It’s safe to say that when it comes to insurance, consumers have had enough. Just 15% of customers are satisfied with their insurer’s digital experience offering. Today’s connected customer wants more and they want it faster. It’s long and complicated insurance claims processes that are getting in the way of this.
But by embracing mobile tech, insurance providers can streamline their claims processes and enhance their customer experience (CX). This turns tech-savvy consumers into long-term loyal customers.
As a traditional insurance provider, there are two key trends you need to focus on in 2019. The first is the customer experience problem in insurance. The second is the rapid rise in the adoption of smart home and Internet of Things (IoT) technology. These two trends are tightly interlinked. New technology opens up completely new channels and touchpoints between you and your customers. Embracing mobile will help you to enhance your customer experience, streamline your claims process and drive engagement across-the-board.
So, what role do smart home, IoT and emerging tech have to play in the insurance claims process?
The Traditional Insurance Claims Process
Let’s start by looking at today’s traditional insurance claims process. For your customers, this is often a stressful and always personal situation. As an insurance provider, it’s important that this process is as simple and stress-free as possible for your customers. Especially seeing as today’s digital-savvy customers are more likely than ever to consider their alternatives, including challenger companies and new entrants to the market. On the other hand, the traditional claims processes are costly, slow and can open you up to fraud.
It’s essential then, for both you and your customers, that your claims process is streamlined, efficient and offers a great customer experience. How can embracing technology help you achieve this?
Most of your customers’ experience with you can be whittled down to three key points: when they sign up with you, when they renew their policy and when they make a claim. This is a key challenge, meaning that on average you’ll have a very limited number of interactions with your customers. And with consumer expectations as high as they are right now, every interaction counts.
This is even more important during the claims process. Customers are often under a huge amount of stress. And they have only one goal: to get their payout as quickly as possible with the least amount of hassle. They want convenience. And for today’s connected consumer, convenience means mobile. About 15% of consumers would, if possible, conduct all transactions with you through an insurance app. That’s up from under 5% two years ago.
Using Mobile Apps to Enhance Insurance Claims
Making a Claim
One of the biggest challenges in the insurance claims process is information gathering. It’s important to get as much data and information from your customer up-front. Small gaps in the claim details up-front can lead to big problems down the line. But very often, because of the emotional stress of the situation, claimants will understandably leave out key details.
For example, after a car accident, claimants need to record the make, model, colour and number plate of all vehicles involved. They need to note the time and date, the driving conditions, the damage done to the vehicle, any injuries sustained and the names of any witnesses. All this after they’ve remembered to switch their engine off, turn their hazard lights on, check themselves and their passengers for injuries, call the police and exchange details.
Traditionally, insurance claims like this require a lot of note-taking and a tonne of photographs. But this is where mobile can make a huge difference. Most of these tasks are simple, there’s just a lot of them to remember. And mobile technology is perfectly suited for automating and streamlining simple tasks. Turning the stressful and confusing situation into an easy-to-follow and intuitive guide. With a well-designed insurance app, your users can be guided through the steps they need to take. Details like time, date and weather are all automatically recorded at the time. And all this is available in real-time to your agents, empowering them to provide the best and most tailored customer service possible.
Emerging Technology in Insurance Claims
Using emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR), you can even use image recognition to automatically record the damage done to the vehicle or claim item. This would mean all the claimant has to do is walk around the vehicle holding their phone, your insurance app would do the rest!
A streamlined insurance app lets your customers initiate a claim without having to go through customer service. Speeding up the claim process, reducing the turnaround time required and giving them peace of mind throughout. All while increasing the amount of insight you have into the incident, making a massive difference down-the-line during disputes.
Ongoing Conversations & Updates
Following the initial claim being made, mobile opens up a direct channel of communication between you and your customers. One that turns communications into conversations. Give your customers the chance to ask questions or provide any extra information they feel relevant from wherever they are. All while recording a comprehensive history to your claim records for future reference. Further to this, you can also use mobile to notify your customers of updates to their cases. Giving them a much better idea of where they stand throughout the journey.
Other Benefits of an Insurance App
Policy Information & History
All throughout this process, an insurance app gives your customers direct access to all the information they need. This increases transparency between you and your customers, letting them access premium due dates, fund values, branch locations and network partners. As well as giving them the option to easily update selected policy information like contact details.
Premium Payment & Renewals
An insurance app also gives your customers a way to pay for premiums or even apply for completely new policies. On their terms from wherever they are. They can also opt-in to receive notifications running up to renewal dates, ensuring they don’t miss any. But also gives you a valuable way to increase the likelihood of renewing by tying together push notification reminders with discount incentives.
Interested in an Insurance App?
Are you interested in a bespoke insurance app? We’re working with companies in the insurance and financial services sector right now. Helping them use mobile technology to solve key business challenges and improve their customer experience. We’d love to help you too with your app development project.
We know innovating in this space can be difficult. Which is why we’ve worked with multinational companies on highly focused lighthouse projects. This allows you to go from concept to digital product in a short space of time, bypassing business bureaucracy and efficiency-obsessed company culture. Give us a call at 01737 45 77 88 or send us a message today to discuss your project.