3 Steps To Build Trust And Elevate Your Insurance CX

For insurance companies, attaining customer trust can feel insurmountable. Yet the customer journey offers unique opportunities for building trust.

This article covers three approaches insurance brands can use to enhance trust and deliver comforting and supportive customer experiences.

1. Go beyond touchpoints
2. Uphold the data value exchange
3. Maintain resilient systems
    

Insurance companies face a particularly steep slope when it comes to building customer trust. Products are often bought out of necessity but never used, which can leave customers feeling like they’ve wasted their money. When products are used, there are often guard rails like deductibles, authorizations and denials for customers to contend with. Fortunately, with the support of digital solutions, these need not be obstacles to developing trust with customers. 

In our latest white paper series on Strategies for Differentiated Customer Experience, we delve into five key elements of CX: empathy, personalization, satisfaction, trust and values. Drawing from that exploration, we present here some practical methods for insurance brands to fine-tune their trust relationship and provide experiences that don’t just positively impact growth, they improve their customers’ lives in meaningful ways. 
 

1. Go beyond touchpoints

The most critical insurance customer touchpoints are generally claims submissions, policy renewals or direct bill payments, and it’s certainly imperative that each is a smooth experience. But outside of those interactions, customers are often motivated to gain knowledge about how best to support their family, reach retirement or achieve their life goals. 

Insurance brands can help customers better prepare for pivotal moments, both the unfortunate and the celebratory, by ensuring they have everything they need throughout the entirety of their journey. Here’s how:

• Communicate policy resources in a manner that’s easily understandable
• Convey the product’s side benefits clearly (eg. transportation membership)
• Be open about drug coverage and prior authorizations
• Provide coverage summaries of what the customer did and didn’t use
• Put information, tools and resources right in the customer’s path
   

Making resources easy to find and being transparent about what’s contained within them goes a long way to building trust with insurance customers. Digital solutions offer a range of options for facilitating all of the above suggestions.
 

2. Uphold the data value exchange

Customers are becoming more comfortable with the data economy, but they must see the benefits of engaging. Data represents a value exchange, and should supply relevant returns to the customer. With the luxury of having extensive information about their customers, insurance brands are in an ideal position to:

• Offer specified programs and coverage
• Present information in a way that’s most relevant to each customer
• Connect customers to the most appropriate resource (eg. HCP network)
• Use micro-experiences or positive interventions (eg. alerts when nearing a spend limit)
• Reward customers who opt-in to marketing campaigns
• Direct customers to needed resources (eg. financial forms)
• Suggest other products that might be suitable for the customer
• Ease the transition if a customer decides to switch to another product
   

The above actions build trust because they demonstrate to customers that their insurance company is looking out for them and “has their back.” Digital solutions can automate these processes, making them a seamless part of the customer experience.

We worked with a leading American health insurance provider to build a digital tool that made reliable Medicare recommendations for members based on their budget, health needs and location. The solution was personalized using data the organization had already collected, so the customer didn’t have to start from scratch.
 

3. Maintain resilient systems

Insurance isn’t typically renowned for being early adopters of technological advancements, but now is the time to take the leap as people are increasingly shopping for their insurance online and half of consumers opt not to engage with a company lacking an online experience.

While engaging with a digital solution, customers often hop across multiple technologies and they will complain about glitchy, over the top, or confusing systems that impede their experience. To adjust to evolving demands, insurance brands should:

• Enable platforms for experimentation and constant change
• Build resiliency into their digital ecosystem
• Test and deploy in a process of continuous delivery
   

People often purchase insurance hoping they’ll never need it, but when they do, the experience should flow as expected. Here again is an opportunity to grow trust by showing customers they can rely on the brand’s solutions, particularly during their toughest times.

Even though deepening the bonds of trust between insurance brands and their customers can seem difficult, there are methods for overcoming barriers. Along with digital solutions, these approaches can be turned into exceptional customer experiences.
 

To discover more strategies for enhancing your customer experience, download our white paper, From Profiles to People: Five Strategies for Differentiated Customer Experience.