By Dean Baker
With the insurance landscape ever evolving, it is becoming increasingly crucial for insurance companies to embrace innovative technological advancements that introduce convenience, enhance customer engagement, and redefine marketing strategies to stay competitive.
Africa’s population remains largely underserved by traditional insurance models, underscoring the urgent need for accessible, customer-centric solutions. This highlights an opportunity for insurers to serve this market with innovative tools and solutions that can meet the changing demands of African customers.
Delivering a strong insurance product is no longer sufficient; insurance companies must also focus on delivering a robust omnichannel customer experience. Modern customers expect instant, real-time, and personalised support experiences. They want to buy insurance easily, file a claim, access basic information, and have questions answered anytime and anywhere over their preferred communication channel.
However, it is not only about technology, the key is to also create connected customer experiences that are humanised. This should be at the heart of the digital transformation efforts of insurance companies, and this is where knowing who your customers are, their channel preferences and always being there for them becomes essential.
With the rise of digitalisation, insurance companies are exploring new ways to increase customer engagement, streamline processes, reduce costs, introduce convenience, and boost satisfaction, and one effective strategy is through conversational customer experience.
A conversational experience
To exceed customer expectations, insurance companies must implement new technology, practices and processes. A conversational customer experience ticks all the boxes and focuses on building long-term customer relationships that ultimately result in greater customer loyalty, improved brand image, and more revenue.
For example, conversational experiences use tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots and virtual assistants for conversations initiated via QR codes from advertising on social media pages or click to conversation promotional campaigns. This provides customers with instant and personalised two-way communication over WhatsApp.
By integrating conversational experiences, insurance companies can scale communication efforts and unify internal operations, allowing marketers, agents and chatbots to work together to deliver one customer experience.
AI, particularly Generative AI (GenAI), has democratised innovation, enabling businesses of all sizes to harness its power. GenAI-powered interactions hold tremendous promise for insurers to deliver an enhanced, differentiated customer experience, particularly with its advanced natural language capabilities to support customer service and enhance engagement and satisfaction.
While Africa’s aggregate insurance penetration is still very low, with a penetration rate of 2.78% in 2019 compared to the global average of 7.23%, the industry has leapfrogged traditional services to some extent. This was the result of harnessing digital technology and driving innovation to find unique solutions that suit the continent’s demographics.
Overcoming digitalisation challenges
Despite this, insurance companies in Africa face several challenges related to digitising processes and meeting customer expectations. For example, complex products and policies can make it difficult for agents to effectively communicate and explain the details of policies, leading to customer confusion and dissatisfaction.
Similarly, many insurers lack a comprehensive, 360-degree view of their customers or the tools to engage them effectively at key moments in their journey, thus limiting potential for maximising customer lifetime value. Some struggle to implement the right technology to meet rising customer expectations for quick, accessible and personalised communication.
These insurance companies can enhance their customer service and provide fast, accessible, and personalised support by leveraging AI technology. Introducing AI will open up the potential to make this more accessible and efficient.
By embracing technology and adopting digitalisation and omnichannel communications strategies, insurance companies on the continent can boost customer engagement, streamline processes, reduce costs, introduce convenience, and increase satisfaction. Finding the right omnichannel communications partner with a full stack of digital channels and conversational solutions is essential to effectively digitise customer communication.
Dean Baker is the Regional Sales Lead at Infobip