How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital CommunicationsGet the digital tools you need to empower exponential agency distribution and growth

Insurance 2021: The Shift Towards Digital Distribution 03

Communication Challenges for Insurance Providers 04

Getting the Communication Flow Right 05

Building a Seamless Communications Experience with Whispir 08

Whispir’s Features and Capabilities Designed for Insurance 09

About the Whispir Platform 10

Contents

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 02

Insurance 2021: The Shift Towards Digital Distribution

1 McKinsey: How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever.

COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of technology, especially for businesses. According to a

recent report from McKinsey1, the COVID-19 crisis accelerated the digitisation of customer

interactions in Asia by four years. To stay competitive in this new digital-driven environment,

insurance companies need to rethink their method of enabling and empowering distribution

channels. With insurers relying so heavily on sales brokered through agencies, keeping up with

this demand to go digital is imperative.

More and more, insurance companies need to find ways to go beyond simply providing education and product information to distributors. They need to be able to empower agents, foster engaging connections, and find ways to deal directly with policyholders in a way that supports the agency and edifies agents in the eyes of the policyholders.

With the right digital communication tool - such as Whispir - this can become a reality. In this

guide, we’ll expand on the unique challenges the insurance industry faces today, the power of

digital communication in solving these issues, and how the Whispir platform can work for you.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 03

Communication Challenges for Insurance Providers

When working with agency distributors, there are many common communication challenges that

insurers encounter. These include:

• Competing with an increasing field of digital-only insurers.

• Providing agencies with the right tools and information to properly engage policyholders.

• Communication channels supplied by insurers tend to be based on secure portals, a

multitude of native apps of varying quality and ungoverned channels (such as WhatsApp).

This leads to a cumbersome and crowded engagement ecosystem for agency teams.

• Agencies are often constrained by standard products or centralised capabilities that are

offered by their internal IT teams. This results in the use of mobile apps and tools that are

easy for IT teams to manage, rather than what’s best for agents.

• Compliance regulations create additional challenges, particularly in the case of face-to-face,

wet signature requirements.

• Agents often use unofficial channels to communicate directly with familiar distribution sales

team members. This creates significant compliance risks for insurer CDOs and CIOs, who

can’t effectively secure and account for communication between distribution sales and

agencies.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 04

Getting the Communication Flow RightMany insurance agencies only communicate with their distributor agencies to provide basic

updates, such as product and policy information. On top of this, these updates are often

delivered in methods that can be overwhelming for the receiver, at times sending between

20-50 SMS messages or emails per day that largely go ignored.

To shift with the changing tides of digital distribution, insurers need to both understand the

type of information that needs to be communicated and the correct methods for doing so.

Several primary communication flows should be considered:

• Engaging with your agents the way they want to be reached and enabled, at the right time,

with the right content, using the right channel.

• Empowering your agents to drive optimal engagement with policyholders and prospects.

• Directly engaging with policyholders in a way that doesn’t impede on existing relationships

that agents have, but rather fortifies those relationships in the eyes of the client.

The Whispir platform delivers frictionless and secure end‑to‑end experiences throughout the purchasing lifecycle, both online and offline, enables insurers to understand policyholders’ needs and engage with them accordingly. Through the Whispir platform, our messages are viewed by more than 70% of the agents which contributed to one of our largest agency kickoff turnouts at the start of 2020.

Wong Sze Keed

CEO, AIA Insurance”

“

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 05

Empowering agents

There is still outdated thinking amongst insurance companies that communicating with agencies

is the only objective. While this is important, communication should go well beyond this.

Insurance companies that directly connect with agents and customers will find it easier to build engagement, attract new relationships and retain existing ones, and build brand loyalty. Communication flows should therefore look less like one single pathway, and more like an

interconnected network of dialogues between various stakeholders:

Insurer to agency

Product & policy introduction

Insurer to agents

Insurer to customer

Agency to agents

Agency sales communication

Agent to customerCustomer

communication

CUSTOMERSAGENTSAGENCYINSURER

These direct modes of communication make it possible for insurance providers to complete

functions – such as facilitating policy holder upsell via agent appointments – in a seamless and

completely digital way.

Direct-to-customer communication

Thanks to the rapid emergence of digital-only insurance providers, it’s more important than ever

for traditional insurance companies to differentiate themselves as the brand of choice in the

eyes of their customers. One key way of doing this is by providing direct communications to the

policyholder that still reinforce and edify the agency.

Insurers should no longer rely on agencies to be the sole disseminator of information with

policyholders. Instead, they should draw on their advantageous access to customer data and

product knowledge to actively communicate their worth.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 06

This includes providing personalised upsells and renewal experiences based on customer profiles,

and offering in-policy benefits at scale. Doing so allows insurers to own the outcome of customer

engagement, without relying solely on agencies to deliver communications.

These communication methods should be created with full transparency in mind. In other words,

it’s integral to keep agents informed. This way, they know what has already been communicated

to their customers. It also strengthens their alliance with the insurer, as they can see firsthand the

effort being put in to proactively enrich the lives of policyholders.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 07

Building a Seamless Communications Experience with Whispir

The Whispir platform makes it easy for insurers to create automated and seamless digital

communication experiences for their agencies, agents, and policyholders. Using Whispir,

distribution sales teams can:

1 Connect

Instantly send compelling and relevant interactions to your audience by SMS,

email, WhatsApp, and more.

2 Create

Use simple drag-and-drop tools to create quality content in minutes without

the need for designers or developers. Build engaging, personalised content

for acquisition marketing, retention and renewal, cross-selling, surveys,

agency communications and more.

3 Automate

Simplify complex interactions using conversations that are automatically

triggered by events. For example, set up an automation that sends a

confirmation when a customer renews their policy. Accelerate customer

journeys, provide proactive and more seamless experiences, and manage

business communications.

4 Report

Understand your target audiences and make data-driven decisions that lift

call-to-action rates and levels of engagement with intuitive reporting features.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 08

Whispir’s Features and Capabilities Designed for Insurance

The Whispir platform delivers frictionless and secure end-to-end experiences throughout the

purchasing lifecycle, enabling insurers to understand the needs of policyholders and distributors

and engage with them accordingly.

With a complete communication solution, you can transform your vision into meaningful dialogue

and create a unique experience that is personalised and builds loyalty.

Key features

SMS

Create and send rich SMS

messages securely through

Whispir’s online SMS platform.

Email

Send rich, interactive emails in bulk

from anywhere in the world.

Branded Interactive Experiences

Engage your customers creatively

with bespoke landing pages, forms

and surveys, plus the ability to add

rich imagery, videos, audio, location

sharing and more.

Push Inbox API

Send push messages to the inbox

of any application. Each push

message can launch personalised

landing pages within both Android

and iOS mobile apps - providing

greater engagement and avoiding

costly app changes or time lags to

quickly deploy new content.

Video Chat

Easily start live video chats or

set up video meetings through

SMS, email, or push notifications.

Securely archive video chats with

time stamps, duration, and other

key information.

How Insurers can Boost Engagement and Retention with Digital Communications 09

About the Whispir Platform

The Whispir platform is a multi-channel automated communication

workflow solution, designed to be robust, scalable and customisable enough

to meet the most stringent messaging security requirements.

Whispir’s low-code/no-code platform allows organisations to create workflows without design

or development resources. Our drag-and-drop templates enable businesses to automate

personalised two-way interactions for individual recipients at scale using smart logic and

dynamic content. The platform also facilitates customised actions based on certain real-time

events or ‘triggers’ to determine responses across multiple communications channels.

The Whispir platform integrates with pre-existing IT systems, enabling organisations to modernise

legacy systems including systems of record (databases), systems of intelligence (AI platforms)

and systems of engagement (communications channels such as SMS, voice and IoT).

Reporting and dashboard functionality improve situational awareness, speed up decision making

and increase critical responsiveness.

Whispir is the trusted communications provider for leading enterprises, including AIA Insurance,

M1, IBM, Itel International, and Changi Airport, as well as numerous government agencies around

the world. Customers use the platform for critical communications such as crisis response,

emergency management, community notifications and IT incident management as well as

customer engagement and general operational communications.

To find out more:

Visit Whispir today ContactSpeak to an expert