How tech can help life insurers enhance customer experience

Within the life insurance industry, term insurance sales are heavily influenced by price. The landscape is competitive, with agents and customers driving constant reprices – even down to pennies.  

This consumer-friendly environment has forced carriers to reassess their value proposition. What value can life insurance carriers offer beyond a more attractive price tag? 

As an industry, we know we can put more within their reach by making the most of every opportunity to help more people achieve real protection. For us, that’s putting people at the heart of every decision we make, in pursuit of better ways to meet their needs. 

Prior to the pandemic, approximately 50% of Protective’s life insurance business was conducted electronically; that figure has grown to 85%. As acceleration and adoption of digital tools in the life insurance industry have increased, so have customer expectations.  

While many carriers’ technology suites have always enabled a digital life insurance application process, the industry is continuing to evolve and find new ways to leverage technology to enhance the customer experience.

Technology built for customers
Although our industry has historically relied on face-to-face interactions, customers want to purchase their policies when, where and how it’s most convenient for them. Finding seemingly small ways to create efficiencies in the customer application process has a big payoff. It not only increases customer satisfaction, but also the number of families we’re able to protect.

When the application process is easy, potential customers are more likely to complete the process. As a carrier, our teams pay extra attention to processes like how many fields a customer has to fill out on a form, how many clicks it takes, device friendliness, or how many screens the customer encounters from start to finish.  

At Protective, customers can search for available time slots for their telephone interview as they apply online, eliminating steps and the need for back-and-forth phone calls for scheduling. Integrating calendar functions into all electronic invitations provides customers with calendar and text reminders for their telephone interview, including pertinent interview details and documentation needed for the appointment.  

Some potential customers will drop out of the process when it comes to scheduling a telephone interview – it’s committing to an uncomfortable part of the process. Developing an entirely online application process also eliminates one more barrier to help people achieve protection. 

As we implement higher degrees of automation and robotics to improve the customer experience, we will continue to shave incremental time off the application process. 

Not every customer prefers digital processes, so the ability to access a person is readily available at the click of a button every step of the way. Customers increasingly want to be in control, so let’s give them the options needed to help more people get insured.  

Support designed for agents 
With ever-changing pricing and repricing shifts, agents are drawn to products or carriers with a seamless customer experience, enabled by technology enhancements and proven agent support. 

Agents waiting to hear back on questions, cases, or underwriting decisions might lead to poor impressions and lost sales. Accessible, knowledgeable agent support paired with an enhanced customer experience is one way to deliver a differentiated customer and distributor experience. 

To meet customers’ needs and remain contemporary with industry expectations, carriers must continue investing in digital capabilities, always pushing to find new and better ways to protect people. Continuing to improve our digital tools is just one more way we are honoring our commitment to helping more people achieve the sense of protection and security they deserve.