Intro: Liberty Videocon General Insurance Co has employed innovative methods to understand the mindset of its customers and thereby gain their loyalty. Puneet Pasricha, country head – Operations, explains these initiatives:
N. Mohan: What are the key attributes that define in Liberty Videocon General Insurance Company?
Punit Pasricha: The brand Liberty Videocon stands for
- pre-empting dangers and cautioning the people and corporates
- offering ways to prevent calamities and augmenting a safe, secure environment for all
- delivering its core policy of responsibility
For over 100 years, Liberty Mutual has played a critical pre-emptive role of identifying risks in every sphere of life and has responsibly educated the society about them worldwide, while suggesting preventive measures to mitigate those risks. Today, as Liberty Videocon takes its first few steps in the Indian insurance sector, it is happy to note the prevalence of pre-emption as a practice deeply rooted in the Indian diaspora. At home or outside, in city or village, children or men of age, pre-emption has been, and is still being, practiced in every walk of life. We, at Liberty Videocon, are pleased to carry forward that very legacy in our corporate practice here – of preempting dangers, and cautioning the people and corporates; of offering ways to prevent calamities and augmenting a safe, secure environment for all; of delivering its core policy of responsibility towards the society at large, as it has the world over.
As you will see, the brand tagline is‘Responsibility is our policy’.
What is your view of the changing customer behavior and preferences?
Today’s customer is an evolved customer, who is well researched about the available choices. We believe that we need to fulfill the customers’ expectations at every interaction and transaction.With consumerization of IT, it has become imperative to offer customer service in the customer’s platform of choice, be it on social media, mobile phone or through the web. Purchases of non-life insurance products in India are mainly driven by convenience and value. In other words, the right product at the right price. Convenience, however, is a complex proposition. Customers must be able to research and buy easily, a trend that has primarily been driven by the growth of online websites. But, convenience also implies avoiding problems later on – with cover, service or technology. For this reason, some customers still rely on tried and tested channels such as agents, family advice or trusted brands to guide their purchasing decisions.
What are the typical challenges you face in fulfilling these ever-changing customer expectations?
We have invested early in building state of the art systems, processes and training to ensure positive customer experience. However, the biggest challenge is of customer contact ability, which is a hindrance in our ability to pro-actively reach out to the customer in order to understand their preferences. This is an industry wide issue and we are making all possible efforts to improve on this.
Fulfilling customers’ expectations across increasing number of channels in a seamless fashion is a challenge given the disparate systems in any enterprise. To deal with these situations, we are pursuing an omni channel strategy.
Do you feel real loyalty exists in a highly competitive and price sensitive industry like insurance?
There is a segment of customers, which is willing to pay for better service and the real challenge is to segment your customer base accordingly and provide value-added loyalty. Multiple research reports indicate that a significantly large percentage of Indian customers are willing to pay for better individualized service.
Collecting and analyzing customer data is the foundation of success. We as a company realize it is the first thing we need to do. An integrated loyalty strategy is the only way to achieve a high degree of success. This requires in-depth customer segmentation since customer expectations vary basis demographics like age, income as well as geography. Treating every customer in a vanilla manner does not work today; a customer expects to be treated basis his / her share of wallet with a brand. A craving for personalized experience is becoming a norm.
Customers have fewer reasons to be loyal than ever before and are really less loyal than they have ever been before. This is because empowered customers are now in control. Customers are increasingly wresting the control over the interactions they have with companies. The proliferation of social media today has yielded this shift towards immense consumer empowerment
These interaction touch points or the ‘moments of truth’ as referred to at Liberty Videocon are those instances of contact or interaction between a customer and us that give the customer an opportunity to form (or change) an impression about us. The claims experience offered to any customer is really the moment of truth for an insurer and we ensure that experience is transparent and simple. This in itself is a big push towards establishing customer loyalty.
We have made significant investments in analytics so that we have an understanding of our customer interactions. Getting it right would strengthen customer loyalty, increase brand advocacy and escalate profitability. In other words, R3 (Retention, Repurchase and Referral) is the only way forward.
I strongly believe that companies that are best at engaging loyal communities of customers around them to sustain their long-term growth and profitability will be those that create a corporate culture that delivers a delightful customer experience, where everyone is focused on that challenge.
What is the level of technology induction in the company?
We have invested early into our front end and back end technology infrastructure and are seeing the value of those investments. For example, all our customer interactions and transactions are recorded and analyzed in the CRM system. We have also invested in our in house contact center to ensure a positive customer experience across all channels such as calls, emails, chats etc. This is helping us immensely in analyzing customer behavior and keeping pace with customer expectations. From the industry perspective, it is just a matter of time when rapid convergence of 4 major technology discontinuities- Big Data, Cloud, Internet of Things/Mobility1 and Social Media – will allow for finer pricing, more disruptive business models and large scale mass customization of products.
How important are digital channels in an insurance scenario?
Digital as a channel is impossible to ignore in India wherein internet penetration is increasing at a rapid pace. Though the conversions through digital channel are increasing, the impact of researching online and buying offline cannot be overlooked. Social media has made it convenient and easier for a customer to reach out to us and they expect us to respond to them in the channel of their choice instantly.
Do you feel analytics is really as critical for the insurance industry as it is spoken of? If Yes, how?
Analytics can be a game changer as insurance industry matures and evolves. In my opinion, an organization, which captures right data points and builds analytical models will have a considerable competitive edge. Analytics can add tremendous value in underwriting and customer segmentation. At an industry level, individual players need to drive initiatives across three axes of innovation
- Build distinctive granular customer insights to capture high potential growth opportunities and enhance engagement across the customer lifecycle
- Upgrade to next generation technical and analytics capabilities (claims, underwriting, analytics, and actuarial capabilities)
- Build world class operating models to achieve gains in efficiency while strengthening the human capital
In an industry whose bedrock is trust, analytics also provides the backbone on which trustworthiness is established. Frauds are a big concern in our industry and analytics provides leading indicators, which help curb frauds right at inception.
How important is “Self Service” as an option at time when mobility is the accepted norm?
Self-service is critical in today’s fast paced world wherein an insurance company gets compared with other evolved industries like telecom and ecommerce. However, when it comes to self-service, the most basic and simple transactions like claims status, policy kit delivery status are preferred by customers. For high end interactions like understanding claims process, policy benefits and exclusions etc the traditional touch points are desired.
Do you feel customer’s expectation vary basis demographics?
It is an evident fact that Indian consumers are amongst the most discerning consumers in the world. Consumer expectation has changed and education, age, income, economic scenario, media and technology play a predominant role in shaping the expectations. As we are building our customer behavior model, we are seeing a clear trend across customer expectations basis demographics like geography, age and premium invested. Technology is one of the enablers which helps us in terms of managing those easily. It goes without saying that the consumer expectation varies basis demographics, however, an important aspect to be noted here is that understanding customers and inherent customer behavior is a vital element in developing a value proposition which resonates with the customer’s unmet needs. However, with the evolution of the category there is a need to look beyond the traditional segmentation strategies around income, wealth, geographies and life stage. It is imperative that segmenting of the customers is also considered from the point of view of their insurance needs and behavior characteristics.
The approach will have to be to segment to a ‘market of one’ – Yes, Raj, 42, from Delhi, who likes swimming and you get a completely different reward to Simran, 21 of Chennai, who likes gardening. Using dynamic segmentation tools, we know when you change your mind and preferences and can keep up to date with what’s right for you.
