< Back to all resources 27th February 2022

How to improve customer engagement in insurance

A positive customer experience builds strong relationships for any brand and ensures that customers are fully engaged with it. In a fast-moving market like insurance this represents a constant challenge. Negative perceptions have built up around a lack of trust in insurers, which has provided a considerable obstacle to breaking through to engage more fully with consumers. Repairing this is essential progress that the industry needs to make, as it’s much more expensive for any business to acquire new customers than to maintain existing ones. That’s especially true in a sector like insurance where renewal rates underpin economic success.

Customer engagement is vital for trust-building and strengthening relationships for the long term, so how can it be achieved in insurance?

A genuine appreciation of what customers really want. Gaining a clear understanding of customer needs, pain points and behaviours is the first step to better customer engagement. This is something that can be built from the data of real, existing customers - their expectations, preferences and what they really want from the products and services you provide. The more data a business has on its customers the deeper this understanding can be. Creating customer segments provides the opportunity to carry out detailed analysis and use tools, such as usage-based and personalised products, to improve experience.
Investing in personalised insurance products. With a sound understanding of customers, and accurate segmentation, it becomes possible to start offering products that are ideally suited to a customer’s needs. Individualised products that are informed by data analysis improve customer engagement and overall experience with a brand. New technology is making a more personalised approach simpler to achieve, providing increasing opportunities for insurance businesses to be more agile, scalable and driven by real-time data.
Usage-based options and telematics. Usage-based insurance really is a game changer when it comes to improving customer experience because this provides opportunities to get a clear picture of a customer, to assess whether that customer is worth retaining and to better tailor the products and services on offer. It also makes it much easier to find and engage lower risk consumers and to reward those customers who are lower risk with more attractive options.
Gamification to build loyalty. Technology also provides opportunities for insurers to improve engagement with customers through gamification. Point scoring and rewards in response to behaviours can keep customers constantly engaged with an insurer’s system or app and open up many more opportunities for cross-channel communication that help to move insurers away from old fashioned, overly-formal communication styles.
Using automation to improve engagement. The use of automation can help to make customer experience frictionless and ensure a smooth long-term relationship. Errors and mistakes are reduced and automation gives insurers options for staying in touch with customers across many different devices and touch points in a way that wouldn’t be possible manually. Establishing an omni-channel presence creates the opportunity to better engage customers on multiple levels.

Now is an exciting time to be in the insurance sector, as the range of technology available to help businesses better engage customers is agile, effective and improving all the time