How to Improve Customer Experience in Insurance

Did you know that 33% of Americans say they’ll consider switching insurance companies after experiencing poor service on just one occasion? That is 1 in 3 customers.

Poor service is costing companies big, particularly within the insurance industry (due to its sympathetic nature). Improving customer experience in insurance is essential as retaining current policyholders is far less expensive than acquiring new insurance holders.

For better clarity and to better improve customer experience in insurance, this article is structured into the following sections:

  • How to create an excellent customer experience strategy
  • How to simplify the experience with smart technology
  • How to use analytics to inform decisions
  • How to invest in personalized technologies
  • How to automate responsibly

For the purpose of this article and to understand the demand and challenges of the insurance industry in more depth, YOCALE interviewed insurance agents and a case study was implemented focused on our client AAA Ohio. Make sure to give it a read. Now let’s get started.

Create an Excellent Customer Experience Strategy

Today’s brands compete on experience every day. Customer experience (CX) is determined by the interactions and encounters your customer experiences throughout the entire customer journey, from the first “how can I help you” to evolving into a loyal customer.

To put into perspective how important excellent customer service and customer retention are, the below graph shows the correlation between increase in revenue and increase in customers:

Customer experience revenue

Now that we understand how primitive customer experience is for your bottom line, let’s identify encounters that would leave customers with a bad taste in their mouth.

  • Poor website customization – Do you have a poor checkout flow or lazy webpages?
  • Negative interactions with customer support- Do you have inexperienced staff or long wait times?
  • Compromising a customer’s personal security – Do you offer secured, cloud based access?
  • Not investing in innovation – Are you investing in sensor devices to prevent and minimize emergency situations?
  • Ignoring feedback from customers – Customer want the convenience of online booking. Have you automated?

In most cases, a customer’s first point of contact with your insurance company is by interacting with an adjuster. This provides the opportunity to present excellent customer service. However, customer service is just not enough, delivering an excellent customer experience is . For instance, it includes how your procedures and logistics made the insurance client feel.

Customer experience is insurance

To deliver an excellent customer experience in Insurance, insurance executives should focus on:

  • Documenting the customer journey. Focus on priority areas to identify shortcomings and plan real improvements
  • Promoting a customer-centric culture. Empower agents and adjusters with proper, personalized and knowledgable training techniques
  • Listening and open communication. Encourage reviews and conduct timely, specific surveys to receive feedback. A Net Promoter Score survey is an excellent start.
  • Personalizing Interactions. Every customer is different and personalized interactions are key. Train your agents to create emotional connections and use personalized dynamic outbound communication.

To make an excellent first impression, customer support agents should be well trained to handle intense cases. When the roof is leaking, adjusters need to be highly empathetic and helpful. As competition increases, so does customer expectations and word of mouth travels fast!

Simplify the Experience with Smart Technology

Obsolete are the days when people waited endlessly for their calls to be answered by an agent or customer service representative.

As the insurance market becomes more saturated, policyholders are more likely to compare quotes from competitors and even compare the experience. One of the easiest (and most cost effective) ways to not lose policyholders is by improving their experiences with your insurance business.

Cultivate a foundation supported by scalable IT solutions that provide customers with self-service options and frontline agents with easy access to a full view of each policyholders profile.

A free Insurance Agent Scheduling Software with an in depth client management portal makes it easy for agents to manage claims and provide excellent (and personalized) customer service:


To enhance the customer experience, an insurance scheduling software with the following capabilities is necessary:

  1. Configurable Online Booking Tool – Personalized booking widget with location based technology to give policyholders the ability to book multi services with 24/7 access. Agents add their unique booking URL to email signatures for direct booking.
  2. Customization– To create a professional and unique experience, aesthetics of the booking tool can be customized with logo and use of filtering fields to create a profile based on the customers preference.
  3. Precision in Scheduling – A 2-way, Outlook calendar synchronization to create a centralized, store-wide online calendar ensuring staff calendars correspond properly and are up to minute.
  4. Electronic Forms: No one enjoys filling out repetitive insurance forms. If you require your policyholders to do so, chose a software with features like electronic forms to make data exchange efficient and fulfilled directly from any mobile devices.

It is prominent that insurers simplify the experience and offer the efficiency of technology. Automating the insurance process strengthens engagement between customer and agents and offers the ease of doing business via mobile devices.

Fast Claim Processing

One of the fastest ways to ruin a customers experience in Insurance is by lacking speed.

Claims Processing is the most critical and key interaction you have with any policyholder due to its stressful, and often emergency situations. When the hurricane hits the fan, you need to move fast and your operation faster! What is your value proposition when it comes to claim settlements and reimbursements? Is it “Fair and speedy settlement”, “Quick registration and disposal of claims” Insurance claim anytime – 24/7 “?

Avoid inaccurate and slow claims and say hello to data based forms. Wether you are an independent agent or the largest insurance agency, data based electronic forms is the solution to speedy claim processing. This cloud-based solution gathers data electronically and results in fast process of insurance quotes, insurance claims, policy purchase and an efficient way to encode your Declaration Page. Speed is convenience.

Match Customers to Agents with Appropriate Skills

The good match between an agent and customer is a key component of a successful customer experience. To build better agent-policyholder relationships, an online booking tool that uses a “best-fit” algorithm to display a list of agents based on the customers (insurance) requirements will enhance the insurance experience.

For instance, if the customer is booking an appointment for last minute travel insurance, the search can be prioritized with “last minute travel specialist” or by a language tag like “french speaker” to view a list of adjusters with this particular skill set.

Why is this important? An agent with particular knowledge of say foreign medical conditions, is an agent that will capture customers with an exceptional customer experience. Knowledgable agents will also offer  trip cancellation insurance before departure and inform about pre-existing medical condition exclusion waiver. Matching agents with the appropriate knowledge and traits your clients need is a powerful client retention strategy.

Use Analytics to Lead Decisions

Did you know that the insurance industry in the United States netted $1.22 trillion in 2018? This number represents the limitless opportunities within the insurance industry.

Using analytics to lead decisions, you can analyze various aspects of your business, improve and get a bigger slice of the market share in return. Exploring ways to improve the customer insurance journey from the initial consultation through to support and claims, will result in higher customer retention and the opportunity to cross-sell additional coverage. Most importantly, the use of behavioral tracking to captivate the insurance customers interest in related products is trending.

So how can you gather this niche data and use it to improve the customer insurance experience? An Insurance scheduling management software that offers data technologies and reporting structures can give you the data you need to improve the customer experience. In addition, management can identify:

  • Source of Booking (Google, widget, social media, etc.)
  • Most popular services & products, top spenders or most visited policyholders
  • Top operating agents
  • Locations with the most sales
  • A booking widget incorporated with google analytics capability, captures your customers every move in real time.

Our software in other niches, such as therapy appointment software, has all the above-mentioned features, as well.

An innovative booking widget that provides a smooth booking experience for policyholders while tracking their behaviour through Google Analytics is substantial. Having access to Dashboards and Insights can offer transparency with drill-down slice and dice capabilities. Management can view the business performance and volume of bookings in real-time by each location, service type, and even down to each specific agent’s utilization.

By automating and easy access to reports and insights, Yocale was able to achieve the following results for our Insurance client.

Insights and reporting in insurance

With real-time access to customer behaviour and agents productivity, you can leverage data across the enterprise and even reduce no shows and increase after hour bookings.

Invest in Personalized Technologies

Approximately, 82 percent of the 623 senior executives who were interviewed for the Accenture’s Technology Vision for Insurance 2018, acknowledged that their establishment must invest in innovation and digitalization to gain a competitive advantage. Insurers should focus on innovation and how to leverage emerging technologies and risk management. The future of insurance is personalization and even prevention as prevention is better than cure.

Did you know that a third of household insurance claims are linked to water leakage? Today, some home insurance companies are considering and implementing the use of smart-home technology to monitor peril and reduce risk and liability. For instance, a connected-home digital sensor can alert landlord or insurance carrier of water leakage at an early stage to avoid mass destruction. In scenarios with auto or home accidents, incorporating smart technology like IoT-connected sensors, provokes claims processing automatically.

In addition, transforming to new resources such as digital voice assistants will continue the trend for device-agnostic user experiences. Investing in personalized technologies that prevent and protect customers assets and financial well-being, immensely improves customer experience in Insurance.

Automate Responsibly

To cut costs and avoid operational expenses, many companies are using voice intelligence and reducing the need for human interaction within customer service roles. recent study showed that 74% of customers are very or somewhat willing to receive computer-generated advice on type of insurance to buy.

Insurers should focus on innovation and how to leverage emerging technologies and evolving customer expectations into your business. However, personalized human interactions are still necessary to create an excellent customer experience in Insurance. Beyond that, human intelligent is prevalent for handling complex queries such as escalations of claims and evaluation for liabilities and deductibles. To avoid frustration with bots and add a personalized touch, human intervention is required.

Our take away is that it is most effective to balance humans and technology, particularly during the initial support and service stages. For instance, if you have a comprehensive application process, offering 24/7 live chat will decrease your chances of losing the customer (and many more after that). Using applications like Fullstory will allow you to identify (in real time) areas your policyholders are “rage clicking” and in return, provide seamless customer assistance pronto!

Wrapping it Up

From quote to claim to policy renewal, communication and an Insurance Management Software speeds up customer interactions, reduces manual data entry, and strengthens connections with policyholders.

It is prominent that you simplify the experience for your policyholders and offer the efficiency of technology to process claims and offer financial compensation in a speedy matter. To improve the customer service in Insurance, promote a customer centric culture and empower agents and adjusters with proper, personalized training techniques.

Data and analytics is the best tool for improving the customer experience. What you can measure, you can improve. Prevention is better than a cure; A frequent environmental scan and keeping a close eye on digital devices that protects the policyholder reduces risks exponentially, saves millions, and leads to lower premiums. All this results in an excellent customer experience.

Automation cuts costs and saves time so agents can focus on more personalized interactions. By adopting more technology into your company, you can greatly improve the overall policyholders experience. However, automate responsibly. Human interaction and empathy is needed for peril situation and claims.

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