The chief digital officer for one of the largest U.S.-based group insurance providers was worried. After championing the implementation of an employer benefits portal, he watched as policyholder registration hovered at only 25%.
To find out why, the leader and his team talked to customers and found them discouraged by the policies’ complexity.
The carrier turned to video to educate policyholders — and to boost registration. It implemented Cognizant Personalized Interactive Video and onboarded new group health customers with contextualized, intuitive videos that guide policyholders through the details of their coverage and the portal’s self-service features. Within two months, portal registration jumped to 45%.
Backed by data and cloud technology, advances in video are enabling insurers to digitally provide the feeling of hands-on, one-to-one support that customers need.
The videos distill the complexities of products and services in customer-friendly ways that are helping move the industry’s digital transformation forward. What’s more, personalized interactive videos have multiple use cases in insurance, from shortening sales cycles to customer acquisition.
Video’s Growing Influence
Video has grown rapidly as a medium for customer engagement. From standard viewing experiences in which all visitors see the same segments — think YouTube — video has evolved to first enable custom marketing touches such as the inclusion of a consumer’s name, and now to allow viewers to control unique viewing experiences with tailored messages.
Given that the average online reader loses interest after 15 seconds, it’s no surprise that video has emerged as the most effective form of digital outreach. Video is expected to comprise 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022. Eighty five percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Cutting through the clutter is critical for insurers. Whether they’re in life and annuity, retirement, or property and casualty, effective B2B and B2C customer engagement lies in moving beyond standard content to create memorable experiences driven by user data and preference.
Education + Personal Touch = Success
For the group insurer, the goal was education. Its impressive gains in portal registration underscore the importance of combining education with the personal, interactive touch.
The portal’s initially disappointing results had surprised the carrier, given that a similar push for registration among personal insurance customers had met with great success. What the carrier hadn’t counted on is not just the increased complexity of group insurance but also businesses’ greater need for education. Group insurance policyholders are particular about management of their health, disability and other employee benefits. They want to understand them. The insurer’s goal was to step up education to both increase awareness of self-service options and reduce customers’ dependence on its contact center.
How It Works
During a two-day design-thinking workshop in Cognizant’s Collaboratory in Hartford, the chief digital officer and his team prioritized their ideas for improving education with videos. Enabling better self-service for group policyholders emerged as the top idea to launch as a proof of concept.
Global data solutions provider Precisely worked with the carrier’s marketing team to create the content. The Precisely EngageOne Video platform lets business users create videos on their own, either by uploading brand assets or by drawing from the platform’s library of assets.
Our team then implemented the video content on the Cognizant Personalized Interactive Video platform and integrated it with the carrier’s core insurance platforms. To generate the personalized and contextual video content, we accessed policyholder information over APIs. The cloud-hosted solution helps carriers rapidly scale video use for more transactions and additional use cases. The EngageOne Video dashboard features insights such as viewer preferences and behaviors that can measure ROI and further tailor content. (For more information, see Quick Take, Best Practices for Personalized Insurance Videos.)
What Customers See
To put the videos to work, the carrier embedded them into welcome emails for new group insurance policyholders. The videos kicked off a revitalized online experience that emphasizes learning.
To get there, however, the videos start by making viewers comfortable: Clicking on the video triggers a tailored voiceover that greets policyholders by name and reassures them that the video is short in length — and worth their time. With colorful animations, each video walk the viewer through careful explanation of the benefits covered under their policy. It also details how they can use the employer benefits portal to manage their policies, billing information and claims.