How Insurance Providers Can Keep Customers Informed During COVID-19

The more people worry about their health, income, or lives, the more opportunity there is for insurers to provide guidance and answers to clients’ most pressing questions, notably to check that they are adequately covered. COVID-19 was certainly no exception. 

However, as in many other industries, the pandemic disrupted the way insurance providers worked. In-person consultations and responses became impossible during the pandemic and clients turned en masse to call centers, websites, and other channels for answers. Call centers, for example, were stretched to capacity. Not all insurance companies had the resources, systems, or digital tools in place to deal with an increased demand for information.

In addition, job losses led to increased pressure on household budgets, causing many clients to question their insurance policies and to look for cheaper alternatives. 

Insurers thus faced – and still face – two sets of problems: How to stay abreast of rapidly changing information and then communicate it to clients, and how to continue to drive more and more profitable business. 

Increased need for digitization and personalization

As insurers have tried to boost sales, they’ve become increasingly aware of the need for greater digitization and personalization. 

Insurance providers are not renowned for delivering personalized service, with clients usually buying insurance infrequently and often through a 3rd party or agent. There is not a great deal of personal interaction and insurance is also seen as a “grudge” purchase – in other words, people don’t really want to spend money on insurance policies, but feel obliged to do so. 

However, customers not only needed more information from insurance companies during COVID-19, but also became more digital savvy and demanded speedy answers to their personal and specific questions. 

Communication has therefore become more important than ever, underscoring the need for providers to be more customer focused and to find ways to boost customer satisfaction if they want to remain competitive in a far less secure business environment.  

Insurance providers need to continue to boost their offerings to include online, segmented, and personalized communication.

So, how can insurance providers keep customers informed? ‍

Customer self-help: Allow them to find their own answers ‍

There can’t be a better time to move from paper to digital systems – for every aspect of your insurance business, from lead generation through to customer agreements and follow-up customer care. 

For example, rather than call center consultations, providers could allow prospective clients to answer some of their own questions about cover, benefits management, prior authorization, and preventative health themselves. By using easy-to-set-up, no-code interactive decision trees, insurers are able to allow clients to help themselves, and update information on the fly as situations evolve. 

In the process, clients are less likely to waste time and become frustrated when dealing with call centers, leading to a more positive experience overall. ‍

Empower clients to generate their own quotes ‍

Another way to empower clients and boost customer satisfaction is to create fun, interactive ways to keep them informed and to help them choose the best products or policies to suit their needs.

An online insurance quote generator is a good example of an easy-to-build interactive tool which allows clients to compare health insurance quotes and products. In this way, they are empowered to make their own decisions, reducing the reliance on your agents or vendors. ‍

Boost the confidence of call center agents 

Sometimes call center interactions are unavoidable, but through the use of efficient interactive digital tools – call center response rates can be drastically reduced. In this way customers will be happier and it will prevent the center from becoming overloaded.‍

Clear, interactive agent scripts built through no-nonsense decision trees equip agents with the information they need to enable them to quickly find the right answer for every client, in record time. 

Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for the insurance industry – as for many other industries – the positive outcome may be that long overdue personalization and customer-centric communications, including through digital channels, are here to stay.‍

Choosing the right tool‍

When searching for the right software solution for your insurance company, look for one that’s interactive, easy to use, and reliable at scale. That’s what Zingtree offers. 

Zingtree is a user-friendly, interactive decision tree software that helps you build and deploy effective agent scripts, insurance quote generators, and other customer-focused solutions in minutes. Zingtree is already used by insurance providers around the world to increase customer satisfaction, as well as save time and money.

Interested in learning more about implementing Zingtree in your organization? Find out more today.