Maximizing Returns from Digital Investments

Insurance carriers’ digital investments are made with two primary inter-related goals. 

• Customer and agent experience improvement 
• Cost reduction and optimization 

Are the insurers meeting these goals? Our conversations with insurers indicate the results are often a mixed bag. Some insurers report that the number of inbound calls are not reduced as much as they forecasted, while some say they still receive a significant percentage of service requests or applications by paper. Consider the following scenarios: 

• Customer submitting a supplemental health insurance claim wonders why he must enter information such as hospital name, address, date of admission, since this information is available in the documents uploaded with the claim. 
• A retirement service provider determined that over 50% of customers who submitted withdrawal requests online called the contact center within hours or the next day to confirm that their request was received. 
• Some agents prefer to submit paper requests, as they feel online submission takes more of their time. 
• A life & health insurer found that over 50% of calls they receive in the contact center are related to questions about status of claims since the information in the website is minimal or not real time. 
   

While developing strategies for the twin goals of improving customer experience and cost reduction, insurance carriers must look beyond providing customers with the ability to do self-service transactions on digital channels.  

Coforge recommends that insurers look at the customer experience from both an outside in and an inside out perspective. Both are critical for a superior customer experience. 

By outside in we mean how we enable the external customer to interact with the insurer. The touchpoints should be intuitive, in channels customers prefer. It is not just about the website – showing that we ‘know’ the customer, and personalizing the experience is also important. 

The inside out aspect refers to the fulfillment of what the customer wishes to achieve. Fulfillment must be efficient, accurate and meet the expectations of the customer. 

Knowing the customer means knowing what policies the customer has, what benefits the customer is eligible for, the history of customer interactions.  Guiding the customer through the process of submitting service requests such as claims, based on the specific individual’s data is also part of knowing the customer. AI enabled intelligent content extraction from documents submitted by customers for prefilling information is one of the ways that we can make it easier for customers.  

It is a well-known fact that insurers are saddled with a complex landscape of legacy applications from decades of mergers and acquisitions. This presents a challenge to insurers relative to efficient fulfillment of service requests. The black-box nature of the business process means that there is little visibility into the progress of the fulfillment process. The customer gets minimal information on the website, and often contact center representatives are not able to provide much information resulting in customer dissatisfaction.  

The ProcessGym™ framework from Coforge combined with our deep domain knowledge can help insurers evaluate and transform their fulfillment processes.  

The ProcessGym™ framework provides recommendations that encompass  

• Process Re-Engineering; defining the future state processes, eliminating the pain points in current processes, identifying automation and system enhancement opportunities 
• Automation solutions including RPA and DPA, leveraging AI/ML/OCR/ICR technologies 
• System enhancements and API strategy   

If your digital investments are not meeting your business's goals, please contact Coforge, we are ready to help with our proven methods and solutions.