7 Strategies to Transform Customer Experience in Insurance

The insurance sector is swiftly evolving with digital advancements, and today’s consumers have higher expectations than ever before. They seek smooth, personalized interactions at every stage, from choosing a policy to filing claims. Customer experience (CX) has thus become a critical focus for insurance providers.

With technological advancements, resultant changes in customer preferences, and very high competition, insurers risk losing their customer base if they don’t adapt. Coupled with the twin needs to achieve operational efficiencies—due to an unpredictable economic environment—and to maintain complete transparency in client communication, as mandated by regulators worldwide, insurers are investing in and innovating to transform the customer experience like never before.

Continue reading to explore the importance of customer experience in insurance. Delve deeper into seven crucial insurance customer experience strategies that are essential for staying competitive and delivering substantial value to your clients. Discover how Hexaware’s innovative solutions have helped global insurance companies and how we can support your journey toward delivering superior customer service in the age of AI.

Importance of Customer Experience in Insurance

Customer experience has become a critical factor in the insurance industry, where exceptional service is essential for attracting and retaining clients amid fierce competition. It includes every interaction a customer has with an insurer, from the initial research and policy purchase to filing claims and receiving support. A comprehensive customer experience strategy evaluates and enhances each of these touchpoints, ensuring a seamless and empathetic journey. This is particularly important not only in emotionally charged areas like health and life insurance but also in highly complex fields such as commercial and specialty insurance.

The global ISG Buyer Behavior Study, conducted recently with over 250 senior executives, revealed that 48% of participants consider customer experience critically important for their organization’s strategic direction. By focusing on delivering a positive experience, insurers not only differentiate themselves in a crowded market but also build lasting customer relationships that drive loyalty and growth. Effective use of feedback and data analytics allows insurers to identify pain points, optimize processes, and innovate based on customer needs, leading to improved service and alignment with evolving expectations. This approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but also transforms satisfied clients into brand advocates, contributing to long-term business success.

Navigating Customer Experience for Insurance: How and Where to Begin

Improve Customer Experience in 6 Steps:

1. Map the Customer Journey

• Identify pain points
• Highlight areas for enhancement
• Ensure the journey is highly intuitive, enabling even the least digitally savvy individuals to navigate it with ease

2. Implement an Omnichannel Strategy

• Ensure consistent interactions
• Reliable touchpoints across all channels

3. Enhance Digital Channels

• Improve usability through mobile apps, customer portals and chatbots
• Increase security and reliability
• Build transparency and trust

4. Leverage AI and Automation

• Simplify and streamline processes
• Personalize service

5. Use Data Analytics

• Gain insights into customer behavior through direct customer interactions as well as periodic surveys
• Guide service delivery improvements

6. Train Employees

• Focus on customer-centric service
• Monitor feedback and performance
• Make necessary adjustments

7 Strategies to Elevate Customer Experience in Insurance

Here are the top strategies that can help you create a seamless and satisfying customer experience:

1. Personalized Insurance Customer Experience: Creating a personalized customer journey means customizing policy recommendations, coverage options, and communications to match individual preferences, thereby boosting engagement and satisfaction. It goes beyond knowing a customer’s name and coverage details; it’s about enhancing their overall experience. To achieve this, focus on maintaining comprehensive records of past interactions, training staff for effective customer interactions, gathering feedback to understand frustrations and interests, and identifying customer preferences about your agency. It is essentially about achieving a complete Customer 360 view by leveraging data analytics and developing strategies to personalize the customer experience.
2. Underwriting Transformation: Transforming underwriting processes is crucial for enhancing customer experience in insurance. Traditional methods are often manual and time-consuming, leading to delays and inconsistencies. By using AI/ML and Generative AI, insurers can automate data analysis and risk assessment, resulting in faster and more accurate decisions. This accelerates policy issuance, ensures competitive pricing, and improves customer satisfaction. Real-time data integration allows for informed underwriting, streamlining operations and reducing costs, ultimately elevating the overall customer experience. For example, a large U.S. Benefits Administrator faced significant delays in processing new business registrations through a SaaS platform, leading to dissatisfaction among brokers and agents, who began leaving due to the platform’s inefficiency. Hexaware addressed this challenge by revamping the entire new business process using the Pega low-code platform. The solution included developing a widget that could be seamlessly embedded into brokers’ and agents’ portals, automatically adopting the characteristics of the parent portal to ensure a consistent and intuitive user experience. This transformation resulted in a 30% faster processing time and a 20% reduction in costs.
3. Claims Management Transformation: Transforming claims management is crucial for enhancing customer experience in the insurance industry. A global leader in risk, retirement, and health solutions faced challenges with their manual and decentralized reinsurance claims process. Hexaware helped streamline their claims management by leveraging the Appian low-code platform, simplifying both facultative and treaty related claims. The digital processing covers claims related to accounting, market query, collection, premium requests, sunset, earthquake letter etc. and covers automating workflows. It supports automated case generation and assignment to case advocates across multiple geographies by polling 100’s of mailboxes and with document extraction. This transformation improved claims processing efficiency by 50%, significantly reduced manual touchpoints, and provided real-time tracking and data-driven insights with 40% reduction in Turn-Around-Time (TAT). The result was a modern, scalable solution that accelerated processes, reduced costs, and significantly improved customer satisfaction. For more details, visit this case study.
4. Digitalization in Insurance: Digitalization is transforming the insurance industry by enhancing customer experience through self-service portals and automation techniques like Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Self-service portals allow customers to manage policies and file claims anytime, improving convenience and satisfaction. RPA streamlines tasks such as data entry and claims processing, reducing errors and speeding up operations. AI and machine learning further personalize services by predicting customer needs. These digital advancements enable insurers to deliver faster, more reliable, and personalized services, boosting customer loyalty and operational efficiency.
5. Insurance Self-Service Portals: Digital transformation in insurance is driven by the demand for personalized services similar to those offered by Amazon and Airbnb. Insurers are now adopting APIs to offer quick access to information and services like policy changes and claims intake across multiple channels. An API-based architecture enables seamless and personalized customer journeys across multiple channels (e.g. portals, chatbots, mobile apps, etc.), enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
6. Multi-Channel Experience: Enhancing communication channels is crucial for delivering a seamless customer experience. Insurers must provide multiple, consistent touchpoints to ensure reliable interactions. An omnichannel strategy supporting phone, email, chatbot, portal, mobile app, social media, etc., guarantees that customers receive coherent and timely information, no matter how they choose to engage. Since insurers interact with customers infrequently, each touchpoint is significant. Customers often switch between channels during the pre-purchase phase, creating gaps between digital and in-person interactions that need to be bridged for a cohesive experience.
7. Continuous Feedback and Improvement: Gathering and acting on customer feedback through surveys and reviews is crucial for identifying pain points, addressing issues, and enhancing digital customer experiences. Insurance companies must continually assess and refine the customer journey by regularly seeking client feedback and monitoring key metrics like customer satisfaction. This ongoing evaluation helps identify improvement areas, ensuring a positive customer experience and fostering strong client relationships.

Case Studies: Successful Customer Experience Initiatives

How Hexaware helped global insurers elevate customer experience:

Modern Digital Solutions for a Century-old Insurer

Our client, a century-old insurance company, faced challenges due to outdated systems affecting policyholders, advisors, and internal teams. Hexaware’s solution involved building a mobile-friendly policyholder portal, integrating microservices for claims and customer support, launching a centralized digital platform, and developing real-time dashboards and self-service portals for advisors. This transformation led to a 60% increase in site traffic, a 40% reduction in lead time for advisors, and a 3x increase in platform usage, significantly enhancing efficiency and user experience.

Read the full case study here.

Modernizing Contact Center Operations for a UK Insurer

Hexaware partnered with a UK life and pensions mutual insurer to upgrade their outdated on-premises contact center. We implemented a hybrid cloud-based solution, reducing costs, transitioning to an OpEx model, and enhancing customer interactions through an omnichannel approach. Our expertise led to improved experiences for both customers and employees.

Read the full case study here.

AI-Driven Customer Experience in Insurance: A Direct Link to Value Creation

As the insurance industry becomes more competitive, leveraging AI to deliver personalized, seamless experiences that combine cutting-edge technology with a human touch is not an option anymore—it’s a necessity.

AI-driven insights allow insurers to understand customer needs more deeply, offering customized experiences and tailored products that lead to significant boosts in customer retention or process efficiency and engagement.

A recent case study is of a global leader in risk, retirement, and health solutions facing challenges with their highly manual and decentralized insurance quote management process. Hexaware stepped in to address these challenges. Hexaware designed a Generative AI-based solution that could extract information from unstructured and untemplated quote documents and populate the data in the system. They also developed an automated quote comparison and MUD Map creation on top of the extracted data, automating the entire process with a human-in-loop mechanism to validate the data. This AI-powered solution resulted in more than a 50% improvement in productivity for the business teams. By handling interactions digitally, the AI-driven approach led to quicker resolutions and more tailored services for customers.

As consumer expectations evolve, insurers must continuously update their AI tools to ensure seamless, efficient, and personalized experiences. This includes using AI to operationalize vast amounts of data, improving quotes, pricing risks, expediting claims, and detecting fraud. Conversational AI enables customers to self-serve across digital channels, while AI-based assistants enhance agents’ performance by providing real-time transcription and intent identification.

AI helps insurers reduce friction in customer interactions, making processes faster and more efficient. By combining human expertise with AI, insurers can meet and exceed customer expectations, ultimately boosting satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Conclusion

As you navigate the complexities of customer experience in insurance, remember that the journey is ongoing. Hexaware’s innovative solutions have demonstrated significant improvements in customer experience for global insurance companies. By focusing on personalized service, efficient processes, and continuous feedback, Hexaware can help you transform their customer interactions, driving long-term success and differentiation in the market.

Ready to transform your customer experience and stay ahead in the competitive insurance industry? Discover how Hexaware’s cutting-edge insurance solutions can help you deliver personalized, seamless, and efficient services that exceed customer expectations. Contact marketing@hexaware.com today!