Insurance & Technology recently reported that an IVANS’ Carrier Survey report found that property/casualty insurers’ business objectives are driving IT investment in projects supporting customer retention and lifecycle management, regulatory compliance and operational transformation. Looking more closely into the report, I found that the executive summary suggested that “staying ahead of the competition and maintaining market share have made customer retention and lifecycle management a business imperative for protecting carrier revenue.”
The report goes on to state that insurance carriers are investing resources to better respond to the needs of their customers to drive better satisfaction and relationships. Investment responses include web portals and websites directed at the customers and the agents that support them to improve policyholders’ overall servicing experience. A key requirement to turn those projects into successes includes accessibility to the right data and upgrading insurance carriers’ legacy infrastructure.
Chordiant’s customers are at the front of the insurance industry, taking advantage of truly integrated solutions able to drive targeted customer experience strategies. At the same time these solutions access the right data in real-time to facilitate dynamic portal and web interactions whilst preserving legacy environment. A great example was published by Robert Regis Hyle in “Who’s There? Customer Service Steps to Forefront” last December in TechDecisions for Insurance.
We understand that customer retention, development and risk management are all intertwined and have a ripple effect that customer experience management solutions should address.
But in particular, customer retention is top of mind for many of our insurance customers. The IVANS’ report points out and being able to reduce attrition even by 1% could mean millions in protected revenues. There are a few best practices that P&C insurers should consider immediately to ensure this critical area is working to a company’s advantage.
These include:
- The delivery of one consolidated and appropriate view of the customer, considering not only structured but also un-structured data to meet immediate retention needs and future regulatory and transparency requirements
- The collection of all relevant data during real-time portal and web- interactions regardless of the customers’ interaction channel of preference
- The usage of the latest customer segmentation techniques to capture existing and emerging behavioral, buying and servicing patterns during the key-touch points of the interaction lifecycle
- The personalization of offers tailored around life-stages and life-events supported by real-time feedback, guidance and alerts to drive superior customer experiences
- The focus on traditional interaction channels to promote offers as well as alternative channels to intensify the customer interest and loyalty
- The use of robust business enabled tools to support business domain owners whilst easily augmenting and extending the life of existing legacy systems
The results are clear:
- Optimum re-use of existing and new data in servicing conversations to optimize the scalability, flexibility and agility of existing capabilities.
- Cost-effective engagement in proactive retention discussions by leveraging not only predictive analytics to focus on those high value customers that might defect and develop mini-business cases on individual policyholders’ propensities, expectations, preferences and optimum resource allocation; but also advanced adaptive analytical techniques that help organizations act optimally in real-time.
- Appropriate timing of all recommendations by taking into account the policyholder’s responses, mood and behavior.
- Optimized selection of customer-centric “save” decision strategies by acting on models’ results to guide agents through proactive conversations designed to retain targeted customers.
- Rolling out of new programs faster regardless of the channels used by simulating and adjusting planned strategies and determining the impact on policyholders, agents and each carrier via business-friendly tools that reduce reliance on IT.
— Sabine VanderLinden, Director, Worldwide Insurance Solutions
