A RENEWED FOCUS
ON DELIGHTING THE CUSTOMER
Customer experience is firmly back on the agenda. The gauntlet laid down by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has forced insurers to rethink every aspect of the value change, from product design to claims, to make sure they can evidence ‘good outcomes’ for customers.
This means insurers really need to understand their customers, not only in terms of their risk profile but whether the product they are buying is one they understand and one that actually meets their needs. What’s more, according to Sharna Thomson, Head of Customer, UK Claims at Zurich, this understanding and care needs to extend beyond the usual touchpoints of point of sale and point of claim.
‘At pre-sale, it’s imperative that the customer understands what they are buying and further upstream we need to make sure that the product is designed with the target market in mind,’ said Thomson. ‘And at claims, we need to be able to explain why something is not covered and then perhaps divert the customer to relevant charities that can provide support, so they are not just left in the lurch.’
‘In claims, for example, rather than making people wait for a payment while we send out assessors and gather information, we can use Big Data to see there’s been a tragic flood event and just send the money straight away.’
We caught up with Darran Simons, the Head of Insurance for EMEA at FICO to ask him about the opportunities for personalisation in customer experience.
A more holistic effort to support the customer will also help insurers make the shift towards a risk prevention model, creating opportunities to offer well-timed and personalised risk mitigation services. At Hiscox, for example, SMEs buying cyber protection policies are offered a series of cyber training modules for employees at every level to complete.
‘For us, it helps to mitigate the cyber risk, for the customer, it helps protect them from getting hacked and then we waive the excess when those modules are completed, which is good for the customer and good for us,’ said Adele Robertson, Head of Propositions at Hiscox.
These value-added risk mitigation services only come about by understanding the customer and the risks and problems they face in their business and day-to-day lives.
‘Where customers want to do something simple like an A to B transaction, then they can do that through digital channels but for more complicated cases, then we have teams of agents and underwriting experts who can talk to them and make sure the most prized part of their business or business is protected at a really granular customer-centric level,’ said Robertson.
In a hyper-connected, data-rich world, it’s never been easier to understand customers. Retails giants like Amazon have shown how powerful data and analytics can be when it comes to building a delightful CX. However, according to Nicolas Konnerth, Head of Conversational AI, ERGO, data is both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge for insurers.
Before you start adding new data sources, you have to look at the data you already have and how you can leverage that. If you have not done this groundwork then you need to do it urgently or it’s not worth looking at new data sources.
NICOLAS KONNERTH
HEAD OF CONVERSATIONAL AI,ERGO
When it comes to new data sources, Generative AI is a key enabling technology to unlock the secrets of unstructured data, from emails and social media posts to chat and telephony. It’s important, however, that these new insights don’t become intrusive nor overstep the emerging AI rules laid out by regulators. Just because you can infer a lot of information from voice, including identification, emotional state and even medical diagnosis, it doesn’t mean you should, said Konnerth.
‘You need to ask whether it’s really worthwhile to explore a potential use case,’ he cautioned, ‘because you could jeopardise a lot of trust or compliance with the regulator.’
A key benefit of generative AI is the ability to summaries, synthesize and surface data points at speed. When put into the hands of those interacting with customers, this can be transformative, enabling human agents to engage with empathy and effect meaningful outcomes in a seamless and personalised way.
Let’s think more about empathy… Here’s Richard Pash, Zurich UK’s Chief Customer Officer to tell us how he’s thinking about truly empathetic service.
These technologies are also driving huge breakthroughs in the effectiveness of non-human interactions. When ERGO researched humans versus automated phone bots, it found customers preferred humans but the numbers willing to engage with bots was significant enough that the insurer decided to pursued the technology and give customers the choice to opt out. ‘Ninety-six of our customers are now positive or neutral on using phone bots,’ he said.
Jerry, the fast-growing US broker, bet bold on generative AI when it found its service levels were being impacted by a lack of licenced agents to deal with a deluge of customer queries. As early as April 2023, the US company was live with its first generative AI bot, answering generic FAQs and helping customers self-serve through the Jerry app.
‘That alone resolved 30 per cent of customer queries,’ said COO of Jerry, John Spottiswood, adding that when the virtual agents had access to more data and more training that increased to more than 90 per cent.
Voice agents have now also been deployed, with the ability to handle some ‘tough accents’, deal with some complex queries and even inject some empathy into the call, said Spottiswood.
The results are significant, with inbound call wait times reduced from 22 minutes to 80 per cent being answered within 40 seconds while response times in chat have gone from 19.5 hours to a mere 13 seconds.
That truly is delighting the customer.
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