18. February 2022 By Barbara Häuser
What should be considered in the customer journey of Generation Alpha? – Part 2
How insurance providers can prepare for the future generation of customers
Insurance providers should start engaging with Generation Alpha now, as the first business-ready customers of the generation will probably enter the insurance market in 2028 and will choose providers that are set up to deal with them.
In the first part of my blog post, I introduced you to how Ben and Mia became aware of your insurance services. In this second part, I will now focus on the customer journey. Once the two protagonists have become aware of the product, it is now crucial how the information Ben and Mia need is prepared. The two provide their data in order to receive a checklist of information to help them find a new flat.
Consideration – offer the customer information prepared in a way they can understand
Once Ben and Mia have submitted their details, they receive the flat-hunting checklist they requested. They will then receive an additional message from the insurance provider in the coming days. This message will contain an offer for the pair to find out more about household insurance free of charge and with no obligation. The message can be sent to them by e-mail and via whatever the most popular messaging service is at the time. This provides both a point of connection and a challenge at the same time, since Mia and Ben access an abundance of information and strive to form opinions quickly, easily and on their own terms.
Information is available everywhere for the two, which they mostly consume via videos or pictures. It’s important that the information is summarised concisely and offers clear added value. After all, people predominantly stream videos on mobile devices, and several sources compete for one topic.
Due to the fast-moving nature of information and the multitude of it, brand affiliation and loyalty to the insurance provider is probably also decreasing. Insurance providers can only circumvent this by being innovative and addressing the wishes and concerns of their customers.
Acquisition – the customer is ready to buy
After a pleasant conversation or an innovative consultation process, Ben and Mia now have the opportunity to decide on a policy. This is where the insurance provider needs to offer custom options – Generation Alpha puts a lot of stock into individual products tailored just for them. They would like to be able to remove services that they don’t need.
This is a similar process to deciding which toppings you’d like on your burger. If you don’t like tomatoes, you want to leave them out. If you want extra cheese, you can have that, too. Applying this analogy to household insurance for Generation Alpha, this means that even if the digital broker recommends glass insurance to Ben and Mia, they still have the option to opt out.
As with the needs analysis, the same applies to the buying process: the two can get to the personal consultation at any time or – as described in the previous blog post – pause the process. This does not restart the next time, but the insurance provider receives all the relevant information and can seamlessly continue the consultation process – digitally or in branch. What’s more, the fact the provider knows what type of people their customers are means that they can customise even more aspects. A huge number of things can be tailored to customers, ranging from the clothes staff wear to the background during online consulting call, to the office itself. The numerous online profiles mean that the on-site broker can recognise and personally address their customer as soon as they enter the office thanks to the help of AI. This procedure is already being used in China, but data protection regulations mean it can’t be used in Germany yet.
Now we reach the conclusion stage. Generation Alpha doesn’t use a biro to sign their policy, but instead quickly and easily uses their personal end device or via fingerprint. The documents required for life or health insurance products – such as health questionnaires or medical documents – are processed digitally. Artificial intelligence (AI) testing and black-box processing make it possible to obtain feedback on surcharges and risk assessments quickly.
Retention – maintaining customer contact and using cross-selling
One thing is already certain: further customer contact must be simple and fast. Ben and Mia don’t want to use countless apps and a new, individual customer portal for every insurance policy or product. It is important to them to have everything clearly and easily available. This also applies to their own documents, as your high level of digitalisation makes sending out contract policies a thing of the past.
As Leipzig-based insurance news portal Versicherungsbote reports, it’s already possible to send documents securely using the German postal service in compliance with GDPR – and this doesn’t just save customers from having file documents away. The German postal service has already set up a service for GMX and Web.de users for this. This is a start, one which should be expanded for future generations and, should it become necessary, provided with a suitable filing system.
If you want to position additional product, it’s crucial that, just like in the awareness phase, this generation can reach them via the media it prefers to consume: videos.
Summary of the blog post series
Generation Alpha will enter the insurance market as customers in around 2028 and will be the most digitalised and connected generation to date. Insurance providers are already addressing this challenge for current systems. The goal is to dovetail the individual touchpoints across the entire customer journey. Customers should have the feeling that they receive consistent information across all contact points with the insurance provider and that their concerns are in good hands.
More interesting blog posts on this topic:
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