Nearly Two-thirds of Insurance Organisations Surveyed do not Provide Good Cross-channel Communications for Best Customer Experience

APPENZELL, Switzerland, June 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Critical research shows insurance firms missing out on significant annual cost savings

GMC Software Technology (GMC) (http://www.gmc.net), the award-winning leader in customer communications management (CCM) and output management, announced the outcomes of its commissioned research: Insurance Companies Falling Behind In Delivering Modern Communications. With a growing realisation that the world of mobile and social media is rapidly evolving, insurance firms have made multichannel customer experience a top priority. The main business drivers for this are mobility (52 per cent), personalisation (50 per cent) and consistency of communications output across all channels (48 per cent). However, the research shows they are lagging behind customer expectation.

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While 40 per cent of the insurance industry delivers good cross-channel communications, the majority is not able to communicate effectively with customers on mobile or consumer technology. Despite a further 30 per cent investing in new solutions to address the problem, a worryingly large 30 per cent has no adequate mobile support and does not seem to care. This is short-sighted since the research showed cost savings of ten to more than 20 per cent for 82 per cent of firms.

Equal to the drive for consistency in communications, insurance firms are at the mercy of a never-ending battle of compliance and security. With regulations such as Dodd-Frank ensuring that consumers are informed in a language they can understand without a lawyer present, compliance ranks as one of the top risks related to customer communication. This is another important driver for the consolidation of technologies to support content delivery across a multi-channel programme.

Currently, insurance companies' IT systems are complex and not yet focussed on maintaining multichannel consistency, improving personalisation, updating regulatory language, revising templates or altering business rules and logic. Only half of firms (50 per cent) characterise their communications capability as being less than flexible and therefore not in a position to deliver a real-time customer experience.

"The fact that surveyed insurance companies placed a growing importance on customer communication management to improve customer insight reflects the growing recognition that the customer experience is a prime determinant of loyalty and future revenue," said Bill Parker, chief marketing officer for GMC. "This research provides a critical path to overcoming the challenges posed by legacy communication platforms and recommendations for modernising customer communications."

Download the entire Forrester survey at: http://www.gmc.net/en/forrester-research

Download GMC's white paper response at:http://www.gmc.net/fileadmin/downloads/papers/GMC-paper-insurance-multichannel-communication.pdf

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Notes to editor

The research conducted by Forrester Consulting, drilled into top communication priorities, pain points and implementation challenges that insurers are experiencing.

GMC Software Technology AG: delivers seamless CCM solutions that streamline document creation processes and produce higher quality, relevant communications of all types for delivery through print, electronic and interactive channels.

GMC helps thousands of clients worldwide across the banking, insurance, retail, business services, telco/utilities and healthcare industries gain customer insight to improve the customer experience by getting communications to market 70% faster, improves operational efficiencies by more than 50%, and expands business services for more lucrative opportunities.

For more information about GMC's award-winning robust and scalable GMC Inspire solution, visit: http://www.gmc.net.

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