The customer is always right.
This is a fact you learned early in your entrepreneurial career. It affects your business on a daily basis, no matter the category of your enterprise. But in the insurance field, it’s particularly important that you and your team respect customer expectations in every move you make. And today, there are more ways than ever to observe customer centricity in every interaction with your audience.
Why Customer-Centric Insurance Models Are the Future
Start with a definition: Customer-centric insurance models represent a range of strategic actions taken by insurers to maximize customer satisfaction, thereby strengthening their loyalty to your brand. Today, this approach is undertaken with digital tools to enhance communication channels, gather feedback, and introduce, personalize, and customize products and services to better appeal to the audience on an individual basis.
This digital transformation in the insurance business is where the industry is going because it matches customer expectations. If you’re not taking strategic steps to advance the relationship with your policyholders and prospects, be assured that your competitors are.
How Customer Expectations Have Changed in the Digital Age
Before the rise of the internet and e-commerce, customers felt that they had limited options. They might be doing business with the local insurance agency because that’s the resource their family has used for generations, and it’s the only provider known to them.
The internet changed all of that. Quick online research can yield seemingly endless options for insurance providers. They can take action in the same way they can buy shoes, find a restaurant, book travel arrangements, and buy groceries for delivery.
All of this being true, why would they not expect to be able to research and compare insurance products, purchase coverage, and file a claim with the same ease as they can otherwise conduct business?
In short, the digital age has put the customer in charge of the relationship through the power of the competitive landscape. As their options grew, so did their demands and expectations.
The Role of Personalization in Modern Insurance
Before the digital age, insurance agencies had a limited menu of products to sell. Prospective customers would choose from the options available or shop around to see if more appropriate products were available elsewhere. It was a “take it or leave it” business model.
That changed with customer-first insurance models of the digital age. It gave insurers the ability to engage more directly with the customer and to design and launch products and services that are more tailored to individual needs.
It starts with data acquisition. Through digital research efforts, insurers can discover exactly what their customers want and fulfill those expectations. This data is acquired through social media, chatbots, and other website communication portals and online channels, as well as through traditional agent-customer interactions.
Once acquired, the data can be examined by both humans and artificial intelligence to gauge customer expectations and preferences, and, eventually, to design products that will meet demand. Data-driven activity can also reveal discounts that can be offered to current customers through bundling and a better understanding of the customer’s profile and place in life.
How Customer-Centric Models Drive Growth and Loyalty
Insurers using policy-centric models of doing business lose the opportunity to truly meet customers as individuals. A customer-centric approach enables insurers to know where they are in their life cycle and how that corresponds with insurance needs.
For instance, you can learn when customers are buying a home, when they’re in a place in their lives to consider life insurance, and when they have children at an age to obtain their licenses and drive for the first time.
If you’re there when your customers need you most, and you can offer them insurance products that precisely match their needs, you will have earned long-term loyalty and trust. They’ll come to you first as their insurance priorities change.
How Confie Is Leading the Way with Customer-Centric Insurance
At Confie, we don’t just preach the advantages of customer-first insurance models and personalized insurance services. It’s how we deliver winning results to our own customer base and strengthen brand loyalty. This is how we’re doing it.
Our Approach to Personalized Insurance Services
We merge advanced digital technology with the human touch.
Through such interfaces as our website, social media, chatbots, and call centers, we can collect data that helps us know our customers se we can personalize the products and services we offer them.
We use AI and machine learning to enhance our customer service and learn more about the expectations and lifestyles of the customers we serve.
We also implement innovations such as telematics to observe and analyze the driving habits of voluntary participants. From this, we can adjust rates and deliver auto insurance products that best reflect their habits behind the wheel.
On top of all of that, we use “old-school” strategies. We listen. That’s employing the human touch, the ability to personalize each relationship and maintain a customer-centric insurance approach throughout the life of the relationship.
Simplifying the Claims Process for a Better Customer Experience
It can be a dark and emotional time when an insurance company customer must file a claim. Perhaps a fire consumed their home. Or their car was totaled in a highway collision. Whatever the impulse, the customer does not want obstacles, confusion, or a long process before the claim is settled.
That’s why we merge technology and human interaction in a customer-centric insurance approach to the filing and processing of claims. The goal is to make the process quick, easy, and responsive for the customer.
We encourage our customers to send photos of the damage on their phones for the quickest possible assessment of the damage for a fast and accurate claims decision. With the assistance of AI technology, we can assess the damage and the circumstances to provide a quick decision.
Claims can be filed online, by phone, or at a brick-and-mortar office for maximum efficiency and convenience of the customer. At our call centers, we field phone calls with an empathetic touch that includes a bilingual staff so customers can interact in the language they are most comfortable with.
Our customers recognize and appreciate the way we treat them during low points in their lives, and it keeps their loyalty during the good times.
Real-Life Examples of Customer-Centric Strategies at Confie
One important Confie strategy is to employ a “click, call, or walk in the door” philosophy to answer questions, offer quotes, address complaints, and provide product and service information. But there’s much more to it than that.
Our call centers are staffed with empathetic responders. These teams include bilingual staffers who can communicate in the language most comfortable to the callers.
Our omnichannel approach ensures maximum accessibility and engagement — we’re available on whatever channels are preferred by individual customers, including phone, email, chatbot, and walk-in.
At Confie, we’re also making a big push to address underserved markets. Our commitment is to use human interactivity and advanced digital tools and technologies to be there for all customers when and where they need us, and to meet them with the products and services they want.
Discover How Confie’s Customer-Centric Approach Can Improve Your Insurance Experience Today
It’s not easy starting a customer-centric insurance model from scratch. But one of many advantages of merging with Confie is that we’re already there. We’ve done it. We’ve adopted and enhanced this model over time and have built a strong and loyal customer base upon it.
As the nation’s leading provider of personal lines insurance, we have welcomed hundreds of agencies like yours onto our team. We have locations coast to coast, and that adds to your own marketing footprint as well as ours.
Through a Confie merger, we’ll introduce you to new concepts and technologies and broaden your inventory of winning insurance products.
Would you like to know more about the many advantages of aligning your company with Confie, an industry leader? Call us at (714) 252-2500 or drop us a line if you’d like to explore a possible collaboration with a company with a strong customer-centric approach.
FAQs
Here are a few more answers to questions frequently asked regarding customer-first insurance models of engagement.
What Does the Customer-Centric Insurance Model Look Like?
It looks like a multi-faceted communication channel that enables a higher level of engagement between the insurer and customers. It should be operated in a way that invites this engagement and benefits both parties.
What Are the Challenges in Implementing a Customer-Centric Model in the Insurance Industry?
You — or someone on your team — must thoroughly understand the concept and know how to launch a website and other communication channels that will lead to customer-centric engagement of current and prospective policyholders. You should have an IT professional on staff or on call who can design, operate, and troubleshoot your digital platforms to keep the system running smoothly and responsively.
How Can Insurance Companies Ensure Consistent Customer Experience Across Multiple Channels?
By taking an omnichannel approach, exhibiting the same commitment to customer centricity on each channel. The brand messaging should be consistent across all media, and personnel training should also place a focus on this same commitment.
