Thinksmart
How can smartphones improve travel insurers’ business and their customers’ travel experience – both now and in the future? Manjit Rana offers his knowledge and insights
How can smartphones improve travel insurers’ business and their customers’ travel experience – both now and in the future? Manjit Rana offers his knowledge and insights
Sci-fi to reality
It took 40 years for the Star Trek PADD (personal access display device) to be (re)invented as the popular tablet device we recognise today, and only another two years before tablet PCs were selling more than 100 million devices annually.
Smartphone growth is even greater (in fact fourtimes greater), with over 50 per cent of your customers living much of their mobile life around a four-inch screen that’s attached to a computer with a brain more powerful than even Spock could imagine, and built-in sensor technologies that even NASA would have been proud of a few years ago.
Smartphones are beginning to touch almost every aspect of the consumers’ life, with the average user interacting with their device over 30 times a day. They are, for many people, the most desirable device ever created. So what makes this technology so addictive and potentially disruptive for so many industries? For the sake of simplicity, smartphone technologies
can be grouped into various core functionality areas such as ‘connectivity and communication’, ‘capture and storage of information’ and ‘processing and display of information’. When you combine this functionality with inventive business models, you begin to deliver increased value for all members of the value chain.
Evidence of how smartphones have begun to disrupt traditional business models is all around us. You only have to see the number of people taking photographs with their smartphones to sense the impact on the camera and photography industries. Most of us now view photography as a social experience. For example, 140 billion photographs have been uploaded to Facebook, with 250 million new ones being added each day.
Smartphone solutions have the potential to generate huge return on a very modestinvestment
Family and friends now share holiday experiences as they happen. This desire to share experiences ‘live’ is having a significant effect on a broad range of service providers, even, of course, travel insurers and others in the financial services and assistance arenas. When you visit a restaurant or hotel, you are increasingly likely to post messages about the great service or the stunning views. The same applies if you experience poor service. Where good or bad views previously travelled at a snails pace, today they travel to potentially millions of people in seconds. So it’s now vital to avoid any negative customer experiences altogether or correct a problem instantly.
Real-life application
As to be expected, travel insurers and assistance providers are experimenting with smartphone apps. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these ‘experiments’ underperform. The reason why is simple: with more than 500,000 apps available, a smartphone user chooses those apps that provide instant value – whether that’s entertainment or support-related. Apps that perform poorly or offer very limited value are instantly deleted.
Smartphone technologies (sensors) such as gyroscopes and accelerometers were designed to compete with the handheld gaming console market. The sophistication of this technology in smartphones now is of such a high standard that games are being released for £1.99 that would previously have been available for around £30. This is splitting the games industry in two. Mobile and console gaming and the retailers will need to evolve or suffer the consequences. The same sensor technology is now used in smartphone apps used by motor insurers to assess and monitor driver behavior and take control if one of their policyholders has an accident. A few years ago, you would have paid £150 plus
for a Personal Navigation Device (PND) or satellite navigation unit, which included only UK maps. Now free global coverage is available with Google Maps on your smartphone. The soon-to-be launched mapping service on the iPhone will likely make smartphone navigation even more sophisticated, relevant and user-friendly. With the advent of ‘augmented reality’, where information is overlaid on top of images viewed through a smartphone camera lens, vital information can now be visually presented alongside actual views of the surrounding areas, and for travel insurers, an example of this could be information that would help to direct a customer to a preferred medical services provider.
Another very interesting area receiving enormous amounts of research and development spend is voice command and recognition. You’ve probably seen the Apple Siri adverts where the new iPhone is responding to voice commands. We are now close to the point at which technology is able translate languages in real time. This opens up possibilities of supporting much greater communication between customers overseas requiring assistance (for more information about how technology is aiding translation services for the industry, please see the ITIJ 2012 Assistance and Repatriation Review, available from the ITIJ website).
The smartphone can be a powerful triage mechanism for an insurer to provide the right level of assistance as, when and where it is required
So how does an insurer or assistance provider achieve smartphone greatness? I mentioned earlier that smartphone users have an enormous choice of solutions and wouldn’t welcome anything that underperforms. Smartphone consumers feel little empathy toward insurers or their products. For an insurer to get a consumer to install an insurance or assistance app on their smartphone it must translate to the consumer as an important and obvious thing to do. Apps should also ideally provide the customer with value beyond the support given in the event of a claim – after all, most people don’t expect to need to make a claim.
Consumers are far more likely to install an app that provides genuinely useful help and support during their trip. One option to meet this requirement is to include the functionality from such an app as part of a travel insurance product that they have already bought, or alternatively, the travel insurance could be bundled as part of the consumer acquiring the app and related services.
Either way, this approach will do little for the insurer as the focus rests away from the insurance element; it could more likely cause the customer to ignore the part the insurer plays altogether. So, the only way for insurers to create real win-win value while taking advantage of their customers’ love of their smartphone devices is, to coin a phrase, ‘think WELL outside of the box’.
Industry options
Smartphone solutions must be built from the ground up and must always stretch the boundaries of what the smartphone technologies can support in terms of representing the interests of the insurer or assistance provider. Simply adding functionality available elsewhere will not help to compete with the popular apps. Smartphone solutions have the potential to generate huge return on a very modest investment. Today, the most effective ‘travel’ apps fall into several categories, such as ‘Policy acquisition’, ‘Insurance wallet’, ‘Travel enrichment’ and ‘Travel assistance’.
For example:
Policy acquisition – for many consumers, the choice between insurance products is largely price-driven. With so many options available, large volumes of consumers are unlikely to download an app just to calculate the premium for a specific insurer. An app that provides comparative quotes is likely to be more interesting to a consumer; however, by working inventively and intelligently with common smartphone technologies and by understanding human behavioural characteristics, price – as a the key purchase trigger – can be removed. As an example: a consumer may receive free trip cancellation cover if booking through a particular site with an option offered to upgrade to incorporate loss of baggage the day before travel and a medical cover upgrade offered once the consumer lands at their destination. Smartphone users are conditioned to make simple, instantaneous decisions.
Providing consumers with positive experiences when they most need support should help to build a more cohesive and loyal relationship and reduce the likelihood of fraudulent claims
Travel enrichment – these types of apps are designed to add incremental value when organising and managing trips. Services such as TripIt and Worldmate alert the consumer about
flight delays, boarding gates and hotel deals at the destination. These could be enhanced to incorporate features such as automatically alerting the consumer of the best currency exchange rates as the trip approaches, restaurants that have been recommended by their specific friends, alerts if any of their friends are going to be at the same destination, language translation, automatic upgrades if any of their membership clubs permit, quick booking service for hire cars and baggage allowance details for the flight booked.
Smartphone users ‘expect’ to have this type of information available at their fingertips without having to do much work. Companies offering services that enhance our experiences and delight us are likely to build a loyal following, but you have to keep evolving the service to retain their attention.
Coming soon?
Smartphone apps for travellers of all types are very popular and have been for the past few years. At least your customers are open (if certain conditions are met) to installing an app that offers value to their journey and/or their destination. Here we have conceptualised two apps that we believe are examples of next generation apps likely to emerge within a year:
DelayBreak
A delay of even a couple of hours when you are waiting to board a flight with a young family can be a very frustrating and stressful experience. Now picture the following scenario: you have gone through security and found yourself a comfortable seat near the duty free shops. Your spouse and kids go off to do some last-minute shopping. Your smartphone suddenly alerts you that your flight has actually been delayed by two hours.
People around you are getting frustrated and the smallest issues are being exaggerated. You lift up your smartphone, select the ‘DelayBreak’ app and scan the duty free area through the smartphone’s camera. As you point it towards the bookshop, a message pops up saying that due to the delay you are entitled to two free children’s puzzle books to help keep
them occupied. You carry on scanning around the terminal as the coffee shop comes into sight, you get a message saying that you can go and pick up two free drinks.
With more than 500,000 apps available, a smartphone user chooses those apps that provide instant value
The benefit here is that you can use the technologies inside most smartphones to provide a positive experience for the consumer. The service could be customised to just work for certain groups of customers – i.e. just those with young children, or for people on a particular flight. What we are hoping for is that the positive experience is something that they’ll share with their friends, encouraging increased sales of the insurance product and also to reduce the likelihood of them making a false or exaggerated claim.
ClaimsDoctor
You get back to the hotel after a tiring day and your child is complaining of the pain from an insect bite on their hand. You access the ClaimDoctor app on the smartphone and point
at the hand on the body image displayed on the screen. The image zooms into the hand area and asks you to filter the symptoms. A list of potential medical scenarios are presented to you. The app instructs you to take a picture of your child’s hand and the image is transmitted to your insurer’s claims handling department along with details of your specific location and the nearest pre-approved medical facilities.
The claims handler calls the smartphone to verify a couple of additional details and confirms where you need to take your child. The clinic is automatically informed of your impending arrival along with your child’s medical history and a translation of the problem in the local language. The app has already calculated the route details in case you wish to drive across, and the medical facility has had pre-approval so that you won’t be asked for any payment. If a claim-related incident occurs, a customer will value immediate and genuine assistance
that supports their specific needs. Accurately identifying the circumstances relating to an incident is vital to delivering customer value. The smartphone can be a powerful triage mechanism for an insurer to provide the right level of assistance as, when and where it is required.
Smartphones have become essential devices for travel insurance customers. The capabilities of these devices can relatively easily and very quickly deliver significant value at a relatively low cost. They are an ideal platform for fusing together travel insurance and travel assistance propositions and solutions. Providing consumers with positive experiences when they most need support should help to build a more cohesive and loyal relationship and reduce the likelihood of fraudulent claims.
Delivering a high-performance smartphone solution requires enormous levels of creative and inventive thinking. Fear not though: your customers are guaranteed to appreciate all the effort you invest.