BPO GUIDE FOR INSURANCE

Maximizing Policyholder Retention: CX Strategies for Insurance Contact Centers

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In 2023, an effective CX strategy is a must for maximizing policyholder retention as consumer expectations rise

It’s 2023, and customer expectations are rising.

Not only do customers expect more from their retail and e-commerce experiences, but they also expect more from products and services traditionally seen as “commodity” services, such as banking, healthcare, or insurance.

As the insurance market becomes saturated, policyholders have more and more options for where to turn if their current provider isn’t meeting their needs—and insurance providers have to do more to stand out. For many, customer experience—or CX—is now one of the major ways to distinguish themselves from other insurers on the market.

So what do modern consumers expect from their insurance experiences? And how do insurance providers promote policyholder loyalty, retention, and satisfaction?

In this guide, our team of CX experts at ROI CX Solutions dives into why customer experience matters so much for today’s insurance companies, as well as what modern customers want—and what strategies will set you apart.

Table of Contents

Why customer service matters for insurance

With more insurance options available across the board—for health, auto, life, home, and more—and higher customer expectations across all industries, customer experience matters more than ever. Unfortunately, it’s also harder to achieve.

As customer expectations rise, meeting—and exceeding—those customer demands becomes more difficult, and therefore, “good” customer service requires more strategy, resources, and knowledge to execute. And as insurance becomes less and less of a commodity product—as consumer options grow—customer experiences are becoming a distinguishing factor between insurance brands hoping to set themselves apart from the competition.

While 84% of customers say that “the experience a company provides” is just as important as the services they offer, and 85% of insurers use some CX initiatives during the customer journey, 60% of insurers agree that, overall, their organization lacks a cohesive CX strategy. As a result, insurers who focus on CX in a strategic way stand to set themselves apart from the crowd and have the opportunity to gain a sizable share of the market.

84%

of customers say CX is just as important as services

85%

of insurers use CX initiatives

60%

of insurers feel they lack a cohesive CX strategy

ROI CX for modern insurance | Icon

The benefits of CX for modern insurance

But the benefits of customer experience go beyond intangibles like delivering higher levels of satisfaction and setting yourself apart from the competition—modern insurance call centers can reap benefits in almost all areas from offering better customer experience.

According to McKinsey, companies that “consistently offer best-in-class customer experiences” see a range of benefits, including:

  • being 80% more likely to retain customers and sustain customer loyalty
  • seeing greater success with cross-selling and upselling
  • achieving higher NPS scores and customer referrals
  • reducing CAC and improving CSAT
  • achieving a 100% increase in annual premium growth compared to companies with lower CX

Not only does improved CX make a difference for your customers, but that improved customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty make a tangible difference toward your customer retention, acquisition costs, profits, growth, marketing efficiency, and more.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Get in touch with us today to discover what ROI CX Solutions can do for your business.

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Implement omnichannel support for seamless experiences

90% of customers expect it, but 78% feel that it rarely, if ever, happens in their experiences with brands. What is it?

Omnichannel support.

An omnichannel strategy uses advanced technology and integrated data and customer management, and contact systems to allow agents to offer customers a seamless experience.

With omnichannel, customers can contact your brand through any channel, and the next agent who speaks to them will have their entire history—past purchases, customer service requests, website page views, billing and payments, and more. This allows agents to deliver streamlined experiences and a higher level of personalization and prevents the customer from having to repeat themselves or provide an entire history each time they call.

For insurance providers, omnichannel is more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. A recent report showed that millennials—the largest customer group today—contact insurers 2.5x more than other customer groups through social media and twice as much as other groups via mobile. For insurers to win over this generation—and younger ones—a seamless digital experience is necessary.

Omnichannel strategies not only support that seamless digital experience but also provide more straightforward, cost-effective, and personalized options for connecting and interacting with customers, leading to greater retention, brand loyalty, and effectiveness.

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Use customer data to support retention

An omnichannel approach isn’t just useful for boosting customer satisfaction with a streamlined experience, though. It also provides a more integrated way to use both customer-shared and experiential data to support retention.

Customer data—when used well—can be a strong driver of retention, personalization, customer satisfaction, purchase value, and more. However, more insurers aren’t doing enough to collect it, analyze it, or implement it. Consider, for example, that with the right data, you can:

  • communicate with customers at integral times throughout the year rather than just when renewal season is approaching
  • deliver more personalized quotes or insurance policies from the beginning
  • offer hyper-relevant interactions and experiences designed to increase conversions and retention

Not only does more accurate data lead to better experiences and higher conversions and retention, but it also builds trust and loyalty to your insurance company—which in turn feeds into more renewals and higher retention rates. It’s a positive feedback loop that keeps on giving—but it starts with your data. As a result, insurers need to increase their focus on gathering, analyzing, and implementing customer data.

This can start with collating and analyzing experiential data from customers—such as website interactions, previous renewals, or customer service requests—and making it easy for customers to share additional data with their insurer for more personalized service and better quotes. Once the data is obtained, it must be integrated into the customer experience for personalized offers, communication, and policies to strengthen retention and loyalty.

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Prioritize personalization

Personalization begins with data—but it shouldn’t stop there. Creating personalized experiences is one of the biggest drivers of positive customer experiences today and is a major contributor to customer retention and loyalty. Consider some of the recent data:

66%

OF CUSTOMERS
expect companies to “understand their needs and expectations”

81%

CUSTOMER RETENTION
for insurers offering personalized experiences

89%

INCREASE
in customer engagement with tailor-made products

50%

REDUCTION
in customer acquisition due to personalization

5-15%

BOOST
boost in revenue thanks to personalization

As a result, insurance call centers that prioritize personalization stand to improve retention, engagement, revenue, marketing efficiency, and more. Even better—personalization doesn’t have to be massive, and it can be integrated into almost any stage of the marketing or customer journey.

For example, insurers might consider:

  • using omnichannel solutions to deliver personalized quotes and policy documents to callers who recently viewed standard policies online
  • offering personalized policy upgrades based on known changes in a customer’s life situation
  • recommending relevant offers for packaged insurance bundles or add-ons based on the customer’s situation
  • enabling automatic premium adjustments based on data from customer behavior
  • using aggregated data to create customer segments and provide more relevant communications, or create more targeted marketing to look-alike segments

And these are just a few examples! The important thing to note is that the only wrong way to do personalization is not to do it. Whether you have a small or large personalization scheme, creating personalized offers, policies, communications, and interactions is key to providing exceptional customer experiences.

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Speed your digital transformation

Customers today expect a digital experience—and they can expect it because most companies are already giving it to them.

Of course, there are the giants like Amazon or Netflix that provide digital-first experiences, but brands across all industries are conforming to today’s digital expectations. From e-commerce to banking, education to healthcare, industries must respond to consumer expectations through digital experiences.

Unfortunately, many insurers are lagging behind the curve. Fortunately, that paves the way for great insurance agencies and companies to stand out by providing exceptional digital experiences. For many customers, digital experiences are a key decision factor when considering brands to work with and insurance providers:

41%

OF CUSTOMERS
say they’re “more likely to switch providers” as a result of lacking digital capabilities

15%

OF CUSTOMERS
say a lack of digital capabilities is the most significant challenge they face when dealing with their insurance

80%

OF CUSTOMERS
cite speed and convenience as two of the biggest factors contributing to good customer experiences

As a result, insurance providers are on the hook to speed their digital transformation and provide customers with the experiences they expect. Digital transformation in insurance may look like:

  • providing digital intake forms and allowing customers to onboard online or remotely
  • offering a variety of support options, such as live chat, video calling, texting, and so on
  • allowing customers to initiate and process claims through online portals
  • providing digital reminders for policy updates, renewals, and so on
  • creating easy and convenient payment and policy renewal processes

Digital transformation changes the experience for customers, but it should also improve backend workflows, making processes even more efficient for customers and employees alike. For example, insurers could be leveraging modern technology more fully to create integrated ecosystems, automate claims processing, improve self-service options, and fully embrace digital and mobile channels.

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Wow your customers with convenient claims

While every company and industry should analyze their customer journey to identify and improve key customer touchpoints, with insurers, there’s one touchpoint that tends to make or break the entire experience: making a claim.

A whopping 83% of customers who were dissatisfied with the insurance claim process they’d experienced planned to switch—or had already switched—to another insurer. As a result, insurers have a lot to lose if the process of making a claim is a hassle or otherwise disappointing—and a lot to gain if you can wow your customers with a convenient, straightforward claims process.

What does good CX look like for insurance claims? In short, it follows the same rules as other customer experiences—make it fast, make it easy, and make it convenient.

In a recent study, McKinsey found five qualities as key to driving customer satisfaction in a claims process:

  • the speed of the claims process
  • ease of communication throughout the process
  • insurance employees’ knowledge and professionalism
  • insurance employees’ friendliness and courtesy
  • the transparency and ease of the process as a whole

The study further found—perhaps more surprisingly—that the settlement amount the claim resulted in actually turned out to be less important to customers than the ease, flexibility, and service of the claim process overall.

Insurers who want to improve retention through CX should take a closer look at the entirety of the claims process and identify:

  • What and where are the key touchpoints in this process?
  • Where do backlogs usually occur in this process, and how can they be alleviated?
  • How can we improve communication throughout the process?
  • How frequently do clients have to contact us about open claims, and how can we reduce that number?
  • How long does the claims process usually take, from start to finish, and what steps can we automate or speed up to reduce that amount of time?
  • What is the average CSAT after speaking about a claim with one of our representatives, and how can this be improved?

Whenever possible, the claims process should be digitized to improve speed and convenience. As a key touchpoint for insurance provider loyalty, focusing on this process will yield outsized returns.

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Increase your customer-centric and self-service options

Ultimately, all of these improvements are designed to create a more customer-centric strategy and operational plan for your business. Ideally, though, insurers who are looking to maximize policyholder retention and satisfaction shouldn’t take an ad-hoc approach to customer experience.

Instead, you should develop a customer-centric culture that places the needs and preferences of your customers at the forefront of all business and product decisions. Rather than focusing on new technologies or personalization or any other singular tactic for its own sake, consider how it fits into a broader strategy of customer excellence and experience.

For example, consider how self-service options support a customer-centric model. The data is clear: customers want to be able to get answers to their questions or take care of small problems without having to contact support:

81%

OF CUSTOMERS
try to solve a problem on their own first before reaching out to a company representative

75%

OF CUSTOMERS
say that they see self-service as a “convenient way” to get help for their needs

91%

OF CUSTOMERS
use customer knowledge bases or self-service support pages if they are available and suited to their needs

So, customers clearly need and want self-service. Not only does it create a more streamlined experience for your company—after all, self-service options are available 24/7 for customers, don’t require additional staff, and can serve many customers at once—they also provide a streamlined, convenient, and easy experience for your audience.

Any CX or digital transformation strategy should take into account what customers want, how to most effectively provide it to them, and how customer-centric the solution is.

About ROI CX Solutions

ROI CX Solutions drives customer satisfaction and business success through outsourced customer service and global sourcing management. With decades of experience across our expert team, ROI CX Solutions has innovated results-driven performance and improved customer experiences for brands across a variety of industries. With flexible, customizable solutions, state-of-the-art technology, and world-class customer service representatives, we deliver results for your business—and your customers.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Get in touch with us today to discover what ROI CX Solutions can do for your business.