1. - Praveen Manjunath, Prashanth D., and Dipankar Kundu
VIEWPOINT
Relevance of customer centricity in insurance industry
Abstract
Democratization of Internet has disrupted the insurance industry by converting it
from a unique and a valued business that competed on offerings and coverage to
a commoditized business that competes on customer loyalty.
To build long-term insurer-customer relationships, insurers need to leverage digital
technologies to create a customer-centric experience that educates and empowers
customers while introducing more clarity and transparency.

2. Customer Centricity
Imperative
The services business has been closely
linked with customer experiences. The
core of the services business is not just
to provide services, but also to enhance
the experience of buying and consuming
these services, making it a distinct
economic offering separate from the
underlying services. As businesses moved
from extracting commodities to staging
experiences, they have created new
economic value at each stage by offering
more customization for the users.
The extent of customization is such
that each offering is tailor-made for
the customer in terms of its physical
appearance, associated features, and
derived benefits, leading to the creation
of memorable experiences. Also,
technology evolution combined with
information revolution has reshaped
customer attitudes and behaviors leading
to a recalibration of expectations about
interaction and experience. Influenced
by the immersive experience offered by
Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and the likes,
customers are demanding similar, and
better, experiences from every other
company that they interact with.
State of Digitization in
Insurance Industry
The insurance industry is perhaps the
oldest industry after banking that has
existed for several centuries. However,
it has been traditionally slow to adopt
digital technologies while customers
have become more tech savvy and
are demanding personalized digital
experiences. User appetite for a smooth
experience in insurance sales and service
provides ample scope for insurers to use
emerging digital technologies and elevate
user engagement.
While insurance companies have started
revamping their backend systems, they
must digitize their frontend systems to
significantly impact user experience and
infuse differentiation in an otherwise
commoditized business.
External Document © 2015 Infosys Limited

3. Key Challenges
Following are some of the key challenges
that insurance organizations face today in
their move towards digitization:
User Experience
One of the key challenges for a customer-
centric organization is to deliver consistent
user experience (UX) across channels and
products. A truly stellar user experience
must go beyond providing a good user
interface (UI) for transactions or customer
service. It must seamlessly merge multiple
disciplines of product design, marketing,
sales, and operations to influence customer
perception, thoughts, and responses
towards the insurer’s products and services.
Delivering a consistent experience and
workflow across multiple digital channels
that are accessed by plethora of hardware
and software is at the core of an insurer’s
UX challenge. Adopting advanced
technology such as HTML5 to support
multiple devices and using A/B testing to
assess user acceptance can help in building
the right solutions for the customer.
Moreover, gamified surveys and customer
focus groups combined with Web analytics
can help insurers continuously evaluate
and evolve their UX.
Customer Data Management
As in other services industries, customer
data is the lifeblood of an insurance
provider. A 360 degree view of the
customer, created by integrating accurate
and complete data from disparate systems,
can help insurers reduce resolution time
while identifying opportunities for cross-
selling/up-selling products that are more
relevant by understanding customer
buying behavior and preferences. Any data
inaccuracies and inconsistencies can lead
to fraudulent transactions that can cost
millions of dollars in penalty and loss of
credibility to the insurer.
One of the core challenges in the insurance
industry is the duplication of customer
data created by multiple channels across
systems. Adopting a comprehensive data
management policy to curate, filter, and
verify customer data using big data tools
can help eliminate data inaccuracy and
duplication problems.
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4. External Document © 2015 Infosys Limited
Omni-channel Experience
With the emergence of alternate channels
such as social and mobile, insurance
companies need to take their multichannel
capability to the next level to enhance
customer experience. Orchestrating
customer experience across all channels
allows insurance companies to manage
data flows, context transfer, and complex
handoffs between channels to offer users
a seamless, integrated, and consistent
omni-channel experience. This gives
the customer the ability to move across
channels to access product features and
complete transactions without requiring
him to repeatedly supply information for
each channel. This makes each interaction
an extension of the previous interaction,
thus giving the user access to all content,
and functionalities anytime, anywhere
regardless of the channel (Figure 2).
Customer Experience Management
For most organizations customer
experience stops once a product/service
is sold. In a business such as insurance
where the real customer experience begins
post sales, insurers need to combine the
top-down-judgment-driven evaluation
with bottom-up-data-driven analysis to
redesign the entire customer experience.
An impactful customer experience boosts
loyalty which in turn increases revenues
through repeat business, reduced churn,
and improved recommendation (Figure 1).
Value Creation Opportunities
For any customer-centric company,
exceptional customer service is at the core
of its offering. To offer such a service it is
important for the enterprise to know its
customers, their needs and wants, and
aspects that excite or disappoint them.
Following are a few key opportunities
that create value by impacting customer
service:
Figure 2 Omni-channel experience
Figure 1 Revenue growth through custtomer experience
Customer
Loyalty
Improved revenues through
 Repeat business
 Lower churn
 Recommendation
Customer Experience Management Strategies
Comprehensive strategy
to manage customers’
interactions and
transactions
Deliver information and
services that result in a
compelling experience
Holistic view of the
customer across all
products
Improve customer
conservation to reduce
lapse and surrender rates
Use analytics for
customer acquisition,
development and
retention
Omni-channel Characteristics
Customer retention
Revenue growth
Better brand perception
Web
Social
Mobile
IVR
IM
Channels

5. External Document © 2015 Infosys Limited
Unified View of Customer
An integrated customer service platform
can help create a single view of the
customer by collecting and correlating
data from disparate systems and social
media. Such platforms create immense
value to the frontline staff by providing
a holistic view of the customer across
all products. The holistic view enables
the staff with servicing capabilities such
as inquiry management, transactions
processing, case management, and skill-
based routing. Smart customer service
platforms can empower the frontline staff
in the following ways, thus creating a direct
impact on customer experience:
• A customer service platform can
integrate structured and unstructured
data from multiple sources (internal
systems and social media) and present
a complete view of the customer,
including his profile data, product
portfolio and past interactions. By
mapping the customer profiles to
personas, algorithms can recommend
suitable products to promote life event
based selling.
• Detailed customer profiles generated
through integrated platforms help
customer service personnel be
informed about the customer and
provide a consistent experience
without requesting for the same set
of information in every customer
interaction.
Role of Digital Technologies
Successful customer-centric organizations
not only use digital technologies to engage
with users, but also adopt them internally
to create efficient processes and systems in
the value chain. Figure 3 shows some of the
key components that are required to build
a customer-centric insurance company.
Driving Self Service
Customer focused technologies such as
social and mobile have a direct connect
with customers and hence have the ability
to create a large impact on the experience.
Self-service solutions deployed using
these technologies can help insurance
companies deliver information and
services at low cost while empowering the
customers.
Figure 3 Digital technologies for customer-centric organizations
Customer-centric Organization
Self Service
Driving self-service applications through social and mobile
technologies for product comparison, claims processing, and
customer service
Identifying Actionable Insights
Identifying actionable insights through big data analytics for
sentiment analysis, customer segmentation, churn management,
and decision-making
Social
 Customer education
 Prospecting and sales
 Customer service
 Customer engagement
Mobile
 Customer engagement
 Transactions on-the-go
 Value added service
 Real-time feedback
Big Data Analytics
 Sentiment analysis
 Customer segmentation
 Churn management
 Data-driven decision-making

6. Social Technologies
Social technologies are a combination
of several related technologies such as
social networks, video sharing, blogs/wikis,
knowledge management systems, social
commerce, social gaming, and others. They
serve the primary purpose of connecting
all stakeholders to create and consume
content through a digital platform. Insurers
can use social technologies to create self-
service driven customer outreach channel
for education, engagement, and support.
Customer education: Blogs/wikis/videos/
social gaming can educate customers
about the need for insurance, types of
insurance products, tips and advice to
reduce insurance premiums.
Prospecting and sales: As more
individuals connect and exchange
information on social networks, insurers
can roll out group buying discounts for
individuals with similar needs.
Customer service: A post on a Facebook
page or a tweet about a negative
experience can be converted to a ticket
followed by a corrective action.
Customer engagement: Social gaming
can be used to engage customers through
a gamification platform to inculcate best
practices, create scenarios to promote
cross-selling, and offer rewards and
recognition for loyalty.
Mobility
The explosion of mobile devices with
the increase in Internet bandwidth has
positioned mobile as an alternate channel
to the Web. The importance of mobile as
a self-service channel is emphasized by
the fact that the mobile devices are with
the users at all times and can act as pull
channels to source necessary information
whenever required.
Customer engagement: Mobile apps can
be used to provide insurance application
process, product details, comparison, tips
and advice to facilitate decision-making
along with enhancing the financial literacy
of the customer.
Transactions on-the-go: Mobile apps
can also help customers update policy
information, pay premiums (by integrating
with mobile wallet), and receive instant
quote by entering details. Apps can help
users submit claims (using the mobile to
click and upload photos of the damage in
the accident) and track the status.
Value added service: Location-based
services on mobile phones can track
individuals in case of a vehicle breakdown
and connect them with the closest
roadside services.
Real-time feedback: Auto insurers have
started recommending mobile app based
telematics to track driver behavior and
provide real-time feedback to the drivers.
This is beneficial to the insurers than the
onboard diagnostics based telematics,
as they no longer need to maintain/
service the dongles and can shift the data
transmission costs to the user.
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7. External Document © 2015 Infosys Limited
Identifying Actionable Insights
Big data has the ability to create value in
every industry. For insurance companies,
big data can provide insights into
customer behavior thereby helping them
evaluate the risk profile for effective
underwriting. Beyond underwriting, big
data and analytics have the capability to
track and monitor assets/individuals for
risks and intimate insurers on time, thus
reducing the chances of a claim. For this to
successfully happen, insurance companies
have to blend transactional data with
unstructured data.
Sentiment analysis: Insurers can use
data mining tools to extract data from
social network, blogs, chat/call transcripts,
sensors, and mobile trackers to identify
location, tone, behavior, and sentiment
of their users. This data can help insurers
to personalize insurance offerings,
marketing, and communication outreach.
Voice analytics deployed at call centers
can assess customer conversations and
derive insights that can be used to improve
service quality.
Customer segmentation: Customer
analytics can be used to analyze existing
book of business to segment customers
based on preference, behavior, and
demographics and generate actionable
insights for offering the right product-mix
at the point of sale. Geo analytics can take
advantage of online activity to identify
sales opportunities in specific geographies.
Churn management: Looking at past
trends related to policy surrenders and
lapses, insurers can derive statistical
models to predict events that lead to
policy surrenders. Insights derived by
integrating this data with data gathered
during customer servicing and from policy
administration systems can be used for
proactive policy conservation effort.
Data-driven decision-making: In
property and casualty insurance, sensors
deployed at homes, offices, warehouses
can track the changes in temperature,
humidity, and other suitable variables
to detect fire hazards. The sensors can
alert users to take preventive action that
can minimize loss. Sensors embedded
in automobiles can track rental vehicles
in real-time to restrict the movement of
vehicles beyond the predefined boundary
for which the insurance is written. Similarly,
using bio-sensors embedded in the
human body, health insurance companies
can monitor our bodies to gather data
about our behaviors and offer discounts/
incentives to engage us in healthy
behavior, thus reducing the risk associated
with a claim.

8. © 2015 Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice.
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About the Authors
Praveen Manjunath is Lead Consultant
at Infosys. He has over 10 years of work
experience in technology development,
business analysis, early stage fund
raising, growth strategy, and innovation
consulting. Praveen is currently working
with a team to identify ways in which
organizations can use digital technologies
to address emerging industry trends and
impact business outcomes.
Prashanth D. is Lead Consultant with
Insurance Cards and Payment business
unit of Infosys. He is focused on domain
consulting as part of Insurance Practice. He
has over 12 years of work experience and
has extensively worked in life and property
and casualty lines of businesses. He has
executed large-scale transformational
programs for Fortune-100 insurers in
consulting and delivery roles.
Dipankar Kundu is Group Project Manager
at Insurance, Cards and Payment business
unit of Infosys. He has over 15 years of
experience across multiple industry
verticals. He currently leads innovation,
focusing on the role of social, mobility and
analytics in insurance.
Conclusion
To drive revenue growth and achieve
differentiation, it is imperative for
insurance companies to switch their focus
from products to customers. Self service
solutions deployed by leveraging social
and mobile technologies provide anytime,
anywhere access to information, thus
creating an empowered customer base.
Integrated platforms, created by linking
disparate systems and overlaying data
analytics, help in building a comprehensive
view of the customer and in identifying
key insights to enhance sales and service
opportunities.
While the journey from a product-centric
organization to a customer-centric
organization is not easy, insurance
companies that create a comprehensive
digitization strategy will successfully
differentiate themselves from other players
who continue to rely on traditional ways of
winning and retaining customers.
References
“Make the Business Case: Better Customer Experience Can Deliver More Than $1 Billion In Revenue Growth”. Retrieved from www.Forrester.com
“What Omni-channel Really Means in Insurance”. Retrieved from www.insights-on-business.com
“Will Body Monitoring Implants Be The Future of Healthcare?”Retrieved from www.Forbes.com