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Based on SMA research, one of the biggest challenges in this decade is the explosion of customer-facing interactions all insurers need to capture and manage. Customer communications management (CCM) plays a critical role in increasing sales and improving retention in the insurance industry. A comprehensive, holistic CCM vision is essential in today's ever-changing landscape with the advent of new customer demands, shifting demographics, and the expansion of the various devices and channels that policyholders, agents, and third-party partners use to interact with insurers.

All insurers must define an approach (vision) that creates seamless flows of information that incorporate all forms of interaction, including and integrating both voice and data via a wide range of channels that continue to expand with social media elements. The vision and strategy are both essential for sales, servicing, and ultimately driving growth through new business and retention.

Insurers can start small, with portal implementations, advance technologies in the call center, workflow automation beginning with the customer and orchestrated across the enterprise, and integration of customer-facing capabilities to back-end core systems. Whatever the current technology plan is, these initiative must fit into an overall vision and approach and be part of an overall business and IT road map.