We continue to base the progress on the pillar of “E.A.S.Y.”: Kayzad Hiramanek, Chief – Operations & Customer Experience, BALIC

Data insights on consumer behavior coupled with holistic digital strategy have further augmented Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company (BALIC) to stay relevant and grow. WhatsApp has emerged as an important digital channel for its customers in the coming days. Already, more than 20 different services are being used by its customers through WhatsApp. Kayzad Hiramanek, Chief – Operations & Customer Experience, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company, talks about the BALIC CMX journey. Excerpts.

Please take us through BALIC CXM journey and how it has evolved in the last 1.5 years?

Digital transformation has been the backbone of our customer obsession way of working. We continue to base the progress on the pillar of “E.A.S.Y.” where we:

• Build Efficiencies using various tech processes
• Provide Accessibility for anything, anytime, anywhere to customers
• Ensure Security of data, systems and processes
• Keep You at the centre of everything we do (you being all our stakeholders)

Our tech/digital transformation journey got accelerated over the last two years. It saw an increase in our investments in technology and building a robust framework of digital assets to ensure a seamless and secure experience to all our stakeholders, despite the macro-environmental challenges prevailing at that time. We introduced an array of digital assets to ensure our stakeholders continue to engage with us and are able to service their policies irrespective of where they are. All this in a secure and seamless environment. We leveraged technology interventions for our stakeholders including partners, agents, insurance consultants, etc. to equip and empower them with enhanced service delivery.

For instance, Smart Assist, our revolutionary virtual assistant platform, enabled our sales representatives to virtually connect with customers and ensure service engagement with them when there were such tight pandemic protocols. We also enhanced our WhatsApp for Business platform. Today, it is one of the most comprehensive service platforms in the industry, offering customers over 20 services. The platform is available for our customers as well for our agents.

Similarly, our tech initiatives for our employees were designed when we had to shift almost all our work to Work from Home. All this while we ensured efficiency and customer satisfaction.

How have you been leveraging tremendous amounts of online data for better business insights?

Data is the backbone of the insurance sector, and the industry has always had the privilege of acquiring valuable data from customers, be it the pre-technology age or the era of digital-first customers/companies and other stakeholders. As the user’s online footprint increases, the use of automated systems and tools to process and analyse the data has also increased manifold.

At BALIC, we focus on dovetailing this valuable data to build efficiencies for enhanced customer experience. We have several data analytics models in place that uses AI and ML to yield better outcomes and create secure workflows. An interesting example to share will be our capabilities of detecting fraud. We have a strong and mature fraud detection model for mitigating potential risks, identifying high propensity fraud patterns and optimising our business efforts. These are some of the examples of how we are better leveraging our access to the data.

Take us through some of the best practices around acquiring, serving, and retaining customers with data-driven insights.

We use AI, ML and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to help us connect with our customers meaningfully through various innovative applications.  Our customer acquisition journey accelerated at the back of the advancements that we made for enhancing the digital journey of our customers – right from policy inquiry to purchase. In terms of customer retention, we have been able to achieve consistently high persistency ratios through data-driven insights and continuous engagement across customer touchpoints. Our best practices to create awareness about the criticality of staying invested in life insurance policies has helped us retain customers and improve business decision-making.

How do you see the future of personalized experiences and the role of analytics in delivering personalized experiences?

As an organization that is driven by customers’ needs and aspirations, we try and keep a tab on their requirements and respond to them at the earliest. Owing to the pandemic, customers have adopted a digital-first approach, wherein the entire journey right from product enquiry to purchases to even claims settlement is experienced digitally. And we have made this possible for them.

Keeping this changing trend in mind, we are offering digital solutions for a more robust and secure engagement along with a human touch. For instance, when a customer interacts with our virtual assistant and is unable to find the most accurate solution, a nudge for human intervention is triggered almost immediately, and a customer service representative steps in to help the customer. Our agents and partners are extensively trained and well-equipped to handle customer queries, ensuring automated yet personalized interactions with them.

What sort of RoI are you getting on the technology and Products?

Our marquee tech innovations are not just limited to the customers, but also other stakeholder groups such as employees, agents, partners, etc. We shifted to a work-from-home as well as hybrid working environment for employees and supported all our partners and agents with robust digital assets designed to help them deliver their services remotely.

Besides the tech innovations, we have also leveraged our product innovations over the last couple of years, introducing a slew of simple, easy-to-understand products to cater to the varied needs of customers. We launched guaranteed return products like the Assured Wealth Goal Plan, as well as retirement solutions like the Pension Guarantee Plan, thus completing our bouquet of products to achieve various life goals.

What is the common goal Bajaj Allianz Life targeting to achieve with the new investment made in IT?

Customer obsession continues to remain our common goal across all stakeholder groups, with a 360-degree approach across all functions. We have beefed our investments in IT to give equal focus on both back-end and front-end technology, including UI/UX, data integration, etc. We are making strong headway in the field of new tech adoption and integration within our key business operations and processes and will continue to do so in the future.