What lies at the heart of a successful claims strategy? The semantics might differ from organisation to organization, but for Tom Thornberry (pictured), group chief claims officer for Zurich Insurance Group, it all comes down to the same thing at the end of the day – the customer.
Claims is the product at the heart of the insurance proposition, he highlighted in a recent interview with Insurance Business, and it’s the moment of truth for any insurance policyholder. As such, he believes that the responsibility of the insurance industry is to ensure it’s consistently delivering the highest possible level of service to customers – wherever they are.
Digging into how customer expectations have – and haven't – changed, Thornberry noted that he has seen that the expectation of speed of response, clarity of response and decisiveness in decision-making is largely unchanged. “Over time, on an individual basis, that is the baseline of what insurers need to deliver and what constitutes a good claims service,” he said. “But what we need to make sure we're doing is that we are consistently delivering according to the insurance agreement - so we’re building a level of trust and ultimately moving towards building partnerships with customers.”
For risk managers, in particular, knowing you can rely on your carrier partners brings huge value, he said, as it means you can put claims forward and expect to have sensible conversations and obtain certainty quickly. Doing that consistently is where it can get difficult for insurance companies but it’s where the right investments need to be made as it’s the only real way to build long-lasting, trusting partnerships that deliver the right outcomes at speed.
“So, it’s not that there’s necessarily a change in the expectations of customers but rather that there is an evolution within that expectation,” he said. “We live in an increasingly interconnected world, where everything from your microwave to your television is connected to the internet, so how people receive information is only getting faster. So, it’s only natural that this is expected to translate into speed of communication with your insurance carrier.
“That’s particularly relevant where you have the desire for certainty quickly. There is a demand for that communication to get quicker and quicker, we know that and so we’re looking at home to communicate in less traditional forms. In Spain, for example, we have WhatsApp communication. We're looking at customer self service portals and how customers and brokers can log in and identify where their claim is.”
From Thornberry’s perspective, it’s critical that insurance carriers give people different avenues through which they can receive the information they require at speed. That means finding new solutions all the time, he said, as keeping pace with changing communication channels is not a once-and-done activity. Technology plays a huge part not only in opening up new channels but also in ensuring consistency of service and the ability to create a lasting partnership with brokers and clients alike.
When he started his new role in April of last year, Thornberry noted that his first question was ‘what do the customers expect?’ That’s the most pressing question, he said, as it’s from there that you can build out a truly great claims strategy – by focusing on those expectations and how to deliver them.
From the customer experience surveys conducted by the insurer, two things really stood out – the importance of speed of certainty, and the value customers place on people. Simplicity is at the heart of a great claims strategy, he said, and so, for him, the question was how to blend the best of both in order to deliver great speed of service without sacrificing that human element. As to how that can be done, he shared that his strategy consists of three core elements.
“Number one, we must always improve customer service,” he said. “When we looked at the feedback, we saw that increasing speed of service is critical. One of the things key to doing that was the need to take away the manual processes, the things that technology can now do, from our people. That’s how we can free up our people to spend their time delivering what the customer wants. That, in turn, increases the speed of the delivery of that service.”
The second element is then to take the time saved from team members and direct it towards more externally-focused activities, he said. It’s by focusing on the customer and their needs that insurers can differentiate their claims services, and ensure their customers’ expectations are delivered. The third pillar is centred on adding further value once the speed of service has been increased and people are more externally focused.
“That’s around educating customers on how their carrier can support them in making sure that the claims they’ve had can be mitigated in the future and the claims they haven’t had can be prevented,” he said. “It’s about using data and insight to focus on how we can benefit the customer. All three pillars focus on the customer in some way and it’s a strategy which combines the best of technology with the best of human beings in order to produce a best-in-class service.”
There’s a pervading sentiment that claims is a transactional function and process, which is simply not true, he said, and it’s a message he’s adamant about delivering to the market – that claims is not an operational function but rather the fulfillment of the promise of the insurance proposition. “By their very nature, claims are an emotional time for most customers,” he said. “They bring huge elements of uncertainty, of fear, and of frustration. Nobody wants to make a claim.
“That’s why making sure that at least the option for a human component is a critical factor in the delivery of a good claims service. Because the empathy required to deliver a claim appropriately is absolutely still needed across the majority of claims that we deal with, and we deal with 10s of 1000s of claims every day. At the end of the day, it all comes down to combining the best of your tech with the best of your people to go one step further and provide value-add support with prevention methods, as well as the level of empathy almost all our customers will require at some point throughout the claims process.”