The pandemic has encouraged carriers to remove many barriers to digital process enablement. However, when a digital experience is delivered using an inside-out (departmental) rather than an outside-in (customer) perspective, rapid digital expansion can come with major pitfalls. The departmental approach creates digital silos, which erode the customer experience and complicate integration.
Recently, I experienced the downside of digital silos with my own auto and home insurer. My experience isn’t unique, but it’s a symptom of how some carriers fund digital capability by department. When done function by function, the end-to-end customer journey is sub-optimal. This is especially true if one department is digitally enabling processes to create internal efficiencies and another is focused on customer experience and adoption.
Poor Execution
My homeowners policy needed a few updates for recent improvements, which were very easy to make via the customer portal. A few simple clicks and my policy portfolio was updated. I saw the change in premium on the portal, corresponding changes to my quarterly bill, and all was good. I was delighted! But my joy changed to confusion as I crossed over into the billing silo.
In an effort to digitize the billing process, the carrier recently switched to a new billing provider. The experience wasn’t anything like my experience making a policy change. The focus was on making things easier for the billing silo rather than for me, the customer. Payment schedules were changed without notification, overdue notices were sent in error, a new billing portal was created with a broken URL, and once I got through all of that, the billing portal said to rely on my paper invoice due to potential inaccuracies.
What happened? I used to be a happy customer, and now I wasn’t so sure. I wondered what it would be like if I had a claim, but I’ve rarely had a claim, so I pushed it to the back of my mind. Unfortunately, I had an auto claim about a month after the billing debacle.
Issues With Claims
I called the contact center to report the loss and the experience was great! It was very easy to schedule a virtual inspection. Even better, they seemed to care about me and what the best way to stay in touch was for me. I was happy again. The auto inspection experience was wonderful—but then I moved to the adjudication silo.
My only ability to contact the adjuster was through email or phone calls (not text). They also sent me letters through the postal service. This wasn’t at all what I expected, and things took forever. I thought I would try the contact center where I had previously had a seamless experience to see if they could help. Unfortunately, all they could do is route me back to the adjuster’s phone number where I could leave a voice mail. I tried the portal. The portal had very limited information about my claim aside from the claim number, my adjuster’s name and phone number, and the date the claim was submitted. Disappointment set in. It felt like billing all over again.
My claim was eventually satisfactorily resolved, but it took a long time, mostly due to communication challenges. I asked if I could get my claim payment via ACH, the same way I pay my bill. I recalled when my insurer wanted to delight me, and I hoped this was the case again. No such luck. My only option was to get the claim payment via paper check, via postal mail, and it would arrive in 7-10 business days. However, another digitally optimized experience came quickly. A customer satisfaction survey arrived via email and text asked if I had a “delightful” experience.
Changing the Perspective
This story happens all too frequently across many carriers and all lines of business. The problem is created when insurers don’t recognize the importance of designing digital engagement from outside the silos, not within them. Customer journeys need to be connected or they aren’t journeys, they are simply transactions. Segmented processes may have worked when everything was analog and paper, but they don’t work today.
Best-in-class digital insurer experiences embrace the concept of customer-centricity and simplicity. Insurance transactions aren’t daily experiences for customers. As a result, it is even more important that they are easy, frictionless, and common across all types of transactions.
When carriers seek to optimize the internal experience of departments without considering the unique experience of a customer, digital silos emerge and negatively impact the customer experience and the brand. Carriers can achieve both internal efficiency and customer delight when the customer journey is designed across silos.
I’m sharing my feedback with my carrier, and I’m hopeful that it will begin to think differently about its approach. It’s an opportunity for all of us to reshape the digital experience.
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