Digital Insurance Through the Generations: Ensuring Accessibility for All

Digital Insurance Through the Generations: Ensuring Accessibility for All

Use of digital technology has soared since COVID-19 forced lockdowns and social distancing. People are turning to technology for mobile banking, picking up their groceries, and even for looking at menus at restaurants. The digital adoption gap between the youngest and oldest consumers is getting smaller. Mobiquity’s survey found that, not surprisingly, 90% of non-baby boomers agree that they will use technology after COVID-19 to reduce the amount of things they touch in their daily life. Most surprisingly, a very close 88% of baby boomers agreed with this sentiment. So… how do these changes impact insurance companies?

How should insurance providers transform to meet the digital demand?

With so much focus on digital customer experiences, insurance providers need to ensure that their services are accessible to as large an audience as possible. This means having an omnichannel insurance digital experience strategy is important, but so is having the processes in place to make those channels, in addition to your more traditional channels, as intuitive as possible. Customers have their own expectations about how a digital experience should feel. Retailers have done a tremendous job with creating immersive experiences that customers don’t even realize – they just expect those experiences to be great. Insurance companies should take a page from retailers’ books and seek to create the same kind of silent utility in their own digital experiences. The idea that customers will overlook a poor digital experience is dead. In the past, customers may have given a pass to some companies with poor digital experiences because they could still have great in-person experiences, but their expectations have changed now. It’s time to transform your business to meet these new needs and digital expectations.   

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Prepare for change management. Before you begin updating or creating a digital strategy for your business, it’s important to have a plan for how your team will approach the change. Digital transformation takes time, patience, and a commitment to the goal. To be successful, identify the stakeholders that will spearhead the program. Be descriptive about their roles. Who has authority to make key decisions? Who will help ideate new initiatives? What teams need to be involved to ensure a smooth transition happens with your existing strategy? This is a crucial step that is easily overlooked.
  
  
• Train your staff. One of the biggest breakdowns that happens post-digital transformation if companies aren’t careful is that the traditional, non-digital experience doesn’t match the digital experience. Be sure to train your employees and agents on any new technology so that they can provide the same, if not better, experience for their customers.
  
  
• Focus on features that matter most. It can be tempting to create a mobile app, website, or chatbot experience that offers a million little features. While this may look like a benefit from the outset, this can lead to friction for customers. Convenience and seamless experiences are actually usually rooted in the most surprising places. Use data to find out what your customers wish you offered – contactless payments? A digital insurance card? Simpler login? Fixing or creating one of these features could be more meaningful to your customers than having a million features. And if there are several initiatives that you want to upend, consider prioritizing your wish list. This will allow you to launch each initiative and accurately measure its success. Download the Mobiquity Friction Report, a proprietary tool that uses AI/ML to analyze thousands of customer reviews on mobile apps, websites, and similar tools to get insights into what your app is doing right and where it could use some help. 
  
  
• Centralize the human experience. Above all else, the biggest way property and casualty insurers can make an impact with their customers is by treating them like people. Too often, insurance customers are viewed as a policy number, when in reality they are people with real assets to protect. Make sure that your experiences, digital or otherwise, focus on the humans that they’re serving.

Make these experiences accessible to all

Approximately one in five people in the United States – that’s 64 million people – have at least one type of disability. But accessibility extends far beyond checking an ADA box. Not only do you need to account for disabilities, but also temporary disabilities as well. Consider the following when planning to create a digital experience for your customers:

• Ensure triage is easy. For some people, picking up the phone and talking to an agent may be a nuisance or disruption throughout their day. For those people, it’s important to have a way to triage issues digitally, such as a chatbot. For other people, talking to a chatbot may be something they’ve never done before. Consider adding a button that gives them the option to click and immediately launch into a call to speak with an agent. Taking difficulty out of this process, especially when the customer is already experiencing a problem, is key.
  
  
• Automate self-service. Did you know automating experiences with digital has proved to reduce the cost of claims by 30%¹? Aside from the benefits automation offers your insurance company, it hugely benefits the customer. Today’s consumers are putting more stock in experiences that allow them to seamlessly take action rather than ones that require something of them in order to complete a task, such as filing a claim or paying a bill.
  
  
• Make common action items simple. Did you know that a majority of your customers are simply trying to pay their bill? Make sure you know which actions are most important to your customers and then work to make those actions easy to do on your website, mobile app, or other digital solution.
  
  

• Create a way to personalize the experience. Give your customers options to personalize your digital solutions to their liking. Whether it’s setting a reminder for five days or 30 days before their bill is due or allowing them to set up auto pay, these options and more can reduce friction for customers.

Are you ready to create a digital insurance experience?

Today’s consumers expect more digital options than ever before. If you’re ready to take your customer experience to the next level, let’s talk.

Resources:

1. McKinsey