Use of WhatsApp in the insurance sector: A brief insight

As the competition level in the insurance sector keeps increasing, insurance companies are facing difficulties in attracting and retaining customers due to extended wait times. The insurance industry has to handle millions of queries about claims to process, policy terms and conditions, account updates, premium payments, and more, on a daily basis. Delivering a satisfactory customer experience becomes difficult in this situation, as a customer support team can only cater to limited queries at a time. Hence, customers would have to wait for long periods of time, which causes them to drop off or switch to competitors. Hence, to streamline their customer experience and automate various service offerings, it would be prudent for insurance companies to leverage WhatsApp business API. Right from providing the services of virtual policy assistance and chat-based eKYC to automated claims processing, insurance companies can turn every customer touch point into a conversation through WhatsApp.

There are many factors that make WhatsApp an advantageous communication channel for your insurance company, such as:

• WhatsApp has made it quite flexible for insurance companies to get customer opt-ins, thereby driving improved visibility and discovery.
• The typical insurance purchase journey of a customer traditionally involves going through several web pages of text filled with technical jargons. With WhatsApp, you can make this entire process simpler and more conversational for the customers. By deploying a WhatsApp bot, you can automate and streamline processes like providing policy suggestions, insurance quotes, policy information, document collection, answering questions, follow-ups and so on. These bots can act as virtual live agents, and effectively help customers to navigate the complexity of insurance offerings.
• Through WhatsApp, insurance companies can also deliver a frictionless payment collection process to the customers, without having them navigate between multiple apps.
• You can get on-the-spot policy renewal acceptance from their customers by sending policy renewal quotes on WhatsApp. The customers can be also directed to your brand website to complete the entire renewal process.
• By using the WhatsApp Ongoing Campaign feature, you can automatically trigger payment and renewal reminders to each customer, at the right time. This would help you to get more in-time payments, and enjoy a highly engaged customer-base.

Customer behavior is changing faster than ever, and a fundamental shift has been witnessed in how people buy and interact with insurance companies. Modern customers prefer to interact via digital channels, with remote interactions outnumbering in-person contacts in many situations. Hence, it is time that all insurance companies create their own WhatsApp business account, and use this messaging app to connect with their customers and prospects.