Hyper-Personalization within Claims

Focus on what really matters, and DON’T hold back

Customer experiences were high before 2020 but that’s nothing compared to today. The exposure to digital services has turbo-charged a necessary response from service providers. Research shows that the majority of insurers plan to execute hyper-personalization strategies as early as next year, the only question is why are the rest holding back?

Based on results from an Insurance Innovators’ survey of over 150 insurance executives showed;

“95% of senior insurance executives surveyed agreed the point of claim is where insurers have the greatest opportunity to win loyalty, but also the greatest risk of losing it.”

What is Hyper-Personalization?

But what exactly is hyper-personalization? Well, we would describe it as being able to respond to customers in ways that recognize their context. Taking into consideration their unique circumstances and responding in an empathetic and relevant manner. It’s not about knowing your customer’s contact details and purchase history but how they live their life and being able to respond appropriately whenever they reach out.

The Lack of Hyper-Personalization in Insurance

Insurance companies have always offered personalized service, as customers are offered policies at a particular price based on a measurement of risk. However, they have not kept pace and are being chased by new entrants with smoother capabilities that compete for market share. 

Additionally, the insurance industry suffers from trust deficits. As research shows policyholders are worried that their insurers won’t deliver what they expect when it’s time to make a claim. A lack of trust from customers can hurt legacy insurers in the long run since whenever the decision of changing or staying with the current provider comes up, there is a new choice to be made. And today that change is easier than ever. Disruptors that appeal to disaffected customers have the potential to grow faster.

The Need for Personalization and Transparency in Insurance

Creating easy, quick, and trustworthy routes to the settlement has shown to be what customers value the most. Personalization and transparency might still sound like buzzwords to many but the fact is they might bridge the gap between discontent and mistrustful customer. So what does the customer want?

How Claims Automation Support Hyper-Personalization

The most frequent interactions customers have with their insurers are mostly about claims. Consequently it presents itself as an obvious area to start with. The customer journey has to be radically streamlined and demystified to keep policyholders’ trust. They need to get what they want when they want. If that’s not possible they need to understand why and feel they have been treated with empathy and fairness.

What to do:

• Invest in your data, it is the life-blood of modern decision-making. This means making data-driven decisions for consistent and unbiased claims valuation.
• Reduce customer efforts by deploying the right technology. For claims this means automation. Focus on your policy holders, not your products.
• Personalize customer journeys. For claims, it means built-in flexibility between manual and automated claims processing. The majority should go straight through (STP) whereas some cases might require human touch. 

Ultimately, insurers can only drive long-term value by embracing hyper-personalization and understanding the shift from a product-centric approach to a data-driven, customer-centric approach.