Over the years, the importance of human support in the insurance industry is steadily losing ground to an intelligent self-service portal. For one thing, customer preferences have grown tech-savvy and self-reliant which means solving any policy or claim-related issues on their own by using insurance self-service portal rather than waiting to solve the issue with a live agent. Additionally, since the pandemic interrupted – customers have become more favorable towards the online channel to avoid conventional face-to-face communication and support delivery.
A 2021 Global FS Consumer Study stated, “Companies should prioritize the basic needs and expectations of their customers for locating real-time data, and information and solving policyholders’ issues within a few clicks.” This can be possible by implementing an out-of-the-box insurance self-service portal that helps enhance cohesive customer experience.
A Gartner study observed that 85% of initial customer service interactions start with a well-suited self-service portal.
Digitization not only opens new avenues to advanced technology but also changes customer behavior in a way to provide innovative approaches to deliver exceptional services and boost customer loyalty and advocacy. In fact, today’s insurers who are enabling self-service portal is not a one-time effort, it requires continuous learning and consistent upgrades that meet the digital demands of the policyholders while being time and cost-efficient.
In 2021, a Gartner study determined that an insurance self-service portal costs $0.10 per content while a single live-chat channel cost $8.11 per contact which comparatively charges more.
Insurance self-service portal facilitates to encourage businesses across the globe. Most of the insurers’ key mission is to support teams and make target customers aware of the products and services. However, this helps companies draw customers to have more knowledge about the product information and will be equipped to solve any issue relating to the claim process, policy tracking and billing configuration on their own.
Therefore, the insurance self-service portal also solves the waiting time of the customers and avoids any delay while dealing with the smallest yet complex tasks. To learn more about it our article will walk you through the importance of a self-service portal in the insurance industry and how implementing self-service enhances holistic customer experience while increasing business productivity and internal communication among teams.
Capgemini Financial Services Analysis pinpoints over 70% of customers in the age group of 25 to 40 require the ability to apply or renew policies, verify coverage, view instalment schedules and track claim status digitally on their own by using an intuitive insurance self-service portal.
The insurance self-service portal is a software solution that is dedicated to automating workflow operations provided by insurers to streamline insurance-related services to policyholders such as 24/7 access to information, claim management, easy access to knowledge base and segment data analytics. These help effectively enrich customer needs faster while reducing time and cost for every insurance related issue.
However, a self-service portal is not only a simple FAQ platform for customer queries, but it is also most effective when implemented as part of your business strategy that fits into the overall customer service initiative and interaction that will largely impact the future of customer experience.
The primary foundation of this customer portal is to allow customers to search for product-related information and resolve policy and claim-related issues without having to reach a designated live agent or authorized sales rep. However, the self-service portal isn’t just a replacement platform for customer service, but it also allows users to be self-reliant with a principal goal to find solutions through a 24/7 accessible knowledge base system, personalized dashboard experience and automating tasks by using efficient workflow management platforms.
According to Harvard Business Review, 81% of customers attempt to solve their queries first before reaching out to a live agent or sales rep team.
For instance, a study by Gartner determined that the insurance industry is striving to provide holistic customer experience, real-time data, and insights where a large percentage of customers who attempt to resolve policy or claim-related issues on their own from. Whereas among them only about 9% succeed and end up with potential results. This could be due to lack of self-service portal integration, or due to a poorly implemented portal.
Therefore, this is crucial for smart business solutions – as customers in today’s digital age are 2x times more likely to prefer to purchase insurance products or services from organizations that offer a personalized self-service experience that benefits customers to be proactive with more power over their purchases.
Insurance self-service portals eliminate myriad challenges that customer face. For example, with a self-service portal customers can easily read FAQs rather than combing through pages online to hunt down a solution. Similarly, customers can effectively refer to in-built features like accessing a knowledge base system where they can be well-informed about insurance products and services via an up-to-date content repository. Also, customers can consult an AI-powered chatbot to resolve low-level issues which also reduces the waiting time of connecting to a live agent and resolving the issue quickly.
Furthermore, a self-service portal can also support cases being worked on by sales reps or live agents where customers can track and check quick status queries from the centralized dashboard. This allows customers to check the status of active tickets and efficiently provides them control over support requests. Therefore, by offering personalized recommendations –insurers can drive customer experience one step further to higher rates of customer retention and generate more opportunities for customer advocacy.
Although any organization can cater to insurance self-service portals. But not all of them are made alike. Here we have compiled key considerations of the self-service portal and how it has potentially impacted the customer experience.
A study conducted by Zendesk determined that about 91% of customers expect organizations to have a self-service portal that provides them with a sense of control over product purchase and a basic understanding of product-related information so that they can quickly solve policy or claim relates issue effortlessly without depending on agents or sales rep.
On the other hand, 60% of customers prefer mobile flexibility while tracking claim approval status and records of past tickets via ticketing systems. This allow them to describe the problem in detail and track the duration of problems being solved. Therefore, this way customers understand the product better keeping the time proximity that leads to improving the overall customer service experience.
An insurance self-service portal is not only for enabling customers to pay bills, track claims and purchase or renew policies but it also comes to effective use when insurers offer various features that anticipate customers’ needs and encourage workforce engagement. Let’s deep dive into 6 features every insurer should offer in a modern self-service portal.
An insurance self-service portal is designed to fulfil the demands of the policyholders who are time-constrained and generate easy access to online digital channels like company websites, omnichannel options and having access to mobile responsiveness. Customers expect an intuitive and user-friendly platform that can efficiently be used to purchase or renew policies, lodge claims, generate sales quotes, and most importantly answer basic and complex queries regarding specific policies and bill payments.
Moreover, a self-service portal is a toolkit that offers potential capabilities where insurers can easily update and help customers or prospects to access crucial information on insurance products and services seamlessly with robust in-built functionalities.
Additionally, the portal optimizes customer digital experience by providing a personalized view for every target audience and generating relevant customer information in no time with powerful search capabilities. Therefore, this gives insurance providers clear visibility of customer behavior, and common issues that customers are currently facing and taps into other customer preferences, needs and analysis.
Investing in a self-service portal empowers insurers and policyholders with win-win solutions of analyzing customer data and offering more appropriate insurance products with better policy and risk coverage with the motive to deliver a more personalized customer experience. Highlighting “personalization” – has become one of the integral features of a self-service portal. This intuitive platform offers a personalized dashboard experience such as listing users’ policy summaries and opting for sign-up options where users can offer a demo session with personalized quote requests.
As per an Accenture study, customers say they are comfortable offering personal data and information in exchange for experiencing a personalized approach.
Furthermore, a personalized dashboard allows insurers to update billing information that provides customers with an overall invoice statement and set up an auto-pay schedule for easy management of payment methods. Therefore, this unified self-service platform offers a downloadable feature where customers can seamlessly track policy or retrieve historical records right from claim issued to claim settlement.
Did you know? As per a Deloitte survey, 33% of executives believe that clear product knowledge and information play a decisive factor for new customers yet only 16% see the results help retain customers. In fact, consistent and detailed 24/7 access to a knowledge base is not only an essential self-service feature but also potentially drives a holistic customer experience.
The knowledge base in the user-friendly portal helps build a centralized content repository of relevant data and insights like claim application, policy comparison, coverage details, legal terms glossary and policy details with terms and conditions. Through this insurer can discern customer needs and help customers with an opportunity to find solutions using analyzed knowledge base activity.
Maintaining a seamless knowledge base helps to create knowledge articles faster and offers customers automated localization to specific demographic and geographic regions with 24/7 access to support service without any intervention of agents or sales reps. Thus, the insurance self-service portal is a valuable tool that provides visibility of any overdue tasks and ensures to drive powerful search engine optimization to find relevant information. Therefore, most importantly the content repository needs to be reviewed and updated time-to-time for implementing an enhanced customer experience.
Traditionally, maintaining claims manually is one of the most cumbersome and time-consuming process. In such cases, customers take all their time and effort to fill out forms, gather an immense amount of paperwork, and photo evidence as well as submit them in person and wait for an agent to start the claim approval process. However, today’s digital age has transformed the customer experience in a way that requires a simple, swift, and hassle-free claim process. Thus, one of the most imperative features of an insurance self-service portal is to provide transparent information and track each stage of the claim settlement process which increases turnaround time on claim approval with effective automation and workflow systems.
Moreover, the self-service portal offers web-based forms that help insurance provider capture customer data, requests, and feedback to track customer behavior, and needs and forecast future customer-related insights. Claim e-forms are the first thing customers come across on the website while searching for any product-related information and they can fill out the form if they need a quote request and while purchasing a policy or renewing policies etc.
In addition, a dedicated workflow system enables storage of customer data, provides claim overviews, and manages communication timelines allowing customers to take control of existing and new claims processes. Therefore, in-built forms and workflow systems in place empower agents or sales reps to spend time on other innovative approaches while rendering claim approval processes using a self-service portal that minimizes time and human error.
Adopting insurance self-service portal pinpoint areas where analytics and data visualization empower insurers to monitor customer actions based on the common question raised, and get clear visibility of delivering customer value depending on preferences, demographics etc. Customer segmentation and data analysis help insurers to visualize customer journeys and touchpoints depending on personalized interests and per audience segment through the portal.
Furthermore, insurance providers offer personalized offers to engage customers with a specific product that identifies and increases the potential for cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Therefore, analyzing customer activity and needs enables insurers to implement or upgrade to future improvements and come up with effective solutions to successfully achieve defined business goals.
Maintaining an insurance self-service portal from a single source like a company website can be tricky business to take care of. Whereas, establishing different channels of interaction opens doors to providing a customized self-service portal that ensures a seamless customer experience. Insurers need to integrate existing systems with easily accessible internal business applications.
Integrating a self-service portal with third-party tools such as claim management software, ticketing tools, policy workflow systems, AI-chatbot and integrating omnichannel presence allows companies to provide better customer support, reduced time and cost that helps foster high-quality customer experience across all channels.
Creating and maintaining an easy-to-use insurance self-service portal for your customers can be a challenging process but all insurers need is to create relevant content and keep the platform up-to-date and eliminate unnecessary outdated data and generates more complexity. To achieve this successfully, insurance providers must cater to a knowledge base platform where customers can resolve day-to-day FAQs effectively which increases operational efficiency while saving time and cost.
Therefore, once the self-service portal is in place, it allows customers to find information quickly and resolve any complex policy or claim-related issue faster by reducing agent or sales rep interaction and leads to enhancing the future of customer experience.
Explore more to learn how insurance companies can make the best use of their self-service portal that make sure to boost holistic customer experience. The main foundation of this portal helps automate workflow systems that simplify relevant insurance products and services and provide 24/7 round-the-clock access to resolve real-time queries relating to policy, and billing invoices and process claim approval faster across digital channels.
Are you wondering to futureproof your insurance self-service portal to improve customer experience? Then consult our expert team who drives high-value insurance sales and customer support.
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