7 Actionable Steps for Insurance Companies to Boost Customer Engagement

Traditionally, the insurance industry is not known to be the ideal forum for talking about customer value journeys and customer engagement. The metric used in determining customer satisfaction in this industry has always been the rate of customer retention. And suppose an insurer’s retention rate exceeds the competitive benchmark, it is generally used as a yardstick.

But is customer retention rate good enough to be the only metric for gauging customer engagement in today’s digital marketing world? Consumers have experienced the thinning engagement margins of financial services and want to have similar experiences whether shopping on e-commerce platforms or buying an insurance product—they are getting more and more demanding and e-transaction focused.

This post outlines actionable steps insurance companies should take to boost their customer engagement. But before we delve into that, let’s first look at what customer analytics is and how these solutions impact customer engagement.

What Is Customer Analytics?

Customer analytics is the process through which customer data analysis is collected and leveraged to identify, captivate, and retain customers. This data can be collected from various sources through which a customer interacts with a given brand. Insurers use these insights to come up with products and marketing techniques that resonate with their consumers. Customer analytics data enables them to provide a more relevant experience for their customers in all of their engagements. This personalized experience is what makes a customer stick to a brand.

Maximizing Insurance Customer Engagement: 7 Proven Strategies for Success

A personalized experience is a must when it comes to effective customer engagement. Customers love it when they get bespoke solutions for their insurance needs. By studying their support queries, challenges, and niches, insurance companies can engage with the policyholders more relevantly. Customer engagement analytics help a great deal in nurturing customer relationships and improving their engagement. Here are actionable steps that insurance companies should take to improve their level of customer engagement upon using customer analytics to understand their customers:

1. Create personalized experiences

Given the intimate nature of insurance services, personalization is not a nice-to-have but an absolute assumption. It’s no wonder that 80% of insurance customers today are after personalized messages, pricing, offers, and recommendations from the insurance providers.

Policyholders want to engage with an insurer that understands them. No one fancies filling out repetitive insurance forms. As such, insurers should save their customers from going through that trouble. By understanding their customers and building a personalized experience, insurers can gain a competitive edge over their competition.

2. Create products and services that reward customers for attaining their goals

Today, many insurance companies are turning to products with rewards and wellness features to enhance customer engagement. Various incentives such as cash-backs and premium reduction are the most compelling influencers of wellness participation. However, to attain long-term engagement, insurers need to employ a more holistic approach. This includes initiatives like stress levels, health, and even financial wellness. The lesson here is that whereas monetary incentives and rewards may attract new customers, demonstrating empathy for customers builds loyalty in a much more powerful way.

3. Create valuable content

People like getting informed. Today, customers are consuming and sharing content more than ever before. They are also seeking new channels for recommendation and advice. Since traditional insurance touchpoints are somewhat limited, it is crucial to find new ways of creating, curating, and promoting content that adds value to consumers. This will help them debunk common insurance needs that are complex, expensive, and difficult to understand.

One of the main reasons people opt not to buy life insurance in the U.S is misinformation about cost. Insurance companies that educate their consumers on the value of insurance through a multichannel content-based marketing approach will position themselves as industry leaders in the coming years.

4. Digitization and automation

Digitization enables insurers to enhance engagement by automating various key functions, thereby making the customer experience as seamless as possible while at the same time minimizing the risk of human error. Today, several insurance processes can be automated, from claims to quotes and everything in between.

As the most frequent interaction between insurance and policyholders, the payment process is a particularly valuable touchpoint for engagement and personalization. Providing frictionless, more flexible payment options engages policyholders, enabling them to set up automatic payments and installment options, as well as giving them the ability to make secured payments via their preferred methods (debit card, credit card) and channels (e.g., email, phone, text).

Automating the claims process also provides another high-impact engagement moment. Many insurers already use digital claims reporting, and some even employ high-tech solutions for analysis and investigation. Claims payment is the newest opportunity in insurance automation. Digital claims payment provides a unique opportunity to deliver a positive customer experience for people who depend on that settlement payment to get their life in order after a loss.

5. Apply intelligence in customer engagement

Contextualizing or optimizing customer engagement is no longer just a thought but a reality in the digital engagement world. By using various tools, insurers can engage with their customers in real-time. As such, they can communicate with their customers more effectively.

To understand customer motivation and buying habits, insurers should leverage a customer intelligence platform to help them quantify and analyze their customer spending habits based on analytics, demographics, and data mining. Relying on organized customer intelligence data can help insurers to understand what motivates a particular group of customers. This helps them drive a higher return on investment (ROI) on their marketing campaigns.

6. Embrace social media

Social media is no longer just a platform where people go to socialize. Over the years, it has established itself as a new kind of marketplace where knowledge is exchanged for access to influential leaders, networks, and emerging consumer segments. Several studies have indicated that social media marketing continues to grow every other day.

Insurers can use this market to better interact with policyholders, share opinions, and send reminders to their customers on issues such as premium payment and the existence of new insurance products.

7. Segment customers based on their lifestyle choices

It’s no secret that most insurers struggle to foster strong relationships with their customers. This is mainly because the insurance industry is highly commoditized and customer engagement is both superficial and limited. Segmenting customers based on their characteristics, needs, lifestyle, and goals can help insurers better understand their consumers. That said, the customer segmentation shouldn’t be generic, insurers should employ a customer-centric segmentation in order to get more reliable customer insights.

In Conclusion

The era of consumer engagement in the insurance industry is well underway, and now is the opportune time to seize this exciting chance to grow your insurance company. The winners will be those insurance companies who come up with the best ways of connecting their products and services with their consumers’ needs and making the insurance-buying experience as seamless and natural as possible.

So, how do you get there? Pilotbird’s customer analytics solutions can help insurers’ better engage with customers by breaking down customer data so that they can better comprehend their customer’s needs and create products and services tailored to satisfy those needs. For a closer look at our customer analytics solutions, contact Pilotbird for a free demo.

Sources:

https://www.majesco.com/customer-engagement-starts-here-measuring-trends-in-the-insurance-experience/

https://insuranceblog.accenture.com/personalization-the-business-of-getting-personal

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-statistics/