Pegasystems lists five reasons why the industry should embrace hyper-personalised customer interaction
Competition among insurance companies is intensifying. As a result of digitalisation, the market is changing rapidly. Customers are becoming increasingly demanding. Concepts such as customer retention, a more personalised approach and customer centricity have therefore long been important strategic goals for insurance companies.
From generic to personalised campaigns
Yet insurance companies still too often deploy segment-oriented, generic campaigns and one-way communication. This leads to disappointing results. The reason is not - as is often claimed - that insurance companies know too little or nothing about their customers. Rather, the crux is that they do not sufficiently use existing knowledge.
Companies like Bol.com, Spotify and Google act as role models by leveraging their data for hyper-personalisation. They not only offer personalised products, but also customise the interaction with their customers. Successful examples can also be found in the insurance sector. For instance, a large Dutch insurance company managed to increase its online up-sell and cross-sell sales by 27 per cent thanks to personalised real-time communication.
Pegasystems lists five reasons why the industry should embrace hyperpersonalised customer interaction:
1. Hyperpersonalisation instead of customer segmentation: Customers each have their own personal desires, ideas, expectations and life situations. This means that the days of broad campaigns planned, driven and processed according to a timetable are really over. Customers want to receive tailored offers at the right time through the right channel. It is more important for them to know what their insurer can do for them right now, rather than receiving yet another generic and irrelevant e-mail.
2. Knowledge in silos is useless: Hyperpersonalisation requires detailed customer information at every interaction step within the organisation. Information hidden in separate systems has no value unless it is aggregated in a central database accessible to all authorised employees. Only then is hyper-personalised interaction possible.
3. From data pool to centralised brain: This data pool is the precondition for the centralised brain, in which all information is processed and then made available to make optimal decisions. As a result, employees no longer spend time sifting through large amounts of mostly useless information. They now receive concrete suggestions for the 'Next Best Action' (NBA), for example, which optimally aligns both the interests of the organisation and of the customer in question.
4. Real-time action and response: The centralised brain has all the information it needs to determine the ideal time to contact the customer, through which channels, with which scope and with which messages. Because both customer history, current customer situation and external factors are taken into account, the customer feels understood and supported. This ensures customer engagement and customer retention.
5.Insurance part of ecosystems: Insurance is increasingly part of ecosystems and platforms. For example, those who lease their new car through a mobility portal often also take out the appropriate insurance there. Only in exceptional cases is there customer contact, such as when reporting a claim. On these kinds of platforms, insurance companies are just one of many parties. Therefore, it is important that they build their own platforms to offer hyper-personalised services. Instead of the proverbial role of co-driver, they are at the wheel themselves and can generate more valuable customer contacts in a targeted way.
"Hyperpersonalisation is not rocket science if you use a decision support system," explains Peter van der Putten, Director of the AI Lab at Pegasystems. "This makes it possible to actively approach customers at the right time with the right offer. This contributes to increased customer loyalty and revenue growth."
