The Future of Client Engagement
Most insurers in today’s digital-driven world rank client engagement as a top priority. Client engagement, most often measured through company social media and website traction, is a telling statistic of customer satisfaction. Today’s advanced technologies, such as Generative AI and machine learning, are already driving client engagement to new heights through enhanced user experience and operational efficiency. But what does the future hold for client engagement? What technologies should today’s forward-thinking insurers invest in for more seamless and personalized customer journeys? Yoni Etiel, Sapiens’ Senior Director, Digital Product Management joins host Amanda Ingram, Sapiens’ Product Marketing Manager, in a discussion on the future of client engagement in this week’s podcast.
Amanda Ingram|Yoni Etiel
Amanda Ingram: Hello! Welcome to the Sapiens Insurance 360 podcast. I’m your host, Amanda Ingram, Customer Proposition and Product Marketing Manager at Sapiens, and I’m so glad that you’re out there listening; this is where we discuss the latest news, trends, and issues from across the insurance solutions and technology spectrum.
As someone who is closely involved with customer support and engagement, I know first-hand that insurance clients are no longer request engaging, personalized digital experiences; they actually expect them. They have come to appreciate – and even demand – personalized digital engagement that caters to their individual needs. And as such, digital engagement methods, their best practices, and impact, are frequent topics of conversation in the insurance space. But one of the big questions in these discussions is, as with all of today’s technological innovations, including generative AI and leveraging customer data, is and how will client engagement evolve? What can we expect 10, 15, 20 years in the future?
To help answer these questions and more, joining us today is a very special guest, Yoni Etiel, Sapiens’ Senior Director, Digital Product Management. And just a little background. Before joining Sapiens, Yoni worked in product management in several digital healthcare concerns. He also worked as a professional branding expert, and later as a partner in a boutique consultancy agency at multinational corporations, NGOs, and startups creating their value propositions and shaping the products and services. Prior to his career in marketing, Yoni worked as a professional stage and screenwriter and director. Yoni, welcome to the program. That’s quite an eclectic background you have there!
Yoni Etiel: Yes, and I’m employing all of it for our clients. So, Amanda, thanks so much for having me today.
Amanda Ingram: I’m very excited to have you here. Yoni. I’m very excited to hear what you’ve got to say. So let’s get started. Yoni, what do you think makes digital client engagement solutions so important in today’s insurance business? And what do you think is going to be the future in the industry from a digital engagement perspective?
Yoni Etiel: That, that’s a great question to start with. Let’s look first on what are the things that make digital channels different, right? So first, potentially, they’re available anytime and from anywhere, which means that our store is always open for business. They enable everyone to start and complete processes in real time, get offers, close deals, file claims, or just change your address. And as they are mostly self-service in nature, there are more operational [and] efficient, which means they’re also easily expandable and scalable. So if you think about an insurer, a carrier, if they have more products to sell, more geographies to expand to, you know, employ more agents, reach out to more customers. All of this is easily achievable through digital. In order to make the most out of these channels, we may need to employ a few capabilities. So here are a few examples. Machine learning algorithms can be used to support smart decisioning and data enrichment capabilities can support a better user experience. When thinking of streamlining the experience, then being able to offer service at the right time for consumers while being able to influence their choice in real time. On the insurer side, streamlining translates to straight-through processing, as well as other ways of automating processes, which in turn contributes to operation efficiency altogether.
Amanda Ingram: It’s fascinating. Yoni, you know, when you talk about streamlining the experience, I mean, I can speak from personal experience. I mean, just a few days ago, my boiler decided to spring a leak, and I had to literally go onto the mobile, connect with, you know, my insurance company actually and say I’ve got a leak, what do I need to do? And they were friendly and they were so smooth and so efficient in the way that they literally booked the repairing, the guy was here the following day. And, you know, it just made that whole interaction very easy and very less stressful, I would have to say. So, you know, good to know that people are thinking about that.
Yoni Etiel: Yeah. And you know what’s interesting? That I think the statistics show that roughly 15, only 15% of, you know, policyholders will actually go through this experience. But these are actually the people that become the amplifiers for the experience. So if you had a good experience, you may want to share, what an amazing experience my insurer gave me. And if the experience were to be bad, then you would also amplify that. So this is why it’s so important to, for I think for insurers to invest in those 15% of their clientele.
Amanda Ingram: I think that’s a great point. You know, it’s very, very challenging sometimes when you’re going through those claims experiences or reporting experiences of, my car’s broken down, I need someone to come and pick it up and collect it and fix it for me. Those experiences are what really drive, you know, that repeat business that you get from the consumer. And digital is really sort of enhancing that. And in general, customer retention to a certain extent, do you think?
Yoni Etiel: Definitely.
Amanda Ingram: Thank you, Yoni! Right, let’s think about P&C. You know, in the P&C insurance space, it can be slightly different between whether there is more or less touch points, more or less interaction with the customer and then, than other sectors, for instance, like healthcare, for instance. And what do you think the new client engagement approaches are going to be for P&C insurers? What are they considering for the future?
Yoni Etiel: Well, Amanda, in my view, first, let’s understand what are the initial conditions for for these P&C personal lines? So in my view, you know, in many cases, the value proposition is is fairly simple and flat in that way, that it’s very similar to other value propositions. On the other hand, it’s very easy to self-purchase, right? Anyone could buy their car insurance or home insurance by themselves.
Amanda Ingram: I completely agree with that. Completely.
Yoni Etiel: Yeah. But in return, it’s very hard to differentiate just through the insurance content alone between, you know, different offers or different carriers. And then, in my view, this is where price becomes a major factor for the consumer, because if they cannot differentiate between the offers, then they only look at the, I don’t know, at the pounds, euros, or dollars of the offer, right?
Amanda Ingram: I’m guilty of doing that myself. And then, you know, yes, we work in the technology and the insurance sector, but we, even ourselves, we are guilty of saying, where’s the cheapest option? Not necessarily where’s the best coverage.
Yoni Etiel: Yeah. And I think this is exactly what yields things like, you know, those engines where you can compare between different offers. And I think this yields two basic strategies, in my view. First of all, insurers can think how they can make the most out of any existing touchpoint. So can they better personalize and tailor the experience to make relevant suggestions for their consumers? And can they make the or keep the experience short and sweet? So, you know, people don’t tend to enjoy very much going and purchasing insurance and insurance altogether, it’s not a kind of a passion or passionate purchase. It’s based on needs. You know, I need to get, I need to get [it] over with.
Amanda Ingram: Very much a “must-have” scenario as opposed to [an] “I-want” scenario.
Yoni Etiel: And definitely, when I’m not passionate, I want to get it over with. And the other thing is can they go the extra miles and provide something more? I mean, anything from a nice voucher or, or some thought, or anything that is beyond the, you know, what is expected from the carrier. And the last point in this respect would be to employ Gen I, Gen AI, I’m sorry, capabilities to enable a natural conversation because in in many cases, for end consumers, the terminology is confusing. They won’t be using or understanding the terminology. And if they can express themselves in their own words, they can probably get what they need faster and in a better way. And the second strategy would be to create more touchpoints. So this can also be, you know, split between two categories when it’s insurance related. So the carrier can offer more services, let’s say, for preventative measures. If we’re talking about car insurance or home insurance or pet insurance, you can employ things like telematics and literally be part of the ride of your insured, and you can employ other and, you know, IoT-based services. And the other option is non-insurance touchpoints such as charity and donations. We know already that there are insurance companies that are already employing such methods. So anything that amplifies the experience around the topic of the insurance, people are very attached to their cars, to their homes, to their pets, and even to, when they take a trip, you know, abroad and have a wonderful vacation. All of it is full of emotion and carriers can tap into that.
Amanda Ingram: I think that’s a very good point, actually, the emotional side of the insurance journey when you purchase an insurance, journey, is certainly starting to become a lot more prevalent now. You know, I mean, I’ve done it myself. You know, when we show the car or we’ve insured our pets and we said, you know, we want to go on holiday, and we’re taking X-Y-Z or by the way, did you know you can get this as a bit of a bonus. Two or three cups of coffee or whatever it might be.
Yoni Etiel: Yes.
Amanda Ingram: And I think that’s very much becoming at the forefront.
Yoni Etiel: Yes.
Amanda Ingram: But I think there’s some other things to consider. You know, so what do you think are some of the key learnings that these digital engagements and this digital engagement wave is bringing from the insurers’ perspective? Do you think that we’ve actually achieved that very streamlined, smooth interaction? Or do you think there’s more to do?
Yoni Etiel: That’s a great question and I’m not sure I have a very soothing answer. I think there’s an ongoing need, you know, for insurers to balance between the inherent complexity of the insurance business and the need for simplicity in the digital channels. So not all products can be simplified. You know, selling insurance is not as simple as selling T-shirts. On the other hand, oversimplification may end up with unwanted business results. Just think about loss runs. If you’re offering something that you are as an insurer, not protected enough, or that you open too much room for interpretation. And on the other hand, educating consumers overall is a very costly effort and not always a very successful one, especially when done on the fly. Just imagine that a consumer is going on a quote and buy journey and you also need to educate them on what the terminology means. What would be the effect of the, you know, of the different covers or benefits on their lives. It’s not easy to do it anytime, and on the fly, it’s even harder.
Amanda Ingram: I would totally agree with that. You know, it’s one of those things that insurance is a bit of a black box for some people, isn’t it? People just don’t understand it and don’t want to understand it. They just want to know they’ve got the coverage that they need.
Yoni Etiel: And I think, it may explain why it seems that insurance [hasn’t] really found the perfect spot yet. Only very few companies have found the right balance of managing this complexity in a way that really serves the user and leads to ongoing engagement and real digital business interaction with their customers.
Amanda Ingram: I think it is a fascinating topic and we could talk about it all day, I’m sure. And there is a couple of things that I’d like to touch on. You know, when we talk about digital, that could really normally, nine times out of ten, means the consumer, direct to consumer engagement. But what about the other side of the coin where there’s a lot more interaction now with what we call the brokers and the agents that are managing the insurance on behalf of the insurers? So, you know, the digital capabilities that we have, they aren’t just for consumers anymore. You know, they’re a lot more focused now on the B to B to C scenario. So how do you think and can you elaborate, and how that is changing the way digital engagements have had to adapt to support the consumer business market as opposed to just the direct consumer market?
Yoni Etiel: Great question. And for me to answer that, I would need to widen the perspective a little bit and touch on the way digitalization has affected our lives altogether. So the way I see it, is we were already on the trail heading for complete digitalization of all aspects of our lives when, as you probably remember, Amanda, as well as probably most of our listeners, COVID came to visit a couple of years ago.
Amanda Ingram: It came to visit and stayed for a while!
Yoni Etiel: Stayed, is still here!
Amanda Ingram: Absolutely!
Yoni Etiel: And when it came, it really rattled the cage in the sense that it turned that trail into a highway of transformation, so to speak. And, you know, we suddenly had to do everything remotely. Our shopping, not just our shopping, but managing our financial affairs. And also insurance.
Amanda Ingram: It made a big impact, didn’t it, on the digital engagement that everybody has now. Even my parents are slightly older and even they now embrace digital banking, which they would never have done pre-COVID.
Yoni Etiel: Definitely. My mother made her first shopping of grocery online.
Amanda Ingram: Same!
Yoni Etiel: You know, everyone had to adapt. And this is really a great opportunity for insurers. So if we agree that we all live our lives now through digital devices, whether it be our laptop, or our phone, and maybe later some strange goggles taking us to a, you know, a deep virtual reality. We are gradually coming to expect the same level of slickness, of slick experience everywhere we go. It’s no longer, reserved for our private lives. Also, when we go and are, you know, working in our professional systems, and you know, we expect the same level of slickness. So my first point would be that I would argue that not only agents and brokers are now expecting this type of slick experience, but also back-office users, such as underwriters [are] also coming to expect a slick experience when, you know, when we shift between the different platforms we are using. One moment, we are an on Facebook if you’re on my age, or TikTok if you are 20 years old, and then you move into a, I don’t know, a portal or any other kind of engagement platform, an insurance or a banking system, suddenly that the gap seems very, very, how should I say, demanding or uncomfortable.
Amanda Ingram: The user experience you talked about, you know, the actual physical look, feel…
Yoni Etiel: Yes!
Amanda Ingram: Usability, capability, etc.
Yoni Etiel: Yeah. Just think about it. If you shift between YouTube, that belongs to Google, and you move into Facebook or Instagram, then, you know, you see the same kind of habits reflecting back from the UI. And when you go into the insurance platform, suddenly you need to learn something which is unimaginable in 2024. So this is a good segue to my second point, which is there’s a gradual, you know, generational shift. And the new generation of insurance professional already expects a friendly, smart, and even, dare I say, self-explanatory interface, right? They want to move from Facebook or TikTok into something that they can easily understand and operate. And my last point in this regard would be that for customers and agents, there are three other key elements. They would look for context of the information.
So for consumers, it’s a very focused, laser-sharp kind of an interest. They need to do something very specific when they engage with the carrier, they want to buy something, they want to report something, they want to change something. So it really abides by the old UX cliche, get in, get what you need, and get out. And for brokers and agents, it’s the other way around. They are met with an abundance of information and the expectation from a modern system is to help them focus. They help them prioritize, to find exactly what they need to see what’s urgent, what’s unattended, what could be profitable. So, and just to tie this up, you know, there was a very important theory called the “Theory of Constraints.” Many years ago, the late Dr. [Eliyahu] Goldratt who invented or created this theory so that if you needed to summarize his whole theory into one sentence, he would say, you need to do what to do and what not to do. So, this is the power of focus. The second thing would be personalization of the experience, to make it relevant for them and easy to operate. So again, consumers would expect the personalization to touch on who they are, what they need, how they should be addressed, etc. And agents and brokers and others are more about how they can influence the interface itself, how they can make the interface better, serving the way they like to operate their business, where they want to place, you know, elements in the UI, what they would like to consume out of the digital menus, so to speak. And lastly is omnichannel. So omnichannel is there too, that people can easily manage more complex processes, right? They want to be able to follow up and monitor processes, and they want to be able to shift it from one another and pick it up for easy completion of these processes. Just imagine a customer starting a quote and buy, and for some reason they are stuck. They can, you know, contact their agent and on a digital channel, the agent will be able to pull up whatever they already started doing and help them complete it. We know that customers hate to repeat that, you know, the need to provide information.
Amanda Ingram: Absolutely. That whole process of having to repeat things or do things twice over or three times over, it’s just, it’s a total anathema to the younger generation these days. They want to do it once and done. Once and done is important. And that omnichannel experience of being able to pick up and shift from one channel to another channel and back again, very seamlessly, seems to become a real, a real thing that people want to be able to achieve these days. You know, I don’t want to have to go from this screen to that screen into that screen and back to this screen again. If I want to start it on my mobile, and move to my laptop and complete it there, or on my iPad or wherever it happens to be, that seems to be a big, big focus.
Yoni Etiel: Yah, exactly, so it’s about when its comfortable for me in the device that I want to do it. Maybe I want to start somewhere, but the device is not comfortable. I want to shift from my mobile to my computer, etc. And I think that insurers would also want to employ best practices for marketing, such as remarketing, retargeting. And this is also part of an omnichannel experience. And the other way around, when agents or brokers want to, I don’t know, push a document for customers to sign or have them read something, or have them complete something, upload something. So this whole capability of, you know, ping-ponging between one and the other is so, so important that everyone would be happy and would be able to complete these processes.
Amanda Ingram: So I quite like the idea of that the journey, if you let’s call it that, or the experience, is completely device independent. It can just move and shift quite seamlessly, and people just pick up and complete as needed.
Yoni Etiel: Definitely!
Amanda Ingram: Well Yoni, thank you! It’s been fascinating. Great advice and great insights and a topic I’m sure that we’re going to come back to again and again because there’s so much more to explore and it will undoubtedly remain a topic that not only is going to grow, but is going to absolutely streamline peoples’ experiences as well, so thank you!
To our listeners, as always, thank you so much for spending time with us today. We love hearing from you, so if you do have any comments or you’d like to follow us on social media, then please let us know! Please reach out to us on our channels, and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast and once again, thank you for listening! We’ve got more coming, so be sure to tune in next time to Sapiens Insurance 360.
