Insurer strategies to manage new communication technology
The big question for insurers is how to leverage the right mix of technology options across the enterprise.
Most P&C insurers have gradually expanded their options for digitally communicating with prospects, policyholders, producers, and employees. As the industry moves beyond the web, portals, and email, there is a growing recognition that a whole new world of digital communications options can be applied in insurance.
Messaging and collaboration platforms, business texting, chatbots, voice, personalized interactive video, and even augmented/virtual reality are now on the palette. Add these communication options to the “zillion” different ways to make or receive a payment, and a great thing happens. They often simultaneously improve the customer experience while reducing expenses.
Technology options and solution providers are plentiful, but the big question for insurers is how to leverage the right mix of these across the enterprise.
Here are three really important components for successfully managing the new communications options.
Digital communications strategy
The methods of communications have often been driven by the requirements of specific areas of the business.
Marketing uses a variety of tools and approaches to reach prospects and customers. Distribution uses another set to interact with agents and other partners. Claims has many types of external participants to communicate with during the claims lifecycle. Underwriting and other areas of the business have their own needs and favorite technologies.
But, now that digital transformation is accelerating, a comprehensive digital communications strategy is needed to determine how and where to best leverage capabilities like chatbots, messaging platforms, and other tools. The capabilities for delivering customer documents and communications via email, portals, and other traditional methods will continue to be equally vital.
Digital content capture and creation
Inbound communications, such as submissions or first notice of loss, benefit from intelligent capture solutions that can efficiently gather and organize the information sent to insurers. Also, the ability to create and manage forms, documents, and customer correspondence is essential. Communications that are created must adhere to branding guidelines, enable regulatory compliance, provide modern customer experience, and have the flexibility to support today’s array of outbound channels (including print and digital channels).
Digital content management and E-delivery
Managing the digital content used for customer communications is an important capability. Insurers must be able to efficiently create, store, and (re)use content objects such as visual branding elements, signatures, text blocks, and the templates that they support. Moreover, in a world of many digital delivery options, the digital communications platform must support the delivery to the recipient through any technology option or channel, including messaging platforms, business texting solutions, and chatbots, as well as traditional print, email, the web, or mobile.
Traditional options for communicating (such as portals, email, and even print/mail) are not going away. But establishing a digital communications strategy and implementing a platform solution for creating and managing those communications is even more important in an era where the world is more rapidly shifting to digital due to the pandemic and work-from-home environments.
Mark Breading (mmbreading@strategymeetsaction.com) is a partner at Strategy Meets Action (SMA), a strategic advisory firm working with traditional insurers and InsurTech solution providers to manage unprecedented industry change. The opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
This column first published at SMA’s blog and is republished here with consent from SMA.
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