5 ways to eliminate insurance company communication gaps
The value of the data most insurance companies have is hard to overstate.
Communication gaps aren’t unique to insurance companies. However, most insurance companies have critical communication gaps that prevent them from achieving their full potential. Without bridging these gaps, companies cannot deliver the best possible service to customers, operate with a minimum of risk, or maximize revenue.
Digital transformation can resolve this communication problem, but the insurance industry has been slow to adopt new technology. The good news is that technology that addresses these gaps can have enormous effects on both customer satisfaction and profitability.
Here are five tips for using technology to significantly improve communications and ultimately productivity.
No. 1: Unify internal data.
In insurance, mergers and acquisitions are a common growth strategy.
The result is that many insurance organizations have data across dozens of systems in various formats. The potential value of this data is huge, but because it exists in a format that’s not usable to the organization, it’s not delivering that value.
In other words, the data sources cannot easily or automatically transfer information between one another, so the organization can’t make use of the cumulative value of this information. Moreover, when data sources are combined and information is understood with respect to a larger picture, companies create new knowledge that they wouldn’t have been able to acquire otherwise.
The solution is to unify data into a single, often cloud-based, data lake and standardize it so that it’s all in the same format. It’s also important to develop an automated (or at least streamlined) process for integrating and standardizing future data that comes into the organization.
With this single source of truth, insurance organizations can fuel countless process improvements.
Still, a single source of truth is in itself of tremendous value. Of particular note is that unified and standardized data gives insurance organizations a 360-degree view of their customers, which makes it possible to transition from a product seller to a helpful advisor.
For example, the following scenarios are both powered by unified backend data shared among departments:
- A winter storm is predicted for the Northeast. This triggers an automated email to every customer with homeowner’s or renter’s insurance in the affected area with tips for insulating pipes.
- Sixty days before the start of hurricane season, automated emails go to customers in frequently flooded areas who don’t currently have flood insurance, encouraging them to purchase a policy so it’s effective in time for predicted storms.
No. 2: Automate internal reporting.
Data-driven business decisions are the gold standard of organizational decision-making. But at many insurance organizations, using data still takes a lot of work: Analysts manually gather data from multiple sources and download it into spreadsheets before they manipulate it and report to decision-makers.
That process has two major problems:
- It takes too much time. By the time an analyst communicates the information in a report, it’s out of date.
- It introduces errors. Whenever humans manipulate data, it’s inevitable that they’ll introduce errors. Sometimes, these errors are minor; sometimes, they aren’t. When business leaders lean on incorrect data to make decisions, the impact for the organization can be significant.
The solution is to automate internal reporting.
Luckily, once data is unified and standardized, this is easy to do. The benefits are tremendous: when data is gathered and communicated automatically, analysts have time to engage in actual analysis that can lead to insights and ideas that can help the business grow. Plus, automation eliminates human error, which means leadership can make business decisions more confidently.
No. 3: Create dashboards.
Once internal reporting is automated, insurance organizations can democratize access to those reports via dashboards.
Dashboards, fueled by real-time data, can be customized for any role within an organization. The result: any employee can see, at a glance, the most updated metrics that matter for their job.
This not only prevents unnecessary and time-consuming email threads and meetings, but it can also boost employee engagement, which is driven in part by empowering employees to understand how their work fits into the organization’s larger goals.
No. 4: Create a data catalog.
Unified, standardized data can power all kinds of automation that improves an organization’s efficiency.
But to ensure optimal communication, it’s important to make sure every member of an organization can interpret its data. Data cataloging is critical to ensuring that data is interpreted and analyzed the same way across the enterprise.
For example, in insurance, the definition that marketing has for “customer” may not align with what a product team has. Or maybe people on the IT side aren’t familiar with insurance-specific acronyms like “FNOL.”
A data catalog can prevent confusion and miscommunication by defining all terms used in the data lake. The data catalog also empowers employees to interpret and understand data in their dashboards, which in turn can help them make decisions about which behaviors are most beneficial to the organization.
No. 5: Give customers more contact options.
Today, there are more ways than ever to communicate with customers: phone, email, text, chatbot, app message, etc. One of the biggest mistakes an insurance organization can make is to decide for the customer how they must communicate with the company.
Customers are used to choosing the communication method that works best for a particular message. It’s frustrating to have to wait through a lengthy phone menu for information that could easily be accessed through an app. It’s infuriating to get canned answers from a chatbot when you have a complex, nuanced question.
To prevent these communication gaps, which can lead customers to look for alternative providers, insurance organizations can make a variety of contact methods available and leave it to customers to choose the one that best fits their message.
To ensure that the information gathered in these various formats doesn’t get lost and create additional communication gaps, insurance organizations need a unified system that captures information gathered from multiple sources in a single location.
Better communication starts with better data practices
As many as 83% of insurers are planning to invest more heavily in data and analytics in 2021, which is good news.
The value of the data most insurance companies have is hard to overstate. Getting to that value is a matter of figuring out how to translate it into a language the organization understands — and making sure each department within the organization is empowered to access and understand the insights it provides.
Thanneermalai Krishnappan (thanneer.malai@saggezza.com) is a senior technical program manager at Saggezza (an infostretch company). This firm is a global technology consultant and solutions provider that combines software development, implementation expertise, and data analytics to help businesses make better data-driven decisions and improve client interaction, engagement, satisfaction, revenue and profitability.
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