Note: A webinar on this topic is also available.

Customer experience is the new battleground for differentiation. But delivering on that experience requires a wide variety of digital capabilities that aren't found in a typical application architecture. This report lays out a new framework for a customer-centric approach and the digital ecosystem that is required to accompany it.

Customer experience is the hot new topic in the insurance industry. The explosion in new technologies continues to shape customer expectations of what a customer experience should feel like. The speed and convenience we get from Amazon, the transparency from Uber, and the control we get from Dell are all experiences that drive expectations across insurance. And of course, all the research shows that a superior customer experience drives retention and profitability.

Increasingly we’re seeing a new role, the Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO), as if the CEO has realized that silos don’t just organically unite. These CCEOs are focused on creating a 360-degree view of the customer, measuring satisfaction through Net Promoter Scores, and using other techniques such as journey mapping to identify the gaps in the customer experience. However, these techniques allow a carrier to better optimize those points of engagement, but focus on the traditional points of engagement between a carrier and customer. And the customer’s expectations have changed. This is just as true if you define the agent as your customer.

In a world of customer-centric design, there is a new way of looking at the customer value equation — and delivering on that value equation requires a wide variety of digital capabilities that aren’t typically found in a carrier’s core application architecture. This report lays out that new framework, highlights the changing application architecture needed to support it, and gives suggestions for how to get started in the transition.