Value Creation through Communication – Four Digital Success Factors for the Insurance Industry

Smoope from Baden-Württemberg has accompanied us for a very long time as a startup and is now an official member of InsurLab Germany since the beginning of the year. Today they share with us four digital factors for successful communication in the insurance industry. smoope combines the reach of your digital channels with one of the most popular modern forms of dialogue: messaging. Whether on websites, apps or portals, you enable your customers and teams to communicate personally and efficiently with each other.

Scrolling through the latest unread messages with a glance at the smartphone and reacting with a smiley – communication with friends and family has never been so simple and intuitive. Rigid, inflexible communication channels are tools that no longer fit into our digital world, one would think. Unfortunately, the reality of corporate communications is often different:

Customers find themselves in a jungle of e-mails, hotlines and forms, far removed from a personal and individual dialogue. The future of the insurance industry is currently being redesigned – and never before has communication been so important as a part of value creation: increasing competition and stagnating premium growth must be offset by new customer added value.

Personal and digital insurance?

Yes, that is possible with the right communication. Insurance companies must find the courage to revolutionize their customer service, because this is the only way to win and retain customers. A good example is Sanitas Health Insurance from Switzerland: with its customer-oriented communication via In-App Messaging (powered by smoope), Sanitas achieves customer satisfaction of over 90% and ranks first in the current bonus.ch survey in terms of service quality.

Based on the experience of smoope's customers, we have identified four digital success factors that insurance companies can use to achieve digital change in communications:

Success factor #1: Analytics

What do our customers expect at which station of their individual customer lifecycle? Insurers receive daily answers to these and many other critical questions from customers and prospects. Corporate communication is a goldmine of data – but not everyone has the necessary tools to challenge this treasure to the light of day. The more digital and structured communication takes place, the easier and more accurate it can be analysed. Clean analysis coupled with reporting systems is the basis for sound and customer-oriented business decisions.

Success factor #2: Data protection and data security

Data protection is finally no longer an obscure detail that only interests a dedicated IT officer: at the latest since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal became known and the DSGVO came into force, sensitive data has been treated as an issue in society without error. Insurers can only have real trust in systems in which they can take responsibility for and control the entire cycle themselves: Transparent and documented communication infrastructures that not only meet safety requirements, but also exceed them will become the basic hygiene factor.

Success Factor #3: Intelligent Automation

Customer communication is a massive sales driver: Every positively perceived contact with a certain brand increases satisfaction and thus customer lifetime value. To ensure that more communication goes hand in hand with higher quality without becoming a cost trap, intelligent automation is a mandatory prerequisite. Smart routing of customer requests, self-service offers outside service hours or answering FAQs through chat bots: Many requests can be processed more quickly and service staff can invest more capacity in complex consulting.

Success Factor #4: Personal Omnichannel Service

Flexible and individual communication in dialog form via web, smartphone and voice control will be assumed in the future. Insurance companies that either block or ignore this social change will lose market share – especially among young customers who are at the beginning of their customer lifecycle. Holistic and networked service modules are needed to be there for customers and prospects in the future as well.

Effective communication through messaging

Personal advice is and remains one of the most important principles of insurance – but in terms of cost efficiency it must be scalable. One solution component is the use of messaging, a popular communication channel that is already 100% digitalised and is used across all ages and environments.

More information about smoope can be found here on the website.