Enterprise applications belong to a vibrant ecosystem and consequently the data they generate is large and varied. Enterprises both benefit and suffer from this nature of application and data.Whenever a new application is to be deployed in an enterprise that integrates with the applications in the ecosystem, the precondition is an 'expansive data definition with referential value' on day 1 to start integration. Traditionally, this approach to data integration involves identifying a target data structure, and force fitting data from all sources into it. This is done to ensure a 'seamless' integration - never mind the loss of data considered irrelevant.
According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, at least $80 billion in fraudulent claims are made annually in the U.S across all lines of insurance. This translates more than $400-$700 per year in increased premiums for each American family.
Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company recently hosted a unique insurance summit focused on putting customer experience first. The event titled Future Perfect-Customer First Insurance Industry Summit 2018 was a full-day event that was attended by 21 of the 24 insurance companies that operate in India. While the focus was life insurance, the summit also saw participation from a few general insurance carriers.
Customer Experience (CX) has seen a paradigm shift from just a good-to-have-function to one of the key differentiators and now a core strategy function for many organizations. CX is no longer limited to knowing what your customers feel about you, instead it includes taking essential actions to enhance a customer’s overall experience (by converting an unhappy customer to a happy one). Companies are offering best-in-class customer experiences over their competitors to grow faster and to be more profitable.
2017 has been a year when ML/AI technologies have become mainstream, and businesses are conversant with their application and possible use cases. 2018 will, however, be the year when trends from 2015-17 will finally come into maturity and we will be able to see results. Commercial application of blockchain (beyond Bitcoin), wider acceptance of enterprise SaaS solutions, and optimization of investments in data lakes – are just some of the examples we can think of. Customers too, are now beginning to understand more about data privacy and security, and want to be more in control of their own data. It seems that finally in 2018, technology and business will move ahead together.
The times of simple service fulfillment are long gone. Now customers demand for not only immediacy in service, but also for a superior customer experience. A lot of this can be attributed to a person’s metamotivation – a term coined by Abraham Maslow to describe the motivation of people who have crossed all key stages of the Maslow’s Hierarchy and are now reaching out to be the best that they can be.
Cross selling is a natural extension of trying to get a larger share of the customer's wallet. After acquiring a new customer, the sales and account management teams put their entire effort into: 1. Ensuring that the customer spends more with them; and 2. The customer buys another product or a service from them.
While Net Promoter Score (NPS®) programs are conducted to understand how happy or unhappy your customers are with your services, one of the main objectives of implementing these programs is to convert detractors into promoters. To achieve this, an EPIC customer experience throughout their customer journey is imperative.
The strongest indication of an EPIC customer experience is when the customer comes back to you for repeat business. But unlike in the past, today a very large number of customer interactions occur online, thus making the task of measuring customer happiness/satisfaction/likelihood more dependent on reaching out to them for feedback and insights. There are several methods available for organizations to measure customer satisfaction, each one of them is different from the other.
A 2016 Report by Econsultancy and Adobe on ‘Digital Marketing Trends’ rated Customer Experience as the most exciting opportunity for organizations to improve customer loyalty. That the two are related is a no brainer, but how deeply one affects the other needs to be evaluated at length.
'Retention' refers to the ability of a company to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defect to another product or business ‘Persistency’, during a period may be defined as the proportion of policies remaining in force at the end of the period out of the total policies in force at the beginning of the period. In other words, persistency is the percentage of business retained without lapsing or being surrendered. Low lapsation means high persistency and vice versa.
As we set our feet in 2023, having experienced a roller-coaster ride last year thanks to the geopolitical tensions and some lingering rub-off effects of COVID-19, it drives home that "change is the only constant." Like any other industry, insurance is undergoing paradigm changes at different levels, whether recruiting potential candidates or customer onboarding, to name a few. However, a common thread that ties the myriad business functions of an insurance company has been data and innovation. There has been an ever-increasing need for insurance providers to use data and embrace innovation in their routine activities, eventually to stand the cut-throat competition.
Risk Management is a core function within the insurance industry. It is a vital responsibility of the underwriting team. Insurance companies collect data scattered across different business units in various formats – some of which are paper and digital, most of which are typically unstructured. The underwriting team doesn't have immediate access to the information required for internal and external decision-making, resulting in delays in making decisions and costly mistakes.
Most insurers offer similar products and services, which makes it challenging to attract new customers and retain them. As an industry, insurance is low-touch, and insurers seldom interact with their customers. A report shows that the top companies have an average customer retention rate of 93 - 95 percent, while insurance companies have an average of 84 percent.