There was a time when timely response and a balanced price-quality relationship were enough to define the basis of a good customer experience in insurance. However, times have changed, and with technological evolution came new consumer habits, behaviors, and expectations.

With declining customer loyalty and insurtech joining the arena, insurers are dealing with an unprecedented risk of disruption. It’s not surprising that in a competitive industry like insurance, where retaining customers is a struggle as big as acquiring new ones, customer experience has become one of the top priorities in the industry.

In fact, as observed in a survey from Ernst & Young:

“40% of consumers decide to continue insurer relationships based on the quality of the experience.”

Moreover, according to Gallup, fully engaged customers represent a 23 percent premium in share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer.

But delivering a good and engaging customer experience goes beyond than just providing a multichannel application for your clients. It’s a significant effort and investment that spans from streamlining internal operations and automating manual tasks, to providing first-rate technology experiences at every stage of the customer cycle.

Building a Customer Experience Strategy: Opportunities and Challenges 

Delivering a great customer experience in the insurance industry is about developing an understanding and proximity between insurer and customer. In fact, according to a study by J. D. Power, 2018 U. S. Auto Insurance Study, while the price continues to be a major factor in measuring the quality of the customer experience, billing and payment, policy offerings, and online and offline service interactions have been growing in importance.

Whether a customer was hit by a car, or their house was damaged by a hurricane, one cannot forget that a claim is usually submitted under stressful circumstances. The more you can simplify the process and your customer’s life, the better. But in an overly bureaucratic industry, a good experience needs to go beyond the claim submission. Customers’ behaviors have changed, and now insurance companies must change with them. It is the innovative and forward-looking insurance companies who are able to keep up with their requirements. This includes:

  • Omni-channel and personalized experiences
  • Self-service when possible
  • Interaction where and when the customer wants
  • Speed of response
  • Data accuracy and protection
  • Seamless, consistent, and connected journey.

To meet these new consumer expectations, insurance companies must deliver solutions that differentiate them from their competitors. However, despite the insurance industry’s huge appetite for digital innovation, delivering results has been frustratingly slow.

Most insurers, especially mature businesses, are tied to complex and disjointed legacy systems requiring maintenance that consumes most of the available  human and financial resources, leaving no room for innovation. Plus, scattered data across several systems, such as customer personal data, policies, claims, contacts, and communications, continue to be a common practice in the industry. Together with the use of manual and paper-based processes, it is difficult for companies to speed up their processes and deliver a satisfactory experience that will help them reduce their churn rate. 

So, you ask: with all these obstacles ahead, how can you meet your customers’ expectations and support the acquisition and profitability of new customers with better experiences? That’s where low-code can help you. 

Improving Customer Experience in Insurance: How Low-Code Can Help

Low-code platforms like OutSystems allow insurance carriers to offer a faster and  transformative way to deliver next-generation experiences to their customers. In turn, insurance organizations are able to support new areas of growth, increasing average policies per customer, and dramatically improving customer satisfaction scores.

But what can you really build with low-code? Well, with OutSystems you can:

  • Provide  full omnichannel capabilities: Give your customers the freedom of self-service, and your business the power of process automation using OutSystems. You can deliver full omnichannel solutions across mobile, web, chatbot, and call-center, providing your customers with real-time interactions where, when, and how they want.
  • Deliver personalized experiences: Connect your entire digital ecosystem on OutSystems to knock down siloed legacy systems and orchestrate all data streams into a single viewpoint, leading to the holy grail of a 360º view of your customers. With this information, you can upsell and cross-sell to your customers not only with the most appropriate policy or service but within the right channel and right time.
  • Develop next-generation portals: With OutSystems, you can build highly customizable and flexible customer and agent portals while testing new features and functionalities in an agile manner. You can build portals that include:
  1. 360º view of customers for agents
  2. Policies, claims, and receipts
  3. First notification of loss
  4. Chat to connect the agent to an underwriter quickly
  5. Quotes directly within the platform
  6. Universal search
  7. Ability to edit customer data
  8. Real-time claims tracking
  9. Identification of suppliers allocated to claims
  10. Customers’ notifier
  • Beat insurtech and big tech competitors: Thanks to its visual development capabilities, OutSystems allows you to build agent and customer-facing applications up to 10 times faster than traditional development methods, speeding up your time to market. With our open API layer, you can connect to your entire ecosystem and add innovative solutions that use AI, IoT devices, real-time analytics, and more. You can also use a set of reusable library modules available on the OutSystems Forge to take your solutions to the next level at breakneck speed.
  • Quickly adapt to new regulations and security standards: With its highly flexible and scalable platform approach, OutSystems enables you to customize your applications in a matter of days—not months—so you can comply with new laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act. And with OutSystems Sentry, you’ll receive additional security, risk management, and monitoring to meet SOC2 Type II, ISO 27001, and ISO 22301 requirements. All of these features enable you to focus more on the ever-changing needs of your customers and less on regulatory updates.

OutSystems allows you to build unique, fit-to-purpose solutions that will help you differentiate from your competitors. And since the platform uses visual language, you can get your team up to speed really fast without spending your entire budget on training. We have several online trainings, from webinars and guided paths to courses, classrooms, and documentation so that your team can learn their own way.

Transforming Customer Experience with Low-Code

If you’re still not convinced that OutSystems is the right tool for you, I invite to take a look at real stories from our insurance customers that have been using low-code to transform their customers’ experience.

AXA

The #1 ranked global insurance company used OutSystems to build an insurance portal for brokers in just three months. The portal provides immediate online access to customer claims data from any device. Read the full story.

American Integrity Insurance Group

The P&C insurance company based in Florida, US, built an online First Notice of Loss Claims Portal that allows the insurer to triage claims based on severity and quickly assist policyholders in need—just in time for the next catastrophic storm. Find out more.

Liberty Seguros

Part of Liberty Mutual Group, Liberty has been using OutSystems to build and maintain "Liberty Connect," an integrated suite of 83 applications that serves its entire distribution network. Since it adopted OutSystems in 2004, the company has experienced a 4x customer growth and 274 percent of policy sales. See the whole story.

Van Ameyde

Van Ameyde used OutSystems to develop ECHO, a front-end system that delivers customized service for each of its clients. Thanks to OutSystems ability to integrate with SAP, Van Ameyde was able to keep all the core functionality in the ERP system including all the fiscal and legal requirements across countries, in addition to the core secure payment functionality. Read more.

Universal Puerto Rico

Situated in the infamous “Hurricane Alley”, Universal Puerto Rico wanted to be ready for any conceivable eventuality. So, the company used OutSystems to boost innovation and eliminate the learning curve required to create new applications and build several applications to better serve their customers better during the next big natural disaster. Check them all.   

Want to Learn More?

If you want to know more about how OutSystems can help you deliver enterprise-grade digital insurance solutions faster, check our Insurance page. If you need to see it to believe it, join our on-demand demo, How to Satisfy Customers and Delight Users With Engaging Experiences.

How to Satisfy Customers and Delight Users With Engaging Experiences