Virtual Viewpoint: Communications Technologies Reduce Costs, Improve Customer Service

Question:  Insurance companies face the difficult reality that two critical needs must be balanced. So, reduction of operational costs often gets pitted against the provision of better customer service when it comes to priorities and budget dollars. Is there a way to achieve both goals?

Wilson: Integration of applications has always proven effective when attempting to create a more efficient overall process. The efficiencies gained by these integrations allow for more of a decrease in policy and claim processing times, in turn cutting down on costs and improving overall customer service.

Additionally, given the advancement of technology, claims systems and policy administration systems are making it easier to integrate with other business applications. Many carriers are able to leverage internal resources for these integrations, so the cost for doing so has decreased.

However, one of the biggest integration benefits that many carriers overlook is the ability to integrate all business applications with communications and customer interaction details.

For years, a phone system has been simply a phone system. With many carriers making the move to software-based communication platforms, they have the ability to share data between not only their administration systems, but also link all policyholder interactions with these systems.

Many common insurance interactions, such as claims reporting and inquiries regarding coverage, are handled by manual business processes which access information in various systems with disparate workflows taking place.

Metrics are tied to each business application, but not the overall process. The result is lack of insight into performance and interaction, resulting in an inability to effectively impact it. Hence, the increased interest right now in business process automation.

What's exciting is that the business process automation field has advanced, and today, insurers have new options that are not only simpler to deploy and use, but also more powerful.

For instance, insurers can now opt for solutions which utilize a communications platform as the basis for the entire business process lifecycle. This takes the concept of simply routing workflow items, and expands it with insight into how long each process is taking and what's happening during that process—including every communication related to the process—through real-time monitoring and end-to-end reporting.

These new solutions are more flexible as well, and insurers can use them for high-level process control, which enables a proliferation of existing applications to work together (including ERP, CRM, and even Excel spreadsheets), or use them as part of a business process.

So, whether managing other applications or working in concert with them, the implementation and integration of communications solutions can dramatically reduce processing time and improve processing accuracy to deliver measurable cost savings and improved customer service for insurers.