Shaping Insurance CX – The ICICI Prudential Way
The pandemic has led to greater digital adoption across various customer use cases, which has fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with brands. Researching online-first about products and services of interest has now become a norm – and has lead to re-imagination of customer experiences that are now a blend of seamless online and offline journeys
For Insurance companies, this has meant a complete revamp of the Sales Process, evolving from mostly face-to-face meetings to mostly remote interactions and virtual customer onboarding and engagement. Outside In explores initiatives carried out by ICICI Prudential to study and summarize the developments in the Industry and thereby its impact on Customer Experiences (CX)… Hoping that this crisp edition will be impactful…
Consumer Perspectives from ICICI Prudential Insurance
Need to popularize Insurance among the young generation
Leverage digital and social mediums to connect with prospect customers
Push short format/video content to maximize organic reach
Younger audience believes in DIY (Do-It-Yourself) – develop tools, guides, calculators, etc. – to help them evaluate the right insurance products for themselves
Reach to relevant cohorts on e-commerce and affiliate platforms – where they are already present and engaged deeply
The Digital CX Initiatives Catalog for Insurance
Almost 100% of their processes are available online for Customers as well as Employees.
A) Customer-facing Initiatives
1) The Mobile App
Their Mobile App allows setting up validation through any of the various modes (Fingerprint, MPIN, Face ID and OTP). Once it is set-up, it allows user access to over 45 types of Policy-related Interactions – with a system uptime of more than 99%
Their download numbers stand at 1 Mn+ as of March 2022 and 1 out of 4 requests are requested and delivered via the App
Digital Life Verification for Individual Annuity Customer
2) Google Assisted Chatbot LiGo
They have enabled chatbot LiGo on the Google Assistant platform allowing customers to access their policies through simple voice commands
An average of 4500 users are catered by the LiGo chatbot on a daily basis – which is integrated with its Website & App as well as Whatsapp Service Channel
The Use Cases available through LiGo are shown below:
Since the pandemic, the total number of transactions handled by chatbot LiGo has crossed 0.8 mn and it has enhanced customer’s self-service capabilities
3) Whatsapp Service Channel: They were India’s first life insurer to officially offer WhatsApp as a customer service channel to its customers
4) Work-from-Home IVR Model
They have deployed a ‘call-center integrated’ Work-From-Home model with interpersonal service, to promptly assist customers
They have ramped up their IVR options, with relevant voice prompts as well as digital options. An Intuitive IVR (Voice prompt) and Visual IVR (Digital) are now able to answer about 70% of their customer queries
5) Humanoid Voice Bot
Their Humanoid Voice bot offers customers a two-way personalized interaction with a human touch. Customers can fulfill service requests just by speaking to the bot in multiple languages – including Hinglish
It can call over 50,000 customers in an hour and converse in multiple languages. Nearly 87% of customers contacted through the route agreed to pay their renewal premiums. Their renewal collections through the digital mode has gone up from 74% in FY2020 to 79.3% in FY2021
6) Journey Personalization
Personalized messages to handhold customers throughout journey
Reaching the customer by mapping their interests/affinities
Banners with built-in calculators for instant and customized quotes
Nudge Engine – Analytics based system which suggests best suited action to achieve next goal
Pre-approved personalized best offers for instant issuance and persistency backed by data
Fitness Tracker
B) Employee-facing Initiatives
1) Diversified yet Integrated Distribution Architecture
They are continuously expanding partnerships with banks, fintechs, start-ups and other players in the BFSI ecosystem – using API integrations
Their seamless distribution architecture enables customer to pick any preferred mode of purchasing products and procuring services from any partner
They are able to process vast amounts of consumer data, providing insights into customer psyche which helps in designing sharper sales pitches, assist distributors in talking to customers more effectively and take the interaction through to its logical conclusion. This makes distributors more efficient, and enables them to reach out to a larger set of prospects
They have cultivated an anytime and anywhere service architecture. Their Bulk issuance solution led to 65 lakh policies being issued in just 3 days, which if done manually, would have taken 130 days. They are able underwrite and issue a cover note to customers in about 5 minutes – thereby delivering “Instant gratification” that has always been an unlisted, unfulfilled customer desire
2) AI/ML Use Cases
Encouraged by AI’s potential, it has embarked on a hyper-personalization journey built on the pillars of 3 Vs i.e. Voice, Video and Vernacular. Similarly, voice bots, video-based medical underwriting, and multi-lingual communication are being used to provide convenience and deliver superior customer service
Their AI-based virtual assistant platform, based on Natural Language Processing was launched in August 2018 and in the very first month of its launch customer queries were responded to with a 94% accuracy
3) Pre-sales Collaboration Tools
IPruMeet: Online meetings, joint sales calls, invite experts, share content
24x7 cognitive bots – 24x7 query resolution using chat bots viz. Chat Buddy, PSF Guru, Tara
Lead Management System – Enhanced with voice capability and geographical tagging
Learner’s Box and MyCoach – On-the-go e-learning modules with AI capabilities to improve pitching Efforts
Demand Generation – Digital platform to generate interest, qualify leads with nurture framework and funnel management
4) Onboarding & Policy Issuance
InstaPlan –A pre-sales tool to create a customized solution for the customer by combining multiple products on the go
Term by Invite – Pre approved offers with zero documents or medical
End-to-end digital onboarding – pre-filled OCR (optical character recognition) form, 3-click PASA (Pre Approved Sum Assured), Smart Doc Upload, E-quote App, Video Risk Verification and Tele-video Underwriting
Document aggregator integration to get income details for financial underwriting
5) Partner Integration
Pre-coded Premium Quotation Pages
Data pre-population
No KYC document, digital payment with SI and digital consent
Video based Pre-issuance verification on WhatsApp
Instant Certificate of Issuance
Instant refund into customer account, in case of cancellation
Video verification and CKYC as a service enabled for partners
End-to-end digital journey for group partners
Group Portal – An end to end automated process for on-boarding group customers
In Conclusion
ICICI Prudential has developed itself on 2 digital fronts: Employee-focused Digital Learning & Sales use cases and Customer-focused Engagement use cases. This way, the company’s front-line team is equipped with a variety of Digital Tools that positively impacts their productivity. And customer-facing Digital Touchpoints like Whatsapp, Mobile App, Chatbot LiGo and its Website are empowering customers to pursue their Purchase & Service Requests from the comfort of their homes… Today, it has over 3 mn digital service interactions every month, nearly 95% of new business is logged online and almost 90% of service requests are self-help in nature. These elements are solid directions to shape up the Insurance CX of tomorrow…
References and Sources
1) How Offline & Online Selling Has Changed Insurance: https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/insurance/how-offline-and-online-selling-has-changed-in-insurance/92661372
2) AI for Customer Service: https://www.expresscomputer.in/artificial-intelligence-ai/how-icici-prudential-life-insurance-is-using-ai-to-raise-the-bar-for-customer-service/82678/
3) ICICI Prudential Results Q4 2022: https://www.iciciprulife.com/content/dam/icicipru/about-us/BusinessPresentations/FY2022/Q4-FY2022-Business-Presentation.pdf