So, you’ve taken the leap – you’re modernizing the core systems of your insurance business, laying down the architecture and infrastructure to propel your business into the digital age. It’s a large-scale transformation project that will most likely take months of resources to complete. But when done, you’ll be set up for business in the digital age.
In a survey of insurers’ expectations from core transformation projects,1 Gartner found that improving the customer experience was the second ‘top benefit’ expected, only preceded by improving internal performance and reducing costs.
Transformation will deliver solutions for underwriting, policy administration, billing and claims management, and your front line agents will be well-equipped with cutting edge core processing capabilities to drive efficiencies and optimize your internal organization.
But what about improvements in the customers’ experience for policy holders during claims and renewals? As you’re making the transformation, it’s worth asking, “How will the transformation actually affect the customer experience?”
Having worked with 50-plus insurers implementing Guidewire core products, we’ve learned that one of the best opportunites to improve customer experience is at the start of a core transformation project. And one of the best places to start is outbound communications.
Think about it for a moment: if you’re going to make the effort to change the foundation of your business, there’s no better time to assess and improve the critical function of communications.
Do you want to have old hat technology for inbound and outbound communications holding back new systems? Not today and certainly not going forward. Forrester tells us that insurance customers are traversing digital and print channels ever more frequently, expecting seamless transitions, personalized information and relevancy when interacting with their insurer.
It’s absolutely necessary for insurers to use real-time and interactive customer communications to serve the new generation of customers who expect real-time and mobile communications as standard.
In working with organizations like Kemper, Safe Auto and Southern Farm Bureau, it’s clear that insurers are thinking about how they can communicate effectively with their customers and combine this with their core transformation. These insurers have realized that customer communications can be modernized and transformed within the core transformation project by selecting a fully integrated best-in-class customer communications solution to improve the customer’s experience.
Integrated state of the art customer communications gives some clear benefits to both your business and your customers:
Deliver accurate, relevant and on-brand materials to your customers
Utilize personalized information to create individual policies making your customer feel valued
Deliver communications quickly and efficiently through print or digital channels and importantly, the customers’ channel of choice
Enable targeted and relevant marketing activities
Simplify the regulatory complexity of policy forms and claims correspondence, ensuring you are more nimble in bringing new insurance products to market
Utilize a cloud solution to give your business agility and the advantage of interactive, real-time, on-demand and collaborative capabilities
Lower project risk, duration and ultimately cost by having an integrated approach
Customer experience is undoubtedly the new competitive battleground and integrated customer communications can set you apart from other insurers who miss out on the opportunity to replace legacy products during the project.
To keep your core transformation project on the right path– put customer communications at the heart of your business.
1 The Four Myths of Digitalization That Every Insurance CIO Needs to Know ARCHIVED Published: 09 March 2015 ID: G00274034 Analyst(s): Kimberly Harris-Ferrante