Creating a new customer experience. Consumer brands are changing policyholder expectations, and carriers are using technology to improve the customer experience. (Photo: Shutterstock)

One of the hottest topics in P&C technology today is customer experience — and how digital engagement can put carriers on equal footing with the consumer brands that have fundamentally changed customer expectations. However, too often I hear vague, general discussions about customer experience rather than a focus on specific customer expectations.

To create digital customer experiences that provide real solutions, we need to be thinking in terms of each customer's persona or role. In our world, this comes down to individual consumers, business clients and brokers.

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User intuition

There has been much progress made on the mechanics of the consumer experience, such as giving insureds the ability to pre-populate all the details about their cars by simply entering their license plate number into a quoting app. Intuitive user interfaces are becoming the new normal with the use of chatbots on the rise and the abundance of mobile applications.

User experience and support for brokers is an area that has seen significant global evolution. One good example is Ztrade by Zurich UK, an online portal that reduced broker quoting time to 60 seconds. It allows brokers to provide rapid indicative quotes, process new business and make mid-term adjustments without involving Zurich where product underwriting rules allow, and includes excellent online support.

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Improving business support

One group ripe for improvement involves business clients, users looking for more self-service — especially in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Possible advances could be similar to the ones highlighted in the Ztrade example. More work can and should be done to streamline data exchange between businesses and brokers; carriers treating corporate insureds more like individual consumers will go a long way toward winning and retaining commercial lines business.

While consumers, businesses and brokers are a good start, increasingly segmented and refined user types are clearly a future focus. Accenture published a study last year on various customer segments and their expectations of insurers. From this research, Accenture identified three primary customer types:

Nomads: A highly digitally active group, ready for a new model of delivery.

  • They want flexible, personalized models.
  • They are ready to transition to a new digital model.
  • They want to do more on their own, with agents involved later in the buying process.
  • They want insurers to go beyond indemnification and offer more value.
  • They will readily migrate to non-traditional insurance firms and models.

Hunters: Value-oriented customers searching for the best deal on price.

  • They want to use specialist insurers.
  • They are primarily driven to seek maximum value for their money
  • They believe that human advice is vital at key stages.
  • They search for carriers that add value through data.

Quality seekers: Loyal to insurers that deliver on brand integrity and service excellence.

  • They are driven by service and trust.
  • They will share more personal data, but only on their own terms.
  • They are open to computer-generated advice if it enhances their insurance buying experience.

Starting with a high-level understanding of the differences between users you serve is a good first step towards transforming your digital presence, but drilling deeper to identify more precise personas provides a much more detailed view into the wants and needs of potential customers.

The more understanding a company has about its customers, the better positioned it is to inform the development of its products and the design of its customer experiences. As carriers use more fully-developed personas to inform their digital transformations, expect to see exciting developments at every user touch point.

Johan Nelis is regional director, APAC at Duck Creek Technologies. Contact him at [email protected].

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