Taking Out the Trash

For property and casualty insurers, using information technology to communicate with policyholders is a critical part of business success. In an industry that generates vast amounts of complex information – much of which is jurisdiction-specific and needs to be delivered to clients – using IT to meet customer communication needs is nothing short of mission critical.

However, although many insurers have up-to-date and customer-friendly Web sites, they are still sending black-and-white sheets of paper – which are difficult to read and look like they were designed in the 1980s – to deliver policy information to policyholders. Many insurers are looking to upgrade to state-of-the art systems in various areas of their business; all too often, however, these firms miss the opportunity to reinforce their brand and demonstrate the same quality of communication in key transaction-based documents as they do when dealing with the customer using a variety of other means.

Rewriting and redesigning information, as well as converting the data from an older system to a new one, can increase the complexity of an IT upgrade. However, there is no time like an IT upgrade to assess the content and quality of the communications. The time-consuming and labour intensive process of migrating data provides the perfect opportunity to examine the content of the firm’s communications and determine how to improve message delivery, as opposed to making costly investments twice.

Typically, impersonal communications to clients arise because of the numerous documents and channels that insurers need to manage. Letters, statements, forms, policy declarations, and direct mail are all examples of crucial touchpoints insurers use to reach policyholders. This content is delivered through multiple channels, such as print, email, Web sites and agents or brokers.

Different supporting departments within a firm tend to manage these disparate touchpoints and channels manually. Insurers therefore face the complexity of coordinating and measuring the delivery of key messages and offers to their customers.

Further complicating matters, there is little control over content and workflow; version management can be either ad hoc or non-existent. As a result, insurers sometimes have a hard time managing what goes out to policyholders.

Unfortunately, the lack of coordination can result in erroneous or conflicting message delivery. While technology advancements and trends in message management have now made it possible to resolve these challenges, many insurers are not taking advantage of these new capabilities.

What can insurance companies do to increase the value of their customer touchpoints in 2007? Businesses will want to pay attention to the following three trends:

1. the importance of clear and effective information design;

2. the personalization and delivery of marketing messages in compliance documents; and

3. the need for a communications infrastructure to help unify the messages delivered across the various customer touchpoints.

EFFECTIVE INFORMATION DESIGN

Typically, compliance touchpoints such as claims documents and policy statements are sent through a production process. An IT system pulls information out of databases, puts the information on a piece of paper and sends it to the policyholder. The resultant document will be the industry standard transaction statement.

For many clients, these statements are difficult to understand and don’t clearly articulate the next step in the service process. The more complicated the product, the more complicated the touch-point. Clear communication is an ongoing challenge for industries such as insurance and healthcare, which have a lot of complex information to communicate to the customer.

Effective information design focuses on the content and the way it is presented to the reader. It ensures the customer can logically follow the flow of the content, find information easily and most importantly understand the message.

Solid information design, coupled with creative design that reinforces the corporate brand, is essential to providing clear customer communications and enables a business to transform its compliance touchpoints into customer touchpoints.

One example is Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana Inc., one of the largest publicly traded health benefits companies in the United States. Humana saw an opportunity to transform its members’ experience. It provided its members with a statement (similar to those in the financial services market) that would help members understand their benefits and better plan and manage their healthcare costs. By pulling relevant data from their global database and creating personalized statements with relevant customer messages, Humana has enabled members to quickly and easily track their healthcare costs while reinforcing the company’s brand.

MERGING MARKETING WITH COMPLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS

Technology has come a long way in the last decade. As we transform compliance touchpoints into customer touchpoints, we are also seeing the convergence of marketing communications such as direct mail with compliance communications such as statements and bills. Today, companies should take advantage of the capability that exists to streamline the delivery of messages through different touchpoints and channels.

For example, the first step an insurer should take is to conduct a communications audit of all key touchpoints to identify and eliminate irrelevant or redundant mailing efforts to the consumer. This might mean incorporating content from the direct mail channel into claims statements or other compliance documents. Streamlining communications in this way can reduce the quantity of touchpoints a customer receives, by focusing on increasing the value of one particular touchpoint.

The next step is to enhance the value of the message by personalizing the content. Companies have access to a wealth of information about their customers. Where possible, insurers should strive to link their silos of information to deliver a holistic communication experience. Information can be used to target specific content at individual customers.

Compliance touchpoints, because of the very nature of the information they contain, are read more frequently than marketing-only, direct mail pieces, which typically end up in the garbage. Assuming the organization needs to send the compliance touchpoint anyway, there is a compelling argument for sending targeted marketing content through well-read touchpoints in which the organization is investing anyway (i.e. such as compliance touchpoints).

CONTENT DELIVERY SOLUTION

A communications infrastructure can help organize the various touchpoints so that they all reinforce each other as part of an overall communications strategy. A centralized process for product and marketing owners to manage their targeted content is important. To maximize the potential to deliver a clear message and ensure a coordinated program, the content should be authored in one place for possible delivery across multiple touchpoints and channels.

In addition, by centrally managing targeted content, firms can gather important delivery and response statistics, which can then be used to further refine or create new marketing campaigns.

Once insurers have identified their customers’ needs and preferences – and co-ordinated their communications efforts to coincide with interactions with these customers – they can be more responsive to customer choices. Delivering clear, customized customer communication is not an impossible feat. Insurers taking a co-ordinated approach to their customer communication and document processes will ultimately avoid the trash bin and achieve more profitable customer relationships.

Nick Romano co-founded Prinova in 1998 and has been helping Fortune 1000 clients to create and deliver clear, personalized direct mail, bills and statements. For more information, visit www.prinova.com.