In our last article, we discussed the concept of "concierge" insurance. Just as in the hospitality industry, the concierge is the focal point for everything required to form a positive and lasting customer experience. In insurance, the best agents do this. They form a relationship with the customer, understand their needs, then over-deliver in the moments that matter.
The only problem is that getting to know a customer well enough to strike the right chord takes time. People are living longer, and insurance is a complex product. Without the help of technology, time alone would prevent agents from making inroads with customers.
The good news is technology exists to collapse the timeframe. Let's look at three foundational ingredients firms need to quickly get to the heart of customer needs and step beyond face value to create enduring value—the kind that only comes after forming deep, personal relationships.
See also: Digitization and Enablement of Agents
Ingredient #1: AI-Led Operations
The modern world has become a cosmos of clicks, swipes, likes and purchases, congealed into unique data fingerprints we all unconsciously carry with us wherever we go. You get married and have a kid, and suddenly, realtors, wealth managers and insurance agents have your number, ready to sell you something.
What makes this possible are the artificial intelligence capabilities many providers of goods and services have available to spot emerging opportunities. AI, and more recently, generative AI, has the ability to augment agent encounters for hyper-personalization; as AI monitors the data cosmos surrounding customers and prospects, it flags life events based on relevant data and serves up the useful information.
Generative AI, when modeled on quality data, can create fleshed-out customer narratives, manifested in ready-to-access formats, that accelerate agent reaction time and speed back-end processes from contact to close. Generative AI works for sales and underwriting, as well as it does for claims and collections. If firms build their operations around AI, they will be well on their way to creating super agents.
Ingredient #2: Automation and Robotics
If firms are going to compress the time it takes to get to know someone personally, it makes sense to compress the time it takes to service their needs efficiently. Automation and, to a growing extent, robotics, will help accomplish this goal. Integrating technology stacks for digitalized operations and knocking down silos that prevent one process from fluidly leading to the next are crucial steps.
Removing manual processes altogether is essential. People are the most valuable asset, and they should be free to engage in more important tasks than pushing paper from one stack to the next.
Digitalized operations have the power to strip costs, time and effort from every corner of an enterprise and set the stage for exceptional customer experiences. This is central to acquiring the modern architecture needed to turn a business into a welcoming respite for customer and employee alike.
Ingredient #3: Clean, Streamlined Data
The data cosmos mentioned above is truly more than any human, or group of humans, can handle in a given moment—those moments that matter in the life of an insurance customer. We are literally surrounded by data points, structured and unstructured, internal and external, proprietary and public, on platforms and applications, housed on-premises and off, in every corner of the organization.
According to a 2024 IBM survey of global insurance executives and their customers, 52% of executives cite inadequate, inaccessible, incomplete and otherwise unusable data as major constraints to swiftly meeting market demands. To overcome this, firms must modernize their data ecosystems to not only openly share data on demand but also support an AI-based analytics engine ready to sort the information and serve up accurate, relevant insights in real time.
We've all heard the adage, "data is the oil that runs the machine." If firms want to truly know their customers, they need clean, streamlined data fueling their customer analysis.
See also: Underwriters' Productivity Can Double
Moving Forward
Without a solid foundation, no house can stand. Without the core ingredients of AI, automation and data to stand on, super-agent, "concierge" insurance can't happen.
Next up, we'll examine six principles to bear in mind as firms transform for over-the-top customer service.
