How to Improve the Customer Experience With Customized Document Creation and Delivery

Customer experience has emerged as a powerful competitive differentiator for insurance companies, which have made improving the customer experience a top priority. Optimizing and customizing document creation and delivery has become an important part of this effort.

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Insurers Need to Invest in CCM to Drive Customer Engagement

By Kemal Carr, President and Principal Analyst, Madison Advisors (Colleyville, Texas)

The legacy thinking on customer documents was very enterprise-focused, with very little consideration for the recipient. Payment and claim processing was the only metric utilized. Now insurers are seeing their interactions with clients as more of a conversation, and one that evolves over time. As with other verticals, it took some time for insurance firms to come to this realization. The tools to produce and distribute rich customer communications have been with us for some time, but only recently has the data to drive those conversations been available across the entire organization. Organizational silos are as much to blame as technology in keeping the dialogue fragmented.

From a technology perspective, the document delivery point will continue to evolve. From desktop, to laptop, to iPads and tablets, display devices will continue to get lighter, easier to use (who doesn't love the always-on iPad?) and even more portable. Mobile is a bit more challenging due to the display, but it makes perfect sense for specific messages and select communications. Certainly, demographics will continue to drive the discussion away from paper, so it is important for organizations to build a platform that is both scalable and extensible to support all existing channels, as well as those we don't yet know (e.g., autos, household appliances, kiosks).

We have seen legacy architecture stand as the biggest impediment to more effective customer communications management. Some clients don't even have customers' email addresses, but want to have an electronic dialogue with them. It just doesn't make sense. There needs to be appropriate investments made in order to maintain leadership as customers' preferences evolve.

Peggy Bresnick Kendler has been a writer for 30 years. She has worked as an editor, publicist and school district technology coordinator. During the past decade, Bresnick Kendler has worked for UBM TechWeb on special financialservices technology-centered ... View Full Bio

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