How to Improve Customer Experience in Insurance: A Guide for Adjusters

Exceptional customer experience drives both satisfaction and retention in the insurance industry. Let's explore proven strategies that enhance the customer journey, with practical insights tailored for claims professionals.

What Do Customers Really Want from Their Insurance Provider?

Customer expectations can sometimes feel overwhelming, but addressing their fundamental needs can significantly boost satisfaction rates. 

Customer Expectations:

Insurance customers have three key expectations that providers must meet: 

1. Seamless Omnichannel Experience: Customers expect smooth interactions across all touchpoints, from websites and apps to social media and call centers. This expectation means companies must maintain integrated communication systems where every interaction is logged and accessible. No matter which channels clients use to contact you, their history and context should be instantly accessible to agents or AI, eliminating the need to repeat their information. 
2. Personalized Insurance Recommendations: Studies show that approximately 40% of American adults struggle to understand their insurance policies. Customers value clear, personalized recommendations when selecting or modifying coverage. This targeted approach not only improves sales outcomes but significantly enhances customer satisfaction.
3. 24/7 Digital Access: Modern customers expect robust self-service capabilities - from making payments to filing claims and accessing policy information. The key is ensuring these digital tools are comprehensive and intuitive, with readily available support when needed.

Common Frustrations:

The most common frustration among insurance clients is the complexity of insurance policies. As mentioned above, almost half of American adults have difficulty understanding their policy. Customers often feel frustrated when they don’t clearly understand what they’re paying for or what support their insurer will provide. 

Another frustration for customers is the long and complex claims process. Usually, customers  place a claim after a difficult and stressful situation, which makes a complex, long claims process even more frustrating.

Actionable Tips:

Start by creating a self-service digital portal. You can work with a third-party technology provider to build it and ensure that it fits your brand and is easy to use. If you already have one, analyze its usage and use a tool such as Hotjar or Clarity to understand where your users struggle. From there, you can improve it either in-house or with a third party.

Next, create a document or comparison table to clarify your policies. Remove all jargon and use simple words so people understand what they’re buying.

Finally, you must understand your buyer journey to know what moments or events motivate people to purchase insurance. This understanding will help you target potential buyers with the right offers when they recognize the importance of having insurance. 

How to Make Communication Crystal Clear

Effective communication directly impacts claim outcomes. Miscommunication frustrates customers who expect different results and can significantly increase insurance company costs.

Why It Matters:

Clear customer communication has three key results:

1. It leads to better customer retention as clients are more satisfied with your service.
2. It increases cross-selling and upselling opportunities, as customers better understand their policies and trust you more.
3. Your reputation improves as customers speak highly of you. This improvement leads to better sales as customers recommend you to others, and there are more positive reviews online.

Actionable Strategies:

To ensure that your communication with customers is as clear as can be, follow these strategies: 

• Provide your staff with regular, practical training on handling everyday situations, reviewing agents' calls, fixing common errors that arise, and praising good problem handling.
• Create and share communication templates for emails, phone calls, and online chats using your brand’s voice and standardizing responses.
• Create useful information for your blog or website to help customers and potential clients before they speak to an agent. The best way to do this is for marketing to collaborate with sales and customer service to identify common issues and questions and address them through blogs and videos. 

Simple Ways to Speed Up the Claims Process

People purchase insurance in the hope that they never have to use it. When they do, it’s because some type of incident has occurred, and it’s the insurer’s responsibility to fix that problem as fast as possible.

Why It Matters: 

• In 2021, almost 80% of respondents to the World InsurTech Report said that they would switch insurance carriers if their responsiveness were “less than stellar.”
• The same report stated that the second-biggest driver of five-star satisfaction ratings with insurers is fast response and prompt claim resolution.
• Bain & Company also found that happier customers promote the brand, are more likely to stay with the insurer for a long time, recommend it more, and be less expensive to serve.

Actionable Strategies:

When a claim is made, you often have to wait for all the correct documentation. If these documents need to be mailed, it can take longer. If you have a self-service portal, enable users to submit claims, including all relevant documents. If a claim is being made with an agent, the agent could send the client a link to add the documents online. In this way, the claims process should move faster.

Once the claim has been submitted, you can use AI to analyze it first rather than adding it to a queue to await an adjuster. Your AI should be trained to flag potentially fraudulent claims and independently sort straightforward claims. If a claim is uncomplicated, AI can assign a value for payout and move it to the next stage to save an adjuster time. 

Handling Tricky Situations Like a Pro

Working in insurance means often dealing with different types of people who are facing difficult situations. Managing difficult situations is a vital skill in insurance.

Why It Matters: 

Managing an unhappy or frustrated client gives you the opportunity to turn a difficulty into a win. If you can sort out their problem and provide a good solution, they will have positive things to say about your company.

The Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023 found that half of customers would switch to a competitor after just one bad experience. To keep customers and maintain their satisfaction, insurers need to be able to provide them with good customer service.

Actionable Strategies:

Firstly, the insurance company should train staff to manage difficult situations. Providing practical training on handling tough customers gives your staff a basis and helps them feel more comfortable.

The training should cover three basic principles:

1. Listen to the customer. Don’t interrupt, just allow them to vent their frustrations with their situation.
2. Provide the customer with options. By giving them a choice, you give them control over the answer to their problem.
3. Follow through. If you promise to follow up with the customer later or give them extra information, make sure you do so to increase their trust. 

The Tools That Make Your Job Easier

Rather than sticking with the way that adjusters have always worked, look for tools and technology that can make your adjusters’ jobs easier and the claims process more efficient.

Why Technology Matters: 

It’s no secret that technology is changing rapidly. With it, how we work and live is also changing, and insurance is no different. 

Technology improves customer experience and satisfaction, saving insurance adjusters time and effort.

Key Features of Useful Tools:

For insurers, tools that enable you to:

1. Automate the claims process: Reducing manual data entry will reduce mistakes and speed up the process. If you have a system or AI bot that can automatically flag potentially fraudulent claims or change the claim’s stage when it has all the correct information, it will save you time and money.
2. Streamline claims: Saving all key information together, integrating your current systems, and simplifying the process is also a big timesaver for adjusters. It will help them manage and organize claims faster.

Example: n2uitive

n2uitive is the first recorded statement lifecycle management platform. You can record, review, manage, transcribe, store and share your recorded statements all within one platform. n2uitive makes recording and organizing statements easy, and it also integrates seamlessly with Guidewire and Allegis. 

You’ll never have to worry about locating your statements or ensuring they’re clear and accessible, n2uitive takes care of that for you.

Are You Tracking What Matters?

Tracking key metrics can help you assess your organization's performance. For instance, it can reveal correlations between customer satisfaction and the time it takes to close claims. This allows you to measure performance and assign teams KPIs quickly. 

Metrics to Monitor:

A few key insurance metrics include:

1. Customer retention rate: You need to understand how many customers you keep compared to how many you cancel. This number is essential for long-term profitability.
2. Net promoter score (NPS): Your NPS shows you customer satisfaction based on how likely they are to recommend you. 
3. Claims processing time: How long it takes to settle a claim on average. This is important to clients, so you should track it constantly.
4. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): To calculate CAC you divide the sales and marketing expenses over a given period by the number of new customers acquired during the same period.
5. Claim costs: This metric includes legal fees, report delays, and settling time. It shows how much you spend on each claim to understand margins better.

Tips for Improvement:

Continuously measuring metrics will help you make data-driven decisions and ensure improvements. Without this type of data, you’re constantly guessing how well you perform. 

You should also benchmark your data against industry averages to assess your performance. For instance, if your NPS is low, try talking to clients to understand their dissatisfaction and work on improving.

Why n2uitive Is the Perfect Partner for Insurance Claims Adjusters

Using n2uitive improves the efficiency and speed of your claims by making your recorded statements easy and practical to manage. It makes your adjusters’ jobs less stressful, and customers benefit from faster claims resolutions.

Ready to see how n2uitive can help you deliver better customer experiences? Explore our platform today!