AI is accelerating already-heightening consumer expectations into turbo drive, and as a result, keeping up with intensifying consumer demands is posing a greater challenge than ever — especially within high-trust industries like insurance.
Given how tightly regulated and risk-laden insurance is, the industry needs to adopt a careful approach to implementing new tech. Yet, attainable opportunities for piloting AI are within reach for insurance leaders.
● 69% feel customer engagement on their digital channels isn't producing the results they need
● 50% worry over staffing challenges that will persist without stronger tech and AI
● 93% are exploring new customer interaction tech — just 5% are satisfied now
The high level of dissatisfaction among industry leaders and customers alike suggests we're approaching a paradigm shift. But to understand the disruptions that are likely to come, we must dig deeper into the issue. What exactly isn't working about CX for insurance? And how might digitalization help resolve it? The answer may lie in three ingredients: interactions, integration and insight.
The interaction problem
The integration problem
Of course, insurance companies want to provide excellent experiences for their policyholders and agents. However, doing so is easier said than done after charting an awkward course through an earlier era of digitalization that came with innumerable bolt-on solutions, all of which promised to deliver a new era of efficiency — but weren't able to fundamentally rethink how the industry manages interactions.
In hindsight, we can all agree the first wave of digital transformation in insurance leaves today's leaders wanting more than a stack of bolt-on solutions that never fully worked together. Now, insurance needs AI-powered solutions that are integrated from the ground up.
The insight problem
Since interaction management solutions are often disconnected, it can be difficult to reconcile the full scope of data that interactions generate — let alone, derive insights. Often, this gap leaves managers and executives struggling to piece together torn pieces of a roadmap — and even when they do, it's as though each piece is written in a different language. These disparate data inputs make strategic improvements to managing interactions extremely painful, if not impossible.
The era of digital transition is over
Compliance constraints and other factors left insurance companies with no choice but to make piecemeal digital upgrades to their interactions management. But those incremental fixes only delivered incremental results.
The generative AI revolution is a clear signal we've moved beyond the earlier wave of Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS). Holistic approaches to CX, powered by purpose-built AI models and refined digital architecture, are emerging to solve today's interactions, integration and insight challenges.
These approaches enable policyholders and agents to connect with insurance companies in their channel of choice — and switch between them — without ever losing context.
Additionally, these approaches don't require manual or third-party integration to integrate with an organization's existing technologies — they come built-in with ways to work with your existing tech stack. And finally, they solve the insight problem by delivering natural language assistance and automatic reporting for single interactions — or for, say, a full quarter's worth.
Caution when adopting new tech is understandable. But growing pains are becoming less and less of an issue. And increasingly, companies that don't embrace new technologies will be left behind.
The solutions exist. The question is: will insurance companies act now — or let their competitors take the lead?
