Digitise claims submission process to drive efficient, transparent, and customer-focused claims handling

Customers want a simple life and that means services on demand: when and in what way is most convenient to their needs. Lengthy, complex, error-prone paper-based processes are fast becoming the antithesis of a good customer care strategy. For some customers they may still have a place, but if insurers want to reap financial rewards, it is essential to automate first notice of loss (FNOL) data collection and ensure that customers can understand their claims status and receive adjuster assessment communications quickly.

Failing to digitise the claim submission process and accelerate customer journeys will result not only in a poor customer experience, but also in an unfulfilling employee experience—ultimately hitting your bottom line. How can you provide a streamlined digital journey for the vast majority of your customers and agents without leaving any customers behind?

Kyung Bae, solutions architect at Airkit, alongside other industry experts, will answer questions like this during a webinar titled ‘ Digitise The Claims Submission Process To Drive Efficient, Transparent, and Customer-Focused Claims-Handling’ on Thursday, September 9, 2021.

During the discussion, the panel will consider how to tackle the challenge of high call volumes from customers wanting updates on the status of their claims, and leverage digital workflows to reduce rising call centre traffic relating to claim status. It will also discuss how to accelerate customer care by providing self-service digital journeys, how to proactively communicate with customers about the status of their claims via email, SMS, or chat, and how to cultivate transparency and ease of access to information for the benefit of customers.

The industry experts will also look at how to reduce the time agents spend on routine status enquiries, increase agent efficiency with digital customer care, and streamline contact centre

operations to mitigate the escalation of servicing costs, and examine the best practices for putting automation to work in service of employees and customers, achieve the right balance between customer experience and agent productivity, and explore valuable use cases for transforming the claims submission process to drive better outcomes for customers and employees.

Bae will be joined by the following industry experts: Becky Kenyon, VP, field claims operations at Amerisure; Lori Pon, director of claims transformation and claim contact center at The Auto Club Group (AAA); Chris Holcombe, head of business transformation at Protective Life; and by moderator Robin Roberson, managing director at Wilbur.

Before the webinar, Bae shared with Intelligent Insurer his thoughts on the topic. He began by responding to a question about the current customer services trends in terms of call volumes, channel usage and the deployment of digital strategies.

What are the current customer services trends?

Historically, insurance companies guided customers to the phone. That was the primary channel, and the current trend is that call volumes are growing exponentially due to customers continuing to call on the phone. The deployment of digital technologies is redirecting customers to the digital channel.

Insurance companies wanted, in the past, to interact with their customers on the phone, and that’s usually the first choice with customers. Insurance companies are now trying to divert the voice channel to the digital channel. We interact with businesses that are trying to digitise their environment, and a lot of the use cases are around voice deflection to digital.

How can insurers tackle the challenge of high call volumes from customers and leverage digital workflows to reduce rising call centre traffic?

One of the typical methods would be deflection: to offer an option to say “if you are looking for a status you can click on a link and view your status”. When a claim is going through a standard process, if the carrier is more proactive in its interactions with the customers (ie, letting them know the claim is moving along and keeping them informed regularly), call volumes will inherently go down. Customers would have the latest status due to the proactive outreach.

What role do self-service digital journeys play in accelerating customer care; and how can they cultivate transparency and ease of access to information?

Self-service plays a central role in overall customer service because it allows customers to determine when and how they want to interact. You are giving customers all the tools: Maybe there is a link on the website, or interactive voice response, or some other way of getting the information immediately.

Give customers the option to divert to a digital channel. This decreases the call volume, and it gives customers multiple ways of getting what they need.

The carrier proactively reaching out to the customer when something is progressing gives the customer insight into the process, thereby offering more transparency to each customer. The agent is often collecting information from the customer.

If the agent is able to initiate a digital process, they can redirect the customer to a digital experience, and thus reduce call time. Another option is the ability to schedule a call-back time: for example, if the customer can’t wait 45 minutes on hold, but has time two hours later, the agent can call the customer back at their convenience.

How can insurers reduce the time agents spend on routine status enquiries, increase agent efficiency and streamline contact centre operations to reduce costs?

The tools to consolidate customer information for the agent become more important when they are dealing with contact centre software and claims systems. It’s often very inefficient if the agent needs to navigate between different systems to get information about the customer. There is a need to integrate the customer relationship management system with claims systems and contact centre software as well as other systems for doing queries about claims status and policy information. Providing a link to the customer, so they can fill out a form without remaining on the call, can also save agents’ time.

What are the top four best strategies for putting automation to work to drive better outcomes for customers and employees?

1. Be able to analyse the processes: Is the underlying claims process complicated? You need information to determine where to invest in automation, or to switch to digital.
2. Consider where customers get stuck: If you already have digital processes (as claims processes are complex), are there areas where the customers get stuck and do they lose their data if they interrupt the digital process? Using analytics, you can identify pain points and adjust the experience.
3. Integrate with your back-end systems: Are there opportunities to automate this? Can you automate or aggregate with automation to gather information to free up the customer services agent?
4. Use data analytics to streamline the process: Gather historical information to identify trends that can be leveraged in the future.

What would you like delegates to take away from the webinar?

In terms of the claims process, the important part is to make the customer interactions as efficient and painless as possible. That’s where the priority should be. When you digitise, it should be from the perspective of the customer by making the customer more efficient, rather than the carrier. The latter can come later.

The key takeaway from the webinar is to focus on the customer. With this mindset you can make different decisions about where to direct your technology.

Kyung Bae, solutions architect at Airkit, is speaking at our new webinar, ‘ Digitise The Claims  Submission Process To Drive Efficient, Transparent, and Customer-Focused Claims-Handling’, on Thursday September 9, 2021 at 4pm BST/11am EDT.  Register here to learn how to innovate your digital journey for customers in this upcoming webinar. If you can’t make it on the day, you’ll be sent the recording.