Would you be surprised to know that customer experience plays a huge role in deciding which insurance provider to choose? A recent study revealed that for 46 percent of respondents, customer experience is one of the most important factors when they select an insurance provider. It also found that almost the same percentage of respondents consider lack of communication their biggest challenge while interacting with insurers.
As per another research, more than half of respondents use multiple communication channels to contact their insurers. However, just 11 percent of decision-makers in the insurance industry prioritize omnichannel experiences. A new survey by Salesforce found that almost three-quarters of respondents expect insurers to use more sophisticated technologies.
All these stats and numbers suggest that insurance companies should consider using advanced and reliable communication tools such as insurance contact center software to deliver a superior customer experience. This blog post discusses the role that insurance contact center software plays to deliver exceptional customer service and experience. Read on and thank us later.
1. By tailoring and customizing services
“Get a quick personalized quote today!” A lot of insurance companies use this phrase on their websites, landing pages, brochures, and other marketing collateral. Customization and personalization are extremely crucial in the insurance industry as different customers have different needs when it comes to policies and services. Expert advice and tailored support can help them find the right insurance policy.
Research conducted by IBM found that more than half of respondents prefer tailored communications from insurance companies. But only 17 percent of insurers focus on customized communications. A study by Accenture revealed that seven out of every ten customers would readily share their personal information with insurance companies to get tailored services. As per the latest stat, tailored services can enhance an insurance firm’s retention rate to a whopping 81 percent!
Now, the question is “How high-quality insurance contact center software can help you tailor customer service and deliver exceptional customer experience?” Well, it can do that in multiple ways. By leveraging advanced insurance contact center software, you can access customers’ purchase history, transaction details, and valuable customer data. The relevant information will allow you to gain insights into customer behavior and help you offer customized services.
2. By enabling customers to contact using a wide range of channels
What do contemporary customers do when they want to contact their insurers? Not all of them call the customer service number. A majority of them send text messages, instant messages, use live chats, as well as tag and comment on social media platforms. Modern customers are leveraging digital channels like never before. As a result, they have higher expectations from their insurance providers when it comes to providing omnichannel support.
A study conducted by Hi Marley, a Boston-based communication platform and software provider for the insurance industry, revealed that seven out of every ten customers said that they prefer to text their insurance service providers for any query or issue. Email and phone emerged as the second and third most popular channels respectively. The survey also revealed that eight out of every ten customers feel text messaging builds closer customer connections. What’s more interesting is that 84 percent of the respondents said that they would save the text number of an insurance company in their contacts.
Contemporary sophisticated insurance contact center software supports omnichannel communication. By leveraging it, you can handle customer communication through multiple channels on a unified platform. It will enable your agents to handle the text messages, chats, or social media comments of two or more customers at any given time.
3. By prioritizing security
Did you know that almost 300 businesses or customers get attacked by cybercriminals every hour? If we go by a stat published by Cybersecurity Ventures, that’s the figure! And that’s not all; the rate of attacks is going to surge five-fold in the next seven years!
Ensuring strong cyber security is a must for insurance companies. That’s because insurers are more prone to cyber-attacks than any other company. They have a lot of sensitive customer information and personal data—starting from their name, age, and address to their income, health-related details, and more.
That’s why insurers must do whatever it takes to protect their customers and policyholders from security breaches and data theft. The insurance contact center software that’s equipped with advanced security features such as access controls, robust encryption, and multi-factor authentication can help insurers enhance their security by leaps and bounds.
4. By enhancing agents’ efficiency
Customer experience is closely related to employee productivity. As the saying goes, “The more efficiency that is achieved, the more your customer is satisfied.” Several studies have found that when employee productivity rises, it also enhances customer satisfaction and customer experience.
A McKinsey study estimates that almost a third of underwriting roles could be automated efficiently, which will cut down repetitive and low-value tasks. A KPMG study found that automation in the insurance sector can cut down claims processing time by 50 percent and reduce the repetitive work of agents by 80 percent.
Can insurance contact center software enhance agents’ efficiency? It surely can. First and foremost, it automates and streamlines several routine customer service tasks, which allows agents to focus on more complex tasks and add more value to customer interactions. Secondly, it can also provide various self-service features such as multi-level IVR, chatbots, FAQs, and more which will enable customers to fix minor issues and find answers to common queries on their own.
5. By providing real-time analytics
For some data, it is the new gold. For some, it’s the new oil. But for insurance companies, it’s much more valuable than both put together. Data and analytics enable insurance companies to make data-driven business decisions. Insurers must focus on collecting relevant customer data and studying them to get insights into their customer service process.
By analyzing various data, insurance companies can detect problems, evaluate agents’ performance, give the right coaching and training to agents, and optimize their contact center’s performance. This will enable agents to calculate the gap between actual and desired results and bridge the difference.
By providing real-time analytics and monitoring tools, sophisticated insurance contact center software can help insurers to study every available data at their disposal. Apart from that, they can also determine the performance of each agent and take corrective steps to enhance their performance.
To review,
Even though it’s not uncommon to find mid-sized and large insurers outsourcing part of their customer service operations to BPOs and third-party customer service providers, many firms prefer to provide value-added customer service on their own. After all, customer service defines a company. And if you want to know what a company stands for, just contact their customer care number and you will get your answer.
That’s why joining hands with a reputable and reliable contact center solutions provider and selecting the right insurance contact center software can be extremely beneficial to deliver exceptional customer service. While looking for a software provider, take its experience and track record into account and make sure that it provides a free demo. Taking a free demo can give you a lot of insights about the software as well as the software provider.