Why do Insurance build Single Customer View
Nowadays customer tend to use online comparison services to find the best deal of an insurance product that suits them the most instead of going thru existing insurance agent who may have limited access on availability product.
Wouldn't it be nice if my insurance provider already knew the context when they reached out or my insurance agent knows which product is suitable at my key life events (moving to a new house, buying a car or having children) - It’s from different point of views.
This shows insurance providers always having challenges in maintaining brand loyalty and the competitive position in a market that driven by what consumers wants.
To drive repeat business with existing customer or having potential customer for business growth, insurance providers must have the ability to provide high quality services at the endgame of a customer centric organization.
Single Customer View (SCV) is the key where an organization's Operation Teams can develop to have better understanding on their customers along the timing across different channels, touchpoints or departments, which is a view where they can have a picture of a customer based on business elements. For instance, Customer Service Staff knowing customer they are facing now purchased pre-birth insurance one year ago and currently looking for advice on what product they can have.
Obstacles in the journey of creating a single customer view
Unfortunately, most of the organization are struggling with: -
1. Legacy Systems
Legacy system is mission-critical system for most organizations. Data resides in these systems are foundation to the operation of a business which it can be game-changing for many downstream applications like web portal, reporting etc. The legacy system itself is often different from the structure of digital application data. This makes it incredibly challenging for operation team who are not legacy system experts to integrate the data that will delight customers throughout their journeys.
2. Organizational Silos
Silos phenomenon can be felt by customer when they experience services from organization where they repeat on their issues and information about themselves in different channel. Most of operation professional do agree on such situation face by their customer. The phenomenon exists among the processes and teams across different department from management level to working level (for e.g. Operational Excellence, Underwriting, Claims, Customer Services etc.) which their focus is on their own KPIs. The disconnection between departments even more obvious when found duplicate records in source system such as 2 department create the same customer info with different Legal Entity ID for different purpose which impact the outcome of Single Customer View to see the exact numbers of existing customer of organization. So, why don't align some of these metrics towards customer and data quality of source system?
3. Poor Data Quality
Poor data quality happens when source system is having data integrity issue which it may happened during data creation at branches, system maintenance, application upgrade, data patching or data migration which may caused by
· Skill-based error / rule-based mistake during data creation / patching. Classic example could be a Malaysia citizen can have multiple legal entity ID (LEI) within a long period of stays in Malaysia that causing duplication happens during data creation.
· Historical data may not convert into the new system / application due to confusion of technologies used. For instance, the completeness of Customer’s Date of Birth does not migrate over to new system.
Without accurate, reliable and updated data, more effort and money are wasted to create a single customer view which bring inaccurate or sometimes duplicate information to front-line support and causing entire customer experience to worsen.
For the reason to allow data quality to improve and under monitoring, Data Governance (DG) program plays it roles here by putting data managements and processes in place. For example, all Malaysia citizen should have 12 digits LEI are mandatory policy to hold during customer info creation. If organization is in the beginning of DG journey, they do can start from Compliance Department align with operational departments to have a dedicated person or team to enforce data governance standards. Compliance Department normally are department who is least tolerable to data quality issues that happens in customer data as they known regulator’s policy very well and the consequences of ignoring data quality issues that bring penalties to organization.
Benefits Brings from Single Customer View
With Single Customer view, insurances provider not just having more understand on what their customer wants but: -
1. Regulatory Authority
When facing regulatory, the organization have the confidence to report on the duplication records which happened within source system before regulators. The accuracy of reporting submission related to Financing is getting higher and precision of risk profiling under AMLA guideline is better.
For IFRS 17 with effective date is 1 Jan 2021, the requirements trigger questions around fundamental data management strategy (including data quality, storage and archiving), end-to-end systems architecture design and different actuarial, risk & accounting processes. Although the benefit for the organization will not reflect very soon however it will help in prepare for the upcoming compliance report where SCV will have large contribution in data management strategy by identifying duplicate customer within source systems of organization.
2. Customers
As mentioned in earlier section: Malaysia citizen can have multiple legal entity ID (LEI) within a long period of stays in Malaysia. For instance, a customer who using 2 different LEI to bought 3 policy within an insurance company, the person should not have 3 online or mobile accounts. They should be able check status of any policy they are holding using only single user account. Hence the customer experience can be more seamless which customer loyalty is maintained and improve business performance.
3. Marketing
Marketing Professional do know that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer which this reason has kept marketing team preferred to keep in touch with their current customer base than looking for new potential customer. With rate of customer record’s duplication able decrease by SCV implementation, marketing team able maintain a professional appearance all the way to customer’s inbox without sent duplicate email to their existing customers. Nevertheless, the team can remind their customer with more actual and customize upcoming events and seasonal tips on insurance products.
Steps to Create A Single Customer View
Having mentioned what is Single Customer View, challenges of create Single Customer View and benefits that brings into organization, but how do we create a Single Customer View? Let’s look on below diagram.
The journey involving 3 main stage which is identify, develop and testing: -
· Identify: Identify business element
· Develop: Develop technical process based on business requirement
· Testing: To test the view built whether is what business needs.
In summary:
· Single Customer View able provide organization a full picture of their customer and respective history across different channel and touchpoint based on organization’s critical business elements such as customer’s information, purchase behavior based on life events, etc.
· Single Customer View project involve 3 main stage which is identify, develop and testing. Identify the critical business element, develop technical process to de-duplication customer records and test the process to assure the outcome is what business needs.
