The Rising Importance of Visual Engagement in the Insurance Industry

In past year, we’ve seen the importance of customer engagement emphasized by the growing need of improving customer journeys across different channels and business functions. One of the biggest trends right now is visual engagement. Many companies are leveraging visual engagement to engage with their customers online. They are searching for new innovative ways to entice their customers into long-lasting relationships based on trust.
According to Forrester, “Customers today want easy, effective engagement. More than a quarter (32%) of customers used screen sharing for customer service in 2016, and 32% used video chat. The use of these relatively new visual engagement tools is a key trend in customer service in 2017 because it strengthens the customer bond”.
So, How do we leverage visual engagement to strengthen relationships with customers?In this article, we will explore the benefits that visual engagement provides and how companies in the insurance industry can take initial steps to improving customer engagement.

What is visual engagement?

Before we dive into this topic, we need to define “What is visual engagement”. According to Aberdeen, Visual engagement is a form of customer interaction enabled by any technology that helps organizations to visually interact with customers through digital channels. Example of these technologies includes, co-browsing, video, screen sharing, and annotations.
The true value of visual engagement lies in its ability to explain or share information that can be processed 60000X faster to the brain than text. According to the Social Science Research Network, “65 percent of us are visual learners”. As humans, we rely on mental shortcuts to make purchase decisions. In fact, When it comes to understanding a product or service, we tend to remember all the information when it is visually displayed, rather than verbally.
Further, as customers, we prefer to communicate with a real person who can express real empathy, and address more complex questions, during high-value purchase such as insurance policies or claims. This is where visual technology such as co-browsing and video chat can help here.

Benefits of Visual Engagement

Personalized experiences with visual technology can be beneficial for helping current and future customers through digital channels. Let’s start by looking at a few statistics that illustrate the benefits of visual engagement.

  • Reduce handling time – “Visual engagement helps agents quickly understand the context of the customer need, thus decreasing the time to handle an issue and improving agent productivity”~Aberdeen.
  • Increase sales – Visual engagement drives relationships and revenue for customer service. “Businesses employing visual engagement tools enjoy an 83% greater year-over-year increase in annual company revenue, compared to All Others (8.8% vs.4.8%)” ~Aberdeen
  • Increase upsell and cross-sells – “ Visual engagement enables reps to provide cross-sell and up-sell recommendations tailored to a customer’s unique needs.”.~ Aberdeen.
  • Increase customer satisfaction – “Live-assist communication channels (phone, chat, co-browse) have much higher satisfaction ratings than asynchronous electronic channels (email, web self-service). Satisfaction ratings are: phone (74%), chat (69%), co-browse (78%), email (54%), and web self-service (47%)” – Forrester
  • Strengthen customer loyalty – Visual engagement is an instrumental part of building customer loyalty. According to Aberdeen, “Visual engagement technology helps businesses increase customer retention rates 7.6% annually, compared to a mere 0.8% increase for All Others”.

 

How can Insurance companies leverage visual engagement?

Customers are having their expectations reshaped by advances in information technology. With customer demands changing, it is important that insurers start to place customer and user experience at the heart of every digital decision. To leverage visual engagement for better customer service, an insurance company has to have the right technological capabilities. Here are a few tools that can help.

  • Video chat to nurture relationships with customers

Video chat is used widely by representatives in the insurance industry. According to the latest study by Ernst and Young, “More than 80% of customers are willing to use digital and remote contact channels”, including video chat to interact with insurers. It’s an excellent tool for developing a trusted relationship with clients. Insurance companies can ensure exceptional customer experience by offering video chat, so that customers can interact with agents or remote advisors face to face while making high-value purchases.

  • Co-Browsing to guide customers through complex forms

Insurers are starting to see the value of co-browsing as a key differentiator in the industry. Web-based co-browsing technology makes joint navigation through the web by two or more people simple. Thanks to co-browsing, agents will be able to guide and explain products or services visually to customers – with a personalized human touch. Unlike screen sharing, co-browsing does not require customers to download any plugins or software – making it simple and safe.

Conclusion

Ultimately, managing how customers engage with your organization is a universal requirement for being competitively successful. In order, for visual engagement to work, insurance companies need to integrate it into their customer service or sales strategy. By mapping the customer’s journey, insurance companies can pinpoint steps where visual engagement can reduce any obstacles or frictions. Above all else, a better experience will encourage customers to spend more, and refer friends, all of which will be beneficial to future sales.
If 65% of the population is visual and 25% are aural, why not explain your product and services with Surfly co-browsing solution? Click to learn more.