The winds of change are driven by people. As their lives change, insurers adapt.

When it comes to the customer experience, group insurance carriers are pulled in multiple directions because they are concerned with so many layers of customers. Is it possible to meet everyone's experience expectations — the partner, the brokers, the employer's HR team and the thousands of employees?

The answer is most certainly, "Yes."

There has never been a better time technologically to capture growth through experience management. Insurers can pay attention to these four customer trends in particular.

No. 4: Portals for brokers, employers and employees

Increasingly, paper enrollments are becoming less common, even at the worksite. As technology becomes more pervasive, with nearly every employee having at least a smartphone, activities ranging from enrollment to claims submission are increasingly happening electronically.

However, carriers need to be capable of supporting this. Having the right portal, with a responsive, mobile first design, that is built around well-thought-out journey maps, is critical, supported by a modern back-end system that supports real-time processing.

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Having the right portal, with a responsive, mobile first design, that is built around well-thought-out journey maps, is critical for today's insurance business. (Photo: iStock)

No. 3: User experience

Millennials are now employees, employers, home office staff and have much, much different expectations for user experience. They've grown up in a world where UX has been defined by Apple, Amazon, and Google and expect that our systems are built to those standards, not that our systems are merely an improvement over legacy systems.

No. 2: Customer engagement via wellness/gamification

Getting customers engaged can help improve cross-selling. This can be achieved in part with gamification and wellness solutions. Examples of this include Life.io and Human API, both of which can provide access to data from wearables. Life.io can allow participants to earn rewards, achieve goals, etc., but tied back to employee benefits. This engages customers and helps to build the brand.

No. 1: Improved underwriting through technology

Underwriting, either at a group level or at an individual level for small groups, can be significantly improved using technology. Technology to improve underwriting ranges from tools such as Force Diagnostics' rapid health exams, to cognitive analysis of census data (e.g., Watson), to leveraging analytics to better evaluate experience rating.

These market trends, as well as others, ensure that group benefits providers will stay busy for a long time to come. Equally important, they mean that the distance between carriers that have modernized and those that haven't will grow rapidly, and that those that haven't will be challenged to win new customers, and could be subject to adverse selection.

Modernizing has never been more important, and it has never required doing more to get there! What is certain is that group benefits providers that haven't started on a course of change need to hoist their sails and catch the wind while it's blowing in opportunity's direction.

Chad Hersh is executive vice president at Majesco. To reach him: chad.hersh@majesco.com.

This blog published first at Majesco.com. The opinions expressed here are the writer's own.

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Market trend: Improved customer service and engagement

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