July 2, 2020
The challenge: insurers need an effective digital experience for their customers
As insurers cope with the impact of COVID-19 on multiple fronts, effective digital communication with their customers has become more important than ever. Transparent, relevant, and crisp customer communications are key differentiators. While insurers have historically relied on intermediaries to communicate with their customers, they have made significant movement toward direct-to-consumer communications; however, the pandemic has highlighted just how far they still have to go.
Insurers have to balance a wide variety of public-facing and back-office demands, challenging in any time, but especially so during a pandemic. On top of the ongoing work of claims intake and management, sales and distribution, new policy onboarding, business continuity, etc., insurers need to efficiently and effectively answer custom questions and solve problems, proactively communicate about pandemic-related initiatives (such as premium relaxations and rebates, relief programs, and flexibility around policy renewal) – essentially, support and service their policyholders in a time of great stress.
Insurers need to arm their agents with information and content, as well as a complete view of each customer, including content from a variety of sources and analytics to pull it all together and make sense of it. To do so, insurers need to collect and consolidate customer data from multiple sources, run AI-enabled analytics, and curate digital content assets for honest, empathetic, and relevant communication with customers. From there, they need to determine how to disseminate personalized content with an omnichannel approach to reach the customers in the ways best suited to their needs.
The potential answer: the Digital Experience Platform (DXP)
Digital experience is the key lever for insurers to pull to effectively communicate with clients and prospects, to offer the desired customer experience, and to meet the challenge posed by digital-native companies and InsurTechs. A successful digital experience strategy, driven by a fit-for-purpose product that can meet customer needs, impacts and enhances the entire customer journey, and is a strategic imperative for insurers. An effective digital experience platform can provide an omnichannel personalized experience to the end customer, offer a single view of the customer, innovate service delivery, and provide a smoother experience for agents.
At the center of the digital experience solution is the Digital Experience Platform (DXP). See Exhibit 1 for Everest Group’s vision of a DXP for insurers.
Everest Group’s vision of a DXP for Insurance
To orchestrate insurers’ digital content management needs, the DXP should offer
- A configurable and structured content value chain with centralized content / digital asset management and templatized content creation
- Responsive web design with an intuitive UI/UX for consistent omnichannel content delivery
- Effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to identify prospective customers
To meet customer expectations and maintain high levels of customer experience, the DXP needs to
- Provide consistent and seamless omnichannel interactions
- Map the customer journey and offer personalized experiences leveraging meaningful customer data analytics
- Offers self-service portals to enable policy, billing, and claims management
- Monitor customer feedback through internal metrics and external sources and identify and rectify pain points in the customer journey
To enable agents, brokers, and advisors to have meaningful customer interactions, the DXP must
- Generate a unified, 360-degree view of the customer through internal and external data sources
- Optimize workflow with a digital portal that provides self-service capabilities, simplified document management, a holistic view of the customer, relevant product information, and channels to communicate with underwriters to provide quick quotes
- Provide sales support and leverage customer data to identify effective interaction levers, cross-/ up-sell opportunities, and win probability scores to help prioritize sales
To meet insurers’ technology needs, a DXP should offer
- A robust Application Programmable Interface (API) framework for integration with the insurer’s systems
- Internal and external data aggregation with AI-driven analytics to provide personalized experiences and enable agents
- An app marketplace with insurance-focused apps and integration frameworks to enable product enhancements
- Low-/no-code development features for minimal re/upskilling of the insurer’s workforce and enable automation to enhance operational efficiencies
The DXPs that can curate superior customer experiences, enable both customers and agents, and provide digital enablers to drive business impact lead the pack in Everest Group’s assessment of DXP vendor landscape for insurance, illustrated in exhibit 2.
Everest Group’s assessment of DXP vendor landscape for insurance
In our recently released report, Assessing Digital Experience Platforms in Insurance and Vendor Profiles 2020 – Building SUPER Insurance Experiences to Drive Differentiation and Growth, we take a closer look at digital experience trends in insurance and explore the impact of an effective digital experience strategy. The report includes a detailed analysis of 13 leading technology vendors on their DXPs’ capabilities and abilities to meet insurer needs.
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