnberger’s operating costs, increase margins and potentially help achieve free floats.

Reduce consumer health costs

The insurance market has evolved with changing customer attitudes. Consumers these days are looking for cost-effective healthcare and expect insurers and healthcare providers to leverage technology to reach this goal.

Healthcare provider Atrius Health needed a way to monitor diabetics. Their purpose was to encourage greater self-care, manage health between visits, and improve patient satisfaction scores. Given their vast customer base, it was not possible to perform direct screening manually to adopt a proactive surveillance stance.

Glooko’s remote health monitoring service with wearable technology helps Atrius monitor vast amounts of patient data such as blood glucose, exercise activity, and carbohydrate levels on a central platform. Glooko also removes data silos and provides healthcare providers with a complete picture of the patient’s health.

Importantly, these datasets are automatically shared with the patient’s consent. After implementing the program, 80% of patients said they found it very easy to share data. In addition, patients actively monitored their health and doubled the frequency of blood tests.

Better data collection for a better insurance customer experience

Customer satisfaction is intricately related to data collection. The more seamless the data collection, the better the customer experience. Customers are less anxious about sharing data and have less work to do. Care providers can then employ proactive healthcare management solutions to reduce patient healthcare and operating costs.

Tal Daskal is the CEO and co-founder of EasySend...