The number one priority for insurers today is creating a compelling digital customer experience.

Insurers everywhere are asking questions like:

• How can we provide a superior customer experience?
• How can we keep up with customer expectations and CX standards brought about by other industries?

The answer to those questions: It takes more than just one excellent interaction to solve the problem. Instead, a carrier develops a true competitive advantage when it can design customer journeys where each interaction, whether online or off, fosters confidence and trust.

What are the biggest client engagement challenges carriers face?

The pandemic has accelerated transformation across the insurance industry. However, in order to fully realize the advantages of digitalization, carriers must change their approach to digital engagement and move away from traditional practices: making incremental improvements that don’t actually impact the overall customer experience.

Only working with low-hanging fruit won't result in an overall boost in engagement. It may lead to small improvements in some client experiences, but much more is needed to keep up with the customer of 2023.

In order to make significant changes to CX, a more comprehensive strategy for engaging clients is required.

What is making it difficult for insurers to build strong client engagement?

Challenges with access and analysis of data

Leveraging data to improve consumer engagement is among the major challenges faced by insurers. The insurance industry accumulates vast amounts of data. However, it's not always simple to access or leverage this information. The data is frequently not as accurate or as clean as it could be. Gaining a thorough grasp of a specific customer's wants is difficult in light of all these data concerns. As a result, it becomes challenging to provide hyper-personalized service.

Challenges with legacy systems

The greatest obstacle to improving client engagement is unquestionably the limitations imposed by legacy technology platforms.

The customer value chain as it relates to the insurance sector

Carriers need to consider customer engagement enhancements for every process, product and policy that customers interact with. Things like an excellent UI/UX are now considered to be essential, as most carriers have created simplified products that are easier to sell and service through online interfaces.

However, true improvements in customer engagement result from adopting a comprehensive strategy that touches the entire customer value chain. Instead of implementing a series of unrelated solutions, carriers need to rethink the whole landscape, and reimagine how they’re connecting with clients at every point in the process in order to improve the overall quality of the journey.

Choose the right modernization strategy

Carriers are faced with the difficulty of deciding what technology their company will require in three to five years in order to be more fully and effectively interact with customers. They'll also need to take a step back and take into account how to get past their growing technological debt and the shortcomings of their legacy systems.

On one hand, by adapting or building upon existing legacy technologies, carriers will improve their relationship with existing policyholders. However, having numerous core systems makes things difficult, and eventually, carriers will reach the limitations of what their outdated systems can offer in terms of usefulness and future capabilities.

On the other hand, a carrier may be able to create the greatest, most completely realized engagement model by adopting a greenfield strategy.