Transforming insurance with empathy
“Are you a real person?” This was a question that I read on the screen of a live chat agent at one of our insurance customers a few weeks back while visiting their contact centre. That agent then went on to tell me that this was one of the more frequent first questions that they receive… Tariq Valente, Head of Business Development at Surfly explores why the human side of InsurTech is still critical to getting it right, ahead of InsurTech Rising Europe.
The human touch
As I have a big geeky side to me, it took me a while to realise that it’s not so much about the technology, BUT the people. Do you ever say booking that Uber or Airbnb was a great experience? Probably not, however you do tell your friends about that driver that got you to the party late and made you laugh with their silly jokes. Or what about that Airbnb host that shared some great history about the city you are visiting and gave you a warm welcome so you share the experience and leave a great review. As chatbots and AI become ever more ubiquitous, even more value will be placed on the rarer human touch in insurance, and it is the brands that stay human that will also stay more relevant in future.
Current research from PointSource has found that about half the population prefers talking to a human when seeking customer service. As AI becomes more sophisticated, what is important to consider is the overall experience and how we design these technologies in the first place. In a Forbes article, “Will AI Replace Humans in the Customer Service Industry?”, the author placed customer needs on a spectrum of emotion and urgency. If a customer feels that something very important is at stake (ie. their home, car or life), or is unhappy with the service provided, the customer would prefer to be understood by someone showing empathy. We need to understand that humans are the differentiator and can help turn frustrated or confused customers into real fans. In order to do this, insurance brands must not box up their agents or advisors within their own universe and allow them to go beyond expectations to create strong moments of truth.
Going beyond expectations
Achmea, leading insurance group in The Netherlands, has recently designated Surfly as their co-browsing solution across the whole group to help with their customer centricity ambitions. Achmea’s strategy, as highlighted in a recent presentation, revolves around going beyond simply providing insurance, to expand its field of interaction to risk prevention, and more globally to provide daily proactive support for its customers during their entire life for all their daily challenges.
To dive deeper, imagine a customer is driving on a road when his car strikes a large object. He realizes that his car was damaged. The customer doesn’t know if his insurance policy will cover the damage. If a chatbot cannot resolve the customer’s issue or notices frustration, the chatbot should upgrade to a co-browsing session with a human in seconds. This will allow the agent to quickly diagnose the issue and guide the customer smoothly through complex claims forms. When an agent hops on a co-browsing session with a customer, the agent gains the right insights to deliver contextual support. This reduces the time it takes the agent to diagnose the issue, resulting in lower handle time and ensuring customer satisfaction. That agent can go a step further, on that same interaction, and take care of booking repairs or making sure that the customer can get a car replacement.
As another example, on-boarding is by far one of the most important parts of the customer journey. Instead of sending another email or another letter when the customer signs up for a policy, why not use visual engagement tools, to cut through the conversation clutter, connect emotionally with customers and guide them on how to use your brand new self-service portal. This way you can find and create WOW moments as well as deflect calls from the contact center in future.
Speaking with heads of contact centers and customer service, I find it astonishing just how many questions they receive around “how do I...” “where do I...” “what do I...” and also how unequipped their agents are to be on the same page as their customers. Speaking with the management of a large British telecommunications company recently, they were able to deflect a staggering 25% calls to the call centre over to live chat over 18 months. However, the majority of the questions, from the website visitors engaged with the chat agents, are about site navigation problems, as they expect that the agents can see where they are looking. Empowering your agents with tools that help them work together with customers to understand problems and explain solutions in a personalised, easy and visual way can also be very impactful to the bottom line. For the average call center that the SQM Group benchmarks, a 1% improvement in their First Contact Resolution performance equals $256,000 in annual operational savings.
However in the words of Einstein, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” I met a health insurance customer of ours in upstate New York at the beginning of the year and the Director of Customer Experience no longer measures call times but places greater importance on how the agents leave that customer feeling after an interaction with the brand.
Finally, a recent partner of Surfly in Chile has created a B Corp, which are a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit, by the name of #ahorapuedo (“Now I Can” in Spanish). It is a platform that brings together tailored financial advice, real estate search and mortgage providers to help people get on track to achieving their dreams. We will see more and more of these initiatives that aim to solve social, economical and even environmental issues as we move into the future.
Empathy is king
As we sail forwards in to a sea of automation, empathy will undoubtedly become king. The digital visionary Brian Solis has a great quote, “effective engagement is inspired by the empathy that develops simply by being human”. In a recent interview he mentions the rise of the “Assistance Economy” which came about through research with Google. They found that people are not looking for information, data or sales pitches but rather they are looking to find “someone or something which could be useful in that moment” so they can move to the next step. This really comes back to our human instincts to be understood and to understand each other.
There is an emotional conundrum in that by deleting human-human points of contact, relationships potentially diminish over time. The thing that differentiates us is that we understand that building a relationship with your clients is much more than just a set of transactions.
