This is article #4 of 7 in the series on optimizing insurance innovation and productivity through AI and cloud communications.
Like many companies in other industries, insurance companies must deliver maximum value with limited resources. Faced with intense competition and rising customer expectations, industry leaders must find innovative ways to do more with less. One of the most effective strategies for achieving this is to streamline communication and collaboration, removing friction from business processes.
AI-infused Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) significantly boosts productivity by eliminating many of the root causes of inefficiency. Poor productivity often results from small inconveniences repeated thousands of times over.
Consider, for example, the time and attention it takes to switch from one application to another fully. A recent study by Harvard Business Review revealed that the average employee toggles between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times per day.
Think about the delays that arise from communication gaps—calls and emails that go unanswered while employees are on the road or away from their desks. Multiply those delays many times over, and it adds up to some very real loss of productivity.
Consider the time it takes to enter information manually into multiple systems. Logging an inbound policyholder call, for example, requires an employee to capture essential details, type them into the CRM system, and trigger a follow-up activity if appropriate. That small inefficiency, repeated many times over, serves as a drag on productivity.
By adopting an all-in-one communications platform, organizations can reduce the time wasted toggling between apps, chasing down colleagues for answers, and manually entering data into multiple systems. Instead, they can focus on what truly matters: serving their policyholders and growing their business with innovative new products and services.
The high cost of fragmented systems
The problem of toggling between multiple applications is far more substantial than it might seem. The Harvard Business Review study found that workers spend nearly four hours each week simply reorienting themselves after toggling between applications. Over an entire year, that adds up to five weeks per employee, a 9% loss in productivity.UCaaS productivity
This problem even has a name: “app overload.” Research from OpenText found that 40% of workers use four or more apps daily, while 13% use over ten. The problem isn’t just about switching back and forth; it’s also about disconnected silos of information. When information is collected and maintained in various disconnected apps, gaining a holistic understanding of what’s happening is hard. It’s also challenging to use that fragmented information to gain meaningful data-driven insights, so the quality of decisions suffers.
With a unified communication platform, all your most essential data resides in a single system. Your video meetings, messaging, phone calls, and other communications operate together, holistically. Integration with CRM, productivity apps, Policy and Claims Admin Systems, and other systems means your communications and insights are readily available, anywhere you need them. That enables employees to do more, with better, more complete information at their fingertips.
Cloud-based communication streamlines workflows
With the right UCaaS platform, organizations can operate seamlessly, in ways that transcend traditional office boundaries. For insurance companies, tools like video meetings, messaging, and secure data file sharing can enhance productivity and speed innovation—especially when you add powerful secure AI technology to the mix.
Consider what happens, for example, when an employee at your company has a detailed conversation with one of your policyholders about a complex claim. Typically, that’s followed by a series of back-and-forth communications in which a new customer service or claims rep must come up to speed on the case, every time. Today’s generative AI technology can capture the important details, summarize the case, and provide all the essentials to a new person in moments. That not only improves productivity; it also enhances the policyholder’s experience. The new AI-powered platforms can also quickly search a claims or policy knowledge base and return with the relevant information in real time to assist the team in managing the policyholder inquiry or support the claims process.
The same technology helps new employees come up to speed quickly, offering quick, digestible summaries of the previous month’s team meetings, for example, or advising a new service rep on the best answer to a policyholder’s question.
Cloud-based communication tools accelerate workflows and help the business respond more rapidly when it matters most. For example, leaders at SCM Insurance Services, Canada’s top insurance services company, wanted to improve its responsiveness to policyholders, especially during peak claims activity following natural disasters. Unfortunately, the company’s communications systems had grown haphazardly and were poorly suited to the task. Claims adjusters could be difficult to reach if they weren’t at their desks, and communications via mobile phone could not easily be logged as part of a case file. That resulted in limited visibility to important case details.
By moving all of their employees nationwide to the RingCentral platform, SCM Insurance Services removed virtually all of the friction from employees’ communications. Adjusters could take and make calls on their SCM business lines, whether they were at their desks or in the field. This made it easier than ever to respond quickly to clients and resolve cases rapidly. The company even uses RingCentral to provision local numbers following regional disasters, so that policyholders can more easily reach the company when they truly need it.
Enhancing the policyholder experience
SCM’s case is just one example of a company saving time and money while enhancing the customer experience. RingCentral’s UCaaS platform achieves similar results in several ways.
RingCentral’s AI-infused contact center solution, for example, can automatically route each case to the most appropriate person, based on information provided by the customer, which leads to faster, more satisfactory case resolutions.
Imagine that one of your agents works with small business owners, meeting with each client annually to review their insurance needs. RingCentral’s AI note-taking feature can capture the details of those meetings, and prior to the next session, it can remind the agent of important points, even suggesting follow-up actions and questions. That translates into better value for the client and more business for your company.
Data security, compliance, and trustworthy AI
Naturally, insurance carriers must ensure that their technology investments meet the rigid compliance standards that apply to their industry. RingCentral is built with data security and privacy in mind.
That includes our trustworthy AI technology, built on a foundation of transparency, security, and compliance. RingCentral’s AI-infused platform helps insurance companies manage sensitive information securely, without compromising security or compliance. Our products comply with all relevant industry regulations, including GDPR, GLBA, and CCPA, safeguarding customer data while enabling seamless communication and collaboration.
Interested in a game-changing leap in productivity for your organization? Learn more about how RingCentral’s AI-infused communication platform can help your insurance business.
Originally published Nov 11, 2024, updated Nov 12, 2024