Health insurers face intense competition. A customer-oriented customer journey from acquisition to business processing is key to winning in the constant battle for customers. This is increasingly shifting from traditional to digital channels. At the same time, health insurers maintain a large number of interfaces with doctors, hospitals and therapists as well as general agents and brokers. The amount of data to be processed and the potential for digitalization are correspondingly high. For the Swiss healthcare insurer Atupri, digitalization has been a strategic necessity for years, enabling it to continuously expand its competitive edge.
As a result, Atupri has consistently pursued its chosen path – and has since enjoyed success in the competitive arena and earned recognition from its stakeholders and employees. “Nobody knows exactly where the digital journey will take us,” says Dieter Genge, Head of Information Management & Projects at Atupri.
The goal of digitalization is subsumed under increasing competitiveness. The focus is on differentiation in customer service. The customer should decide when and where to use Atupri’s services. This goes hand in hand with the seamless linking of all digital and personal contact points.
Act 1: Customer experience has priority
In an initial phase, Atupri focused on digitalizing the front end in order to adapt the customer journey to today’s customer requirements and create a sustainably better customer experience. The Atupri customer portal launched in 2016 is now used by around a third of policyholders. Just one year later, Atupri made it possible to take out basic and supplementary insurance policies online – conveniently, quickly and with a signature via smartphone or tablet in a matter of minutes.
Act 2: Improved service thanks to process and data digitization
Since then, the picture of digital insurance has been gradually coming together. It goes without saying that digitalization should increase the efficiency of employees and bring more convenience to the handling of business processes. Data and process digitization together with Appway is therefore the focus of the next phase. This step is intended to interlink the digital customer contact points with the personal consulting world and thus ensure personal and efficient customer service along the entire customer journey. This means that it no longer matters to employees which input and output channels are used to process business transactions. The solid foundation enables Atupri to create a new harmony between customers and the different business areas. The entire company operates much more efficiently in relation to its core business.
Personal data comprehensively protected
The security of data and processes along the entire customer journey is ensured at all times thanks to a modular security component(United Security Providers). The customer portal and all other services accessible via the internet are protected against attacks at all times by a web application firewall. This ensures compliance with the new European General Data Protection Regulation and regulatory requirements. Depending on the use case, mechanisms for strong user authentication are also available.
Changing demands on employees
Digitization efforts are also revolutionizing existing job profiles. The focus is not primarily on job cuts, but on reducing routine manual tasks in favour of further increasing service quality and innovation – and thus also advancing digitization efforts. “Business and technology are growing together. We promote this convergence of disciplines through interdisciplinary project teams. Everyone has their own areas of expertise, but at the core we need a common understanding of business,” explains Dieter Genge from Aturpi.
Act 3: Further extend competitive advantage
The milestones achieved so far allow Atupri to be extremely agile today. If the market demands new communication channels or new incentives in communication, these can be integrated relatively easily into day-to-day business. In the future, Atupri intends to further expand its network capability and integrate its network partners directly into the newly created, customer-oriented processes. With the existing database, Atupri has also created the basis for the use of artificial intelligence, such as chatbots or auto-response systems.
For digital marketing campaigns or for the further connection of partners, Atupri has a simple user administration with self-services in its modular system, which is also available at short notice for customer & consumer IAM requirements.
Conclusion
Differentiating yourself significantly as a healthcare insurer is not easy due to the regulatory framework. This made it all the more important for Atupri to provide policyholders with the best possible customer experience when using the digital interface securely. With Appway as the digitalization partner and United Security Providers as the information security partner, this was a first-class success.
Source: This article is based on the interview by Arndt Mielisch (Appway) with Kaspar Trachsel (Atupri) and Dieter Genge (Atupri) published on Moneycab.