How insurance companies in Asia can create meaningful customer experiences

Customer experience is a crucial area where growing insurance companies have an opportunity to stand.

The Asia Pacific region is poised to be the fastest-growing insurance market globally over the next decade and is expected to grow by more than 32% in 2022 alone. Customer experience is a crucial area where growing insurance companies have an opportunity to stand out for all the right reasons. Acknowledging their customers’ emotional state and enabling solutions that reduce stress can present insurance companies with a unique opportunity; one that can help them cultivate an emotional relationship and deepen loyalty significantly.

These five strategies, when applied strategically, will help businesses understand the emotions that drive customer behaviour and gain their trust. In the current economy, setting themselves apart from the competition is critical for success and insurance companies can’t achieve this without their customers’ trust.

Plan how you’ll evolve to empathy

Asia is home to 60% of the global population, the world’s fastest-growing digital economy, and therefore set to become the world’s biggest consumer market. With such huge potential audiences, insurance brands in Asia are in the perfect position to re-evaluate how they design products and capitalise on the power of empathy. 

Embracing a more empathetic approach to customer experience doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Empathy doesn’t have a start and end, so companies should look at this as part of their long-term strategy. Take the time to understand your customers' perceptions, influences, expectations, and attitudes. Build regular checkpoints throughout your processes to keep your digital services nimble.

Make personalisation about people, not risk profiles

Mid-pandemic, companies in the Asia Pacific that focused on customer experience became more resilient and grew their customer base. Historically, the nature of the insurance business has been to look at customers as risk profiles instead of people. Now more than ever, it is important to shift this mindset and lay the emphasis on understanding customers as real people with life journeys. Utilising customer data in more meaningful ways is key to creating and delivering real value.

Insurance brands are uniquely positioned to achieve this due to the wealth of customer data that they already have. They can offer customised forms of coverage, present information in relevant ways, and proactively connect customers to the right resources when they need them. 

Superior customer satisfaction is in the details

Insurance brands typically struggle with customer satisfaction because of the nature of insurance itself. Customers often interact with their insurance companies only when they’re emotionally distressed. Especially in Asia, relatively few consumers have private health insurance. Products that include denials, deductibles, and other needed restrictions are all barriers to satisfaction.

Brands can break through this insurance satisfaction barrier by making the “must-do” process seamless and straightforward, like making claims and policy renewals. In addition, consider their aspirational needs, not only their basic ones. Who does your customer want to become? What is their life journey? Make sure your experience crosses platforms and technology seamlessly, and leverage every touchpoint as a crucial opportunity to engage.

Deliver value to every customer 

Globally, insurance customers expect brands to value what they value — Asian consumers are no different. For B2B insurance brands, that could mean expanding your focus to capture and capitalise on shifts in B2C and end-user behaviours. Though your business might not directly serve individual users, you can supply your B2B clients with products designed to meet the needs of end-user customers. 

Making what your customers value your priority is just good business sense. For example, even if premiums and costs rise, customers are more willing to stay with a brand that aligns with their values and makes them feel important. 

Use digital experiences to strengthen trust

Trust is tricky. The more a brand asks for data, the less a customer is willing to trust it. On the other hand, they still expect personalised experiences and reward brands that deliver them. You need to find the best route to gather data and distil it into actionable insights that can help customise journeys, while simultaneously aligning with your customers’ values. 

With these five strategies, Insurance brands can build trust, be more transparent with prior authorisations, make policy resources understandable and consumable, ensure customers have what they need throughout their journey, and provide coverage summaries of what customers did and didn’t use.