Insurers have realized they need to become more modern to meet the ever-faster changing needs and demands of their clientele. In the meantime, technological progress and change have made customers much more independent than previous generations when it comes to obtaining information, even on supposedly complex issues.
You are no longer insured with "Pfefferminzia" for the rest of your life and the fate of your insurance policies in the hands of the neighboring intermediary, who will already take care of everything. Customer service and, above all, customer loyalty are becoming a real challenge for insurers.
Reaching customers on multiple channels
People want to finalize matters conveniently and with the least effort from anywhere, primarily with a smartphone or tablet. Cumbersome and bureaucratic processes deter customers. You want to be advised via app and online portals and with videocalls and chatbots and and... And being the main thing, not or!
Personal conversations do not lose their situational significance. Especially if it's a claim, I don't want it to he handled virtually. Here I would like the insurer's personal support. But then also experts who can answer all my questions - specialists and not the friendly but at most half-knowledgeable call center employees who live in fantasy land.
Insurers need to leave their comfort zone. The next generation of people looking for insurance will go for the insurer at the top of Check 24®'s list, not the one mom and dad have been insured with for 40 years. If it happens to be the same one - lucky them.But if the insurer doesn't have an app and I, as a potential customer, first have to arrange a complicated appointment with an insurance office and then bring along a 5-page paper application form, then tough luck, I'm going for the next one on the list, even if it's 30 euros more expensive per year.
Insurance is a template
Through modern software that has standards and yet factors in the respective needs. Applications that connect a wide variety of peripheral systems, such as online customer portals, apps and the like. Applications that can be easily adapted to the changing market and still meet all guidelines at all times.
Applications that manage the balancing act between insurance supervisory law and customer requirements unnoticed by customers. To quote a colleague "insurance is a template". At their core, the different insurance companies operate in the same way. The perfect solution is therefore a standard solution true to the motto "one size fits all", whose boundary conditions can be individually adapted.
In other words, applications that enable employees to resolve even complex issues on the phone without callers being connected three times and then put on hold for a callback. In the future, for example, it would be conceivable for an AI to "listen in" on a telephone call and suggest possible answers to customers' questions to employees on the screen. The employee becomes a specialist surreptitiously.
Modernization with platforms
The focus here is on platform solutions that offer all the necessary components and provide uniform operation – ideally with a uniform workplace so that it can process only those business transactions in a concentrated manner that have been outsourced as part of straight-through-processing.
In summary, modernization and further development of insurers is necessary in order to meet increasing customer requirements and at the same time to adapt to technological progress. Not only customers, but also employees want to experience modern application landscapes.
Talking of modernization, take an example from the automotive industry:
The "car country" Germany has relied for a very long time on its (now no longer state-of-the-art) technology of combustion engines, only to be overtaken now internationally on a lot of fronts when it comes to electromobility. Remaining in the comfort zone never pays off.
