Remote-only isn’t the new normal — change is the new normal
Insurance providers navigating the pandemic must consider whether remote-only is the best way to manage their workforces and serve customers.
You could excuse many a tech company during the height of COVID-19 in 2020 for thinking it was their time to take over, especially in industries that had yet to break through, such as remote learning with the explosion of tools like Coursera and Google Classroom. After all, coping with social distancing rules and life under lockdown made remote technology urgently essential for consumers seemingly overnight.
In the world of insurance, giving consumers quick online options to apply for a policy or report a First Notice of Loss (FNOL) was a priority before the pandemic, but by necessity, the need to interact remotely for both employees and customers has accelerated to unprecedented levels. And as immunity to COVID-19 from vaccines wanes and variants like Delta become widespread, the adoption of technology to meet the demands of “the new normal” will spread, too.
But is the new normal today really remote-only? Is that what customers need and expect from their insurance company? Is it what works most effectively for back-office and customer-facing employees?
Insurance providers navigating the reality of the pandemic over the past year and a half can pull out lessons learned to understand whether remote-only is indeed the new normal when it comes to managing their workforce and serving their customers.
The only assured norm is change
Going remote-only — be it work-from-home for employees or how to meet customer needs — has seemed like the new reality for prolonged periods since 2020. But with wave after wave of change, from each surge of coronavirus infection and enforced lockdowns to companies’ return-to-office plans, what is becoming apparent is the new normal is actually about being flexible and ready to adapt to constant change and even more diverse needs.
What does that strategy look like? For starters, it doesn’t mean hedging remote vs. office decisions purely on the impact of COVID variants new and old. Governments and medical experts around the world are still trying to grasp how to tackle diverse emerging COVID variants. For insurance companies, building a strategy predicated on how long these phenomena will impact business operations is unworkable, nor is it how to service their customers most effectively today and in the future.
Shaping an agile strategy that adapts to what different customers need to get insurance processes done can help companies identify the sweet spot that will grow a loyal customer base while also empowering their staff.
Building greater flexibility for insurance employees & customers
Tailoring how customers can interact most efficiently with their insurance provider for many common insurance processes should steer companies in planning how employees can support them best and identify where to make investments to implement technology that delivers that flexibility.
Here are the major considerations insurance companies can make to deliver high-quality service and support, enabling staff with greater flexibility and efficiency:
1. Go omnichannel with customer-facing processes.
Who said remote-only and agent support are mutually exclusive for experiences for customers? Sacrificing one for the other is not what insurance customers are asking for. A survey of over 1,000 American consumers earlier this year revealed that 69% expect automated or digital services they can use remotely, but on the other hand, 71% indicated having difficulty connecting with their insurance provider to ask questions or make changes to their coverage.
That shows that while providing remote options for insurance companies is critical, human interaction is still vital to helping them complete certain insurance requests and preventing these processes from stalling, or worse yet, customers abandoning them altogether due to a lack of clarity or support.
Consumers have long become used to the seamless and omnichannel experience they receive when shopping on Amazon, playing tunes on Spotify, or switching between their Apple devices — insurance providers bringing that simplicity and convenience will be better able to reap the benefits of digital insurance services. Doing so requires the capability to blend both simple and intuitive technology with the ability to speak to an agent when a customer has questions regarding a policy, claim or FNOL.
This will help bring convenience and support to insurance companies and their diverse customer bases.
2. Take a hybrid HR approach.
Companies allowing employees to work remotely or in the office in a seamless fashion grants employees much-appreciated flexibility in juggling work-life challenges and shows that their health and wellbeing are being prioritized.
That sense of empowerment also motivates many employees by letting them choose where they can deliver value most efficiently, helping to reduce the risk of transmission while staying productive.
Insurance companies can stagger schedules for specific groups and departments and tailor them depending on current COVID threat levels.
3. Scale improved products & services with SaaS.
Today, cloud technology makes it possible for insurance providers to roll out advanced solutions to employees globally and ensure that software is always up-to-date. Employees can assist customers in completing requests with the latest customer-facing solutions while automatically updating backend systems from any device or location. Companies avoid any issues around lost data since all data is stored remotely.
They can also seamlessly benefit from the wisdom of the crowd: Companies can incorporate improvements discovered by technology vendors and channel partners driven by their clients and swiftly add new features that can differentiate their services in the eyes of customers.
4. Secure peace of mind for both customers & employees.
Especially true for insurance providers and the sensitive data they manage, scaling innovation both remotely and across office locations can only be done so while ensuring privacy and compliance. While standard KBA questions are no longer sufficient for many types of customer requests, advanced ID verification processes today allow companies to define authentication levels for different processes or requests. A customer can verify their ID right from their smartphone by snapping a selfie and a picture of any required identification card or document and have them automatically matched up and verified while on a call with an agent. This enables agents to easily know who they are speaking to at a high level of confidence, helping avoid service bottlenecks and friction for customers.
Insurance providers can also strengthen customer trust by implementing secured payment technology to facilitate payments without exposing sensitive data to agents or leaving vulnerabilities for bad actors.
5. Ensure customers can digitally complete any insurance request.
Whether it’s simply onboarding a new customer or a more complex scenario like FNOL, today’s mobile-first and multitasking customers expect providers to give them the option of completing processes digitally from their smartphones. Digital completion technology allows insurance companies to automate those processes, allowing customers to tap and swipe their way to completing and signing forms, verify their ID, upload required documents, and make secure payments — just like they are used to doing with their favorite consumer apps.
It also lets remote employees assist customers live with any questions they have before starting up a policy or filing an FNOL report, allowing them to complete them in real-time.
By making it quicker and easier to close new policies and resolve customer issues, insurance providers eliminate overhead and manual errors that go hand-in-hand with reliance on manual, paper-heavy processes.
Be ready to change
Insurance providers may not be able to control whether we’re battling the impact of another COVID variant in the next few months or precisely how remote customer and employee experiences will need to be, but they can control their readiness for change through strategies that bring flexibility to both and the technologies that make it possible to improve business productivity and efficiency while helping customers and employees stay safe.
The opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
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