4 Ways Insurers Can Improve Customer Communications

The surge of available data from traceable digital journeys allows insurers to better track and analyze their customer’s lifecycles, preferences, and buying patterns. However, superior data intelligence paired with rapidly evolving customer expectations puts more pressure on insurers to upgrade their customer communications management (CCM).

The one-size-fits-all approach to CCM has lost its influence. Instead, next-gen insurers are harnessing the latest technologies and extending core platforms to identify the individual demands of their consumers and personalize communications to fit their distinctive needs. To add to the increasing complexity, insurers must navigate the compliance landscape and uphold security in managing outdated on-premise systems. Nevertheless, the benefits of CCM are worth the battle; insurers can move quickly to measure the quality of communications and prepare to meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers.

What is customer communications management?

Customer communications management (CCM) is a business process used to improve the creation, sharing, storage, and retrieval of all customer communications. CCM works across marketing, customer service, account teams, and other business departments to streamline communications. It ties into core systems and triggers activities so insurers can better understand all the touchpoints they have with their customers.

For insurers, CCM incorporates all parts of the value chain — including claims, reporting, auditing, and underwriting. It encompasses more than customer experience (CX) and influences security, compliance, and transparency. CCM is not tied to a single digital experience platform; instead, it works as an element that can interface with a core system or workflow management platform to solve for multi-channel experiences. It can be integrated within a digital platform to provide easy orchestration and leverage the benefits of an ecosystem.

What is the evolution of CCM in insurance?

Historically, insurers viewed customer communications as outbound, one-way conversations. Today, you must be able to interact, edit, and change interactions in real time. Communications are personalized two-way conversations that meet customers on their preferred channel. For example, insurers used to manage communications in static forms, which are hard to compete with a smartphone or tablet. But today CCM is made available as an omnichannel experience that can live in the cloud.

By 2023, 75% of all databases will exist on a cloud platform, and insurers are hastening their pace to migrate conversations to this fluid, highly accessible and scalable environment. However, the journey to the cloud requires the right strategy and migration tools. Luckily there are experts like NTT DATA who can help with implementation. Not only can the right CCM platform delight customers with personalized, interactive communications, but it can also simplify and automate work processes to help mitigate data and NIGO errors.

As the industry matures, so do the usages and functionalities. The insurance industry is advancing from using simple platforms like DocuMerge to innovative platforms like Smart Communications. With a greater emphasis on personalized, mass communications, CCM enables interactive conversations, and insurers must adopt new ways of working to keep up.

What are the main challenges insurers face with their customer communications?

Insurers face three primary pain points when it comes to implementing and optimizing customer communications:

1. Customer Experience (CX): Customer conversations are still considered outbound when they should be treated as interactive, two-way dialogues. Many insurers continue to deliver documents via email or post without considering their customer’s preferred channels. Additionally, customers don’t receive the same experience across all channels. This issue is a significant challenge for customers, carriers, and distribution. An ideal CX is consistent, omnichannel, and personalized based on customer needs and preferences.
2. Compliance: Most insurance communications involve legal correspondence and require adherence to specific compliance regulations. Insurers struggle to maintain compliance while ensuring their documents are presented in language that is comprehensible and customer friendly. Non-compliant insurers face fines, and those who disregard CX lose customers. The right CCM platform helps automate communications so insurers can manage compliance through governance without overextending internal resources or wasting time.
3. Complexity: The simplification of insurance processes is underway. Insurers want to make it easier for customers to get the right insurance products at the right time. CCM platforms allow insurers to offer two-page policies that use simple language and help customers navigate contracts, documents, and other correspondence. In addition, this simplification improves back-end workflows for insurers and agents without compromising security.

What are the main benefits of CCM?

“As Insurers continue along their customer experience transformations, it is critical to include highly personalized secure customer communications in the customer journey,” said Mercedes Concepcion-Gray, Chief Strategy and Growth Leader, Insurance, NTT DATA Services. “Insurers need a CCM system that can deliver invoices, statements and correspondence in the customer’s preferred media in way that is regulatory and data security compliant.”

At face value, CCM platforms help insurers modernize business processes to improve customer relations while maintaining compliance. There are four key benefits insurers will encounter when they shift from stale, manual comms to using a sophisticated CCM platform, including the ability to:

• Deliver personalized communications: CCM allows insurers to be more purpose-driven in their interactions. Rather than casting a wide net and hoping to catch their audience's attention, insurers can tailor content and conversations to match the unique needs of individual customers. As a result, customers who travel through these communications will encounter a seamless, brand-consistent, and relevant experience.
• Scale to add new channels: In the age of digital transformation, new channels are constantly entering the arena, and insurers are scrambling to gain entry. With CCM, insurers can easily add new communication channels to meet their customers where they are. This capability allows insurers to future-proof their communications strategy because they no longer rely on one or two channels for contact.
• Engage customers on their terms: Customer expectations redefine every industry, including insurance. Customers want to communicate on their preferred channels and have high-quality interaction, from email to virtual chatbots. CCM allows insurers to reach their customers where they feel comfortable interacting to encourage more efficient and intentional conversations.
• Manage complexity and compliance: Compliance is a core competency for insurers and can often lead to internal inefficiencies and governance concerns. Consolidating all communications through one focused platform allows insurers to minimize reliance on manual governance or help from IT teams and automate these efforts through consistent, compliant forms and conversations. As a result, insurers can rest easy knowing that their compliance efforts are steady across all channels.
• Accelerate time to value: For companies, cloud-based CCM increase innovations, and helps IT teams stay current with automatic version updates and security patches. This will minimize maintenance and dependence on IT, and takes full advantage of open APIs and headless architecture to extend technology ecosystem investment.

Where can insurers start improving customer communications?

To simplify the complexity of modernization, insurers need to know where to begin. If asked to start improving customer communications on Monday morning, here are a few starting points NTT DATA recommends:

1. Evaluate your key use cases. Consider which departments will benefit from this investment? Identify which existing tech ecosystems and core systems — such as Duck Creek — and where can the value of these systems can be extended.
2. Consider all customer touchpoints. Observe your customer communications, from the initial engagement to policy delivery, through servicing customers from a claims standpoint. How do you satisfy your customers’ needs? What opportunities can bring meaningful change quickly? To elevate your CCM, you must consider your overall CX strategy and determine how communications fit into the big picture.
3. Audit compliance and governance activities. Create efficiencies by making compliance less time-consuming, easier and more consistent. Proactively confront regulatory demands by automating compliance across all your communications in one place. Audit existing compliance practices and governance activities to identify vulnerabilities that must be addressed and start to pluck the low-hanging fruit.
4. Optimize content for maximum impact. Identify how your company wants to strengthen content delivery to be personalized at scale and dive into each piece of content, looking for opportunities. For every type of policy, revisit form-filling practices, track the type of information input, and develop auto-fill features that streamline the process. Additionally, use data intelligence to personalize conversations. For example, if a customer is entering a claims form from a catastrophic area, acknowledge the sensitive situation with a statement of empathy and communicate how you can help and where to find critical information. Finally, process and collect this information through a content exchange to scale communications across all channels and user segments.

Transformational communications

“Modern customer conversations platforms integrated within core systems give insurers an ecosystem of tools to enable the creation of – and the ability to maintain – the proper tempo of communications required to keep their policyholders properly engaged, with insights that are personalized and delivered to their preferred channel”, said Ruth Fisk, Vice President of Insurance Strategy at Smart Communications. “Not only does using digital tools provide the critical information your customer needs but also provides business continuity and delivers the right data to your employees so that they can provide hyper-personalized experiences right from with their main applications. Optimizing your customer conversations and touchpoints will have a significant effect in ensuring customers trust their insurers.”

The future of next-gen insurance and optimal digital experiences depends on CCM platforms. CCM is the key to unlocking a superior experience, improved efficiency, and reduced cost for insurers. With the proper platform integration, insurers can transform complex dialogue into simplified conversations, maintain security and compliance in the most regulated settings, sustain consistency, consolidate legal communications, grant business-user control, and leverage intelligent content usage for maximum impact—the far-reaching benefits of CCM ready insurers for the customer-centric future of the industry. In the end, understanding what your customers need and meeting those needs throughout their lifecycle always starts with a meaningful conversation.

Learn more about how to enhance personalized communications in the press release, Smart Communications Expands Integration with Duck Creek.