Traditional customer centricity

Ronny Reppe, CEO of Noria, explains how insurers could and should pursue and achieve true digital customer-centricity to the benefit of all.

Many leaders in the insurance space know that they need their organisation to be more customer-centric, but are failing to undertake the operational groundwork required to make it a success as the customer journey becomes increasingly digital. Attempting to create a traditional customer-centric culture or mindset is important, but these efforts will be a lot less effective unless you also deliver a customer-centric digital experience. Without the right digital foundation in place, your customer-centricity initiatives will ultimately be ineffectual and provide little added value.

Before we explore how to create a customer-centric architecture, let’s review the meaning and benefits of
traditional customer-centricity in insurance.

A customer-centric approach will improve customer loyalty because customers will feel that their insurer truly understands their needs. In turn, this leads to improved
customer satisfaction and increased revenue through positive referrals and repeat business. The satisfaction goes both ways – employees who feel they are making a positive difference for customers will feel more engaged, motivated and invested in their work.

Here’s what the research has found:

• 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs (Salesforce);
• Customers will spend an average of 10% more for a good experience (Forbes); and,
• Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that are not (Brightlocal). Done well, customer-centricity can become your organisation’s competitive advantage and enable you to stand out in a crowded marketplace. A sharp focus on the needs of customers can also help insurers identify new opportunities for innovation, leading to new revenue streams and continued growth.

What does customer centricity like in insurance

Customer-centricity in insurance involves a focus on meeting the needs and expectations of policyholders and providing excellent customer service. Here are some specific examples of what traditional customer-centricity looks like in insurance:

• Understanding customer needs: Insurers need to have a deep understanding of their customers’ needs, pain points, and risk profiles. They collect feedback and use data analytics to identify trends and offer tailored insurance solutions that meet each customer’s unique requirements.
• Making insurance easy to understand and purchase: Customers should be able to manage their policies and make claims quickly and easily.
• Offering customised solutions: Recognising that every customer has unique needs and providing tailored insurance solutions that meet their specific requirements.
• Providing exceptional customer service: Providing a personalised, responsive service and being available to answer customers’ questions and concerns promptly.
• Being transparent: Transparency is critical to building trust with customers. Insurers should be
  transparent about their policies, pricing and claims processes.
• Offering value-added services: Insurers can differentiate themselves by offering additional value- added services beyond traditional insurance coverage such as offering risk-management advice or providing
  educational resources.

Digital customer centricity

But as the customer journey moves to the digital realm at an accelerating pace, insurers that lack the data and tools required to drive digital customer-centricity will struggle to provide the services listed above beyond the most basic level.

In other words, claiming to have a “customer-centric culture” without the right architecture in place is nothing more than an empty promise. Does your organisation:

• Provide customers with the option to use self-service portals with excellent UX?
• Have a 360-degree view of the customer to provide great service and value-add?
• Leverage the power of a cutting-edge solutions back-office? If not, it is clear that your customer-centric approach must evolve to meet the needs of the digital customer journey. But where should insurers begin? With the data.

Customer-centric data modelling

Without having your structured data in a single source, it is impossible to undertake a 360-degree analysis of each customer. Larger insurers often have customer data spread across several different core systems
(administrative systems, spreadsheets, emails) and have a significant task ahead of them to remove siloes and unify this data into a single view. The single data source should not only involve your own customer data, but, incorporate external data from various sources that can be matched up with your internal data on the customer.

Having a unified data source enables you to equip your solutions back office with the tools they need to take customer-centricity to the next level. Most of us have experienced the frustration involved in calling a helpdesk and having to spend half an hour explaining who we are, what we’re trying to do and the challenge we’re facing.

A customer-centric data model will provide the visibility needed to remove this step. For example, if the policy-holder was filling out an online form and became stuck at a certain point, the helpdesk should have the visibility to see this straight away and provide a solution without the need for any lengthy explanation.

Imagine that a policyholder calls your helpdesk. Is your employee able to:

• Access a single view of the customer without having to dig into several data sources?;
• See a summary of all the different conversations held with the customer?;
• See all the solutions offered to the customer in the past?;
• See all the historic and current insurance products they have with you?;
• See historic claims, transactions, documentation and email history?;
• Access customer-specific analytics/insights?; and,
• Understand the customer’s challenge without the need for lengthy explanation?

At Noria, we have created that 360-degree view. Our customer-centric platform enables insurers to
proactively leverage their collected customer data and lessens their dependency on external resources to
prepare and hand over data when they need it fast.

Self-service and customer centricity: mutually exclusive

One of the misconceptions about customer-centricity is that it requires a high-touchpoint approach with bigger helpdesks and more time on the phone with customers. This can be difficult to reconcile with the accelerating trend towards digitisation and the key part that self-service plays in the digital customer journey.

How can we provide customer-centricity if we are leaving the customer to help themselves? The answer is to balance the digital customer journey with being available to provide personalised, expert help when needed. There’s an unfortunate mindset among some insurers that make it complex for customers to contact the help desk, often making it very difficult to even find a phone number. For me, that’s digitisation gone wrong. You need to be immediately available to solve any customer need manually if their digital experience fails to deliver. Providing a seamless digital customer journey and a self-service approach frees up more time for your team to talk with and assist customers. Having the right architecture in place means they will also have the tools to help them efficiently and effectively while providing highly personalised service. If you can get it right, “customer centricity by design” is where the magic happens in balanced digitisation.