Are You Treating the Payments Process as a Customer Experience?

Amazon one-click shopping has trained consumers to expect a certain buying experience, no matter what they are buying. So why aren’t insurers providing a positive digital payment experience to retain policyholders and attract new ones?

Many insurers simply do not view payment processing as an opportunity to improve customer experience. As a result, they are using outdated and generic payment processing solutions that undermine their efforts in other areas to improve the customer experience.

When Customers Pay You and You Pay Them

Most people do not enjoy paying their bills, but they do want to pay them as quickly, conveniently, and securely as possible. They do however enjoy receiving a claim payment, also as quickly, conveniently, and securely as possible. In fact, according to a study published by Capgemini in 2017, 80% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.

This is an opportunity for insurers to deliver a better policyholder experience and improve your operational efficiency and costs.

Below are the first steps you can take to start improving the customer experience of your policyholder.

Step 1: Use your core systems to generate events such as upcoming payments due, payments overdue, policies needing renewal, policies that have lapsed, and claim payments that have been approved.

Step 2: Notify your policyholders of these events in the digital channels they prefer such as text, email, IVR, or social media.

Step 3: Provide policyholders with access to an online portal where they can see events, connect with you, and make and receive payments.

Insurers who have turned on new digital channels—such as IVR—have immediately realized improvements in retention and revenue. Many have nearly doubled their retention rate in just one month, solely from adopting a new digital channel for engagement and payments.

Conclusion

Alerting policyholders using their digital channel of choice for events is the first step. Your core systems have all the data necessary to generate alerts throughout the policy lifecycle. Provide policyholders the ability to make premiums payments, accept claims payments, and renew policies right there immediately in the same digital channel of their choice.