By Patrick Kehoe, Messagepoint, Inc.’s EVP of Product Management
In recent years, there has been a significant shift in customer expectations. Although printed communications were once considered standard, modern customers strongly prefer highly tailored and dynamic digital interactions. However, even though consumers expect to connect via their phones via digitally friendly apps and websites, print documents and PDFs remain the main means of communication for many in the insurance sector. Because of this, digital-native market entrants that satisfy customers’ digital expectations across the whole customer lifecycle—from marketing to onboarding to servicing—present challenges for established insurers.
When print was the main form of communication, many of the mechanisms used to produce these communications were created. They lack the adaptability needed to support more recent forms of digital connection since they are constructed around the inflexible frameworks of document generation. It is hard to reuse content across various channels in formats appropriate for digital apps because these antiquated systems restrict content into individual communication templates. Insurers must reexamine the systems and procedures they employ to handle customer contacts if they want to remain competitive and relevant in a world where consumer expectations and demographics are changing.
The advantages of updating systems
The baggage of a print-centric and document-centric society is inherent in legacy systems. In that scenario, you would draft a copy of a letter especially for each variation that you needed to address, such as a different product variation, geographical requirement, clause, or coverage concern. It’s simple to comprehend how this operating paradigm allows templates to spread widely. Suddenly, you’re faced with a huge inventory of papers and messages that are largely identical in content, with only minor variations.
Take into consideration the example of a straightforward letter supporting a beneficiary change. Even if you may begin with a single letter template, this communication may be employed for four distinct programs. And it doesn’t stop there: in order to comply with provincial laws in the areas where each product is sold, each of these four versions now needs four further modifications. Currently, you have sixteen distinct documents that need to be modified for three distinct channels: sixteen print-ready templates, sixteen email-ready templates (frequently in a different system), and four more web portal templates. You now have to handle 48 distinct layouts and versions for a single, straightforward customer contact. Now consider the need to make a modification that applies to each of those materials. All of a sudden, you are able to update 48 distinct layouts with the same material. This procedure is not only expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient, but it also increases the possibility of mistakes and discrepancies across those items.
This problem can be mitigated by insurers using contemporary technologies that allow them to handle information for both print and digital communications as well as printed documents in a single system. Insurance companies may easily generate and manage content and then reuse it across channels in various communications by concentrating on solutions that extract content blocks from the presentation template. Examine our example of the beneficiary change. Imagine that you produce the content that needs to be communicated inside a content management system, instead of producing a print document template for a letter. You can apply the material to a printed letter, an email, a web page, and a mobile application with this system, which centrally handles the content. By doing this, you are utilizing the content and dynamically generating communications when needed, drawing in the appropriate parts of content to construct the document, the letter, or the email instead of making copies of templates or individual letters. Any content changes you need to make only need to be made once, at which point any subsequent communications utilizing that content are immediately updated. Do you require a different disclosure or clause? The individual pieces of content that are used to generate the communication for that specific scenario can be created in several variations. In addition to saving you money and time when editing and updating materials, this modular approach to content management also gives you more visibility and control over your content inventory.
It is necessary to adopt a new, more flexible way of thinking in order to create procedures that make use of a modular approach to content management in order to address the evolution of the customer experience, particularly its shift toward omnichannel interaction.
Adaptability = modularity
Numerous sectors have effectively implemented modular systems in various ways, elevating the management of insurance papers to a new level. The insurance sector benefits greatly from modularity when it comes to creating and customizing policies for individuals or organizations. There are several similarities even within an inventory of insurance mail that includes dozens of pieces intended to convey distinct messages. Common content components that are readily reusable include contact details, logos, copyrights, and signatures. These are the low-hanging fruit. Complex material that may be modularized for more control and efficiency, such as product descriptions, disclosures, terms and conditions, fees, and calls to action, is also frequently used across templates. Targeting the right content elements and distributing them across a variety of channels is simple and well managed.
Delivering content via APIs using JavaScript object notation (JSON) is flexible and important for digital channels that require specific formatting determined by the delivery application and channel. In order for it to work and appear like the rest of the digital experience, this makes it possible for the fonts and styles to be applied via a mobile app or the website CMS system. By operating in this manner, content teams may optimize productivity and control, allowing the channel experts to take charge of the user experience.
facilitating the transfer
Growing pains are inevitable with a change of this magnitude, but the good news is that there is technology that has been shown to work that can streamline the process and provide a more effective method of managing material by making the transfer of content from outdated systems into more contemporary settings simple. By automating ingestion, combining redundant and comparable material in your inventory, and getting the content ready for onboarding into the new system, AI-powered solutions may expedite the content transfer process. To get your content ready for the advanced content sharing features of modular content management systems, look for solutions that can specifically dissect old communications into logical content components. Furthermore, with the advent of generative AI, there are now programs that can rewrite and optimize your content according to the rules of plain language, targeting sentiment, reading levels, and brand alignment. These features facilitate an insurer’s capacity to deliver a contemporary experience by reducing the amount of content and making it easier to grasp, or even condensing it for digital channels when shorter communications are necessary. To prevent having to re-onboard or apply those modifications in your core system, it is imperative that you harness AI within the application you are using to migrate or manage the content, rather than looking to use it as part of an external optimization process. You can benefit from AI’s efficiencies without adding a labor-and money-intensive manual implementation load by optimizing within your primary content management system.
The advent of the digital age has forced several adjustments to the way we conduct business in almost every sector. Implementing these changes can be daunting, but it will be worth celebrating when you replace antiquated methods with a flexible, modular strategy that makes it possible for you and your clients to communicate more effectively and dynamically.
See the InsurTech Spotlight for more information about Messagepoint.
Software provider Messagepoint employs Patrick Kehoe as its product strategy manager, working closely with the product development team. With over 25 years of experience, Kehoe provides the organization with business solutions for content management, customer communications, and document processing.