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As the insurance industry adapts to a customer-centric mindset, health plans will need to focus their efforts on becoming a trusted brand in order to differentiate themselves. By embracing innovative technology that streamlines internal communications and provides a 360-degree view of their members, carriers will gain the valuable insight necessary to enhance customer experience and build brand loyalty, while identifying revenue opportunities.
Few would argue the impact that brands such as Amazon, Apple or Nordstrom have had on customer experience. These brands have managed to build tremendous amounts of trust and have maintained a loyal following of customers and brand advocates who are very open to their influence.
How were they able to achieve and maintain this level of trust? By personalizing the customer experience to create a positive brand. These brands are able to use the tremendous amounts of customer data that they have to successfully tailor the experience their customers have by ensuring that the appropriate products and communications are delivered to the right customer at the right time.
Know Your Consumer: Capture Metrics for Building a Positive Brand
How well do you really know your customer? Demographics are just the beginning when it comes to understanding customers. By measuring consumer behavior at every touch-point between the consumer and the carrier, health plans can learn where people are having positive and negative experiences. This knowledge allows the organization to be more proactive when engaging with members and to communicate in a manner that resonates the most in order to move membership toward increased brand affinity.
Do you have the ability to tailor plans or additional products?
The insurance industry has tremendous amounts of data that can be used to strengthen the relationship between the carrier and consumer. Utilizing real time data and analytics allows health plans to segment members based on behavioral and/or clinical personas. This presents the opportunity for carriers to identify where they can positively change these personas and offer products and services based on this information.
New technologies present new possibilities
Carriers may struggle with how to modernize their current systems, however it is not as daunting as it may seem. Innovative technologies such as industry specific CRMs and data analytics are quick and cost effective ways to enhance the systems that carriers already have in place. An industry specific CRM powered by real-time data analytics allows carriers to proactively change the customer experience and to identify revenue opportunities.
Online retailers use your ordering and site visit history to show you similar items you may like the next time you return to the site. A CRM system allows carriers to adopt the same approach based on customer interactions such as changes or additions to a member’s policy or frequency of claims. Leveraging predictive analytics, health plans can then determine the likelihood of a member to purchase new products. Equipped with this information, carriers can then build targeted marketing campaigns that maximize cross-sell conversion rates. “Cross-selling and category-penetration techniques increase sales by 20 percent and profits by 30 percent.” While these stats pertain to retail, they apply to insurance as well. Targeted marketing does create value.
For carriers to compete in this customer-driven market they have to focus on building trust between their brand and their members by having a complete understanding of the consumer and being able to anticipate their needs. Technology that is focused on the customer experience is a necessary component to carriers achieving the level of brand loyalty that brands such as Amazon have. Industry specific CRMs and data analytics provide the tools needed to gain insight into customer experience and behavior, allowing carriers to tailor products and services and drive membership retention and acquisition.