Customer experience is key to customer loyalty, brand security, and revenue growth. With the integration of digitalization with AI technologies, customers are now expecting easy, customized, and quick solutions. Improved customer experience provides a competitive advantage, prevents customer loss, and in trust-based sectors such as finance and insurance, ensures loyalty even in times of crisis.
In 2024, customer experience underwent an impressive transformation with innovations such as artificial experience and machine learning providing smart customer support, and data-based customization offering the appropriate service and pricing for customers. As Artiwise, we have researched these changes and their effects for you as we enter a new year. Let’s take a closer look at these innovations and other trends in customer experience.
How Customer Experience Evolved In 2024
In 2024, customer experience improved in parallel with digitalization. Sector players began to transform their work processes with new technologies to meet customers’ expectations. In addition to technology-brought changes, human factors also played a role in shaping the trends. Here are the most important trends of 2024 and how they affected the customer experience:
Artificial Intelligence and Customization
The advancement in AI technology brought forth several advantages. Companies can now know each customer as if they’re their only one. The use of machine learning and advanced data analysis to gather and analyze customer data provides more personalized experiences and allows companies to create customized campaigns and offers. For example, customers can be categorized according to their preferences and targeted with personalized offers. Personal insurance premiums can be determined with the analysis of the customer’s health condition and lifestyle. Artiwise Voice of Customer platform facilitates this process by making ambiguous customer data more understandable with user-friendly panels and analytical tools.
Email marketing also got an update with AI, which can determine when the best time is to send them out and personalize the emails. AI can analyze social media channels to see which posts get the most engagement and can offer ideas for future content. A survey of over 400 executives shows that 61% of them think personalized customer experience is a number one priority in terms of ensuring loyalty.
Predictive Abilities
AI is able to derive from data to anticipate what the customer is going to need and detect potential issues. They can understand the customer’s tone from their reviews, analyze customer sentiment, and while providing customer support, decide when to direct the customer to a human employee and prepare them for the customer by informing them of the customer’s overall feeling.
AI can also help companies make smarter business decisions by providing them with analysis and predictions regarding trends and sales patterns, which in turn minimizes the risks. AI tools can be seen by more than a single human employee can and cost much less. They can provide personal analysis of each customer and take necessary steps. Our Artiwise platform can detect customers’ sentiments along with the subject in the message. Derives positive and negative insights from dialogues and informs you about them with its easy-to-use interface. AI tools can also send suggestions to managers when there is a lack of activity in terms of customers or if their birthday is coming up so they can find personalized solutions. This might be emails about products they might want to reorder or discounts on special occasions. All of this helps with customer retention numbers.
Omnichannel
Omnichannel is meeting customers where they are. In finance and insurance sectors where the customer interaction per year is minimal, omnichannel provides the opportunity to make the minimal number of interactions count. Companies interacting with their customers through various channels, including social media apps, streaming services, and websites, have a bigger chance of getting them to engage with their business. Creating different messages and developing various marketing strategies according to platforms can improve customer experience.
Sustainability
Younger customers, especially, value sustainability as part of a company’s strategy. According to research, younger generations are more likely to engage with a company if they believe the company cares about its impact on the world. In the finance industry, sustainability, green investments, reduced carbon footprint, and sustainable finance products came to the fore. For example, offering customers tools with which they can track their carbon footprint or opening accounts promoting sustainable investments can improve customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, in the insurance sector, customers like to see companies not only provide financial security but also offer mindful and proactive solutions for environmental risks. For instance, green insurance policies and special discounts for energy-efficient houses or electric vehicles offer both financial and environmental value to customers.
Loyalty Program
According to research, %79 of customers are more likely to purchase from a company because they have a loyalty program. While in the past, these programs worked on getting customer loyalty with points and rewards, today there are more sophisticated and personalized approaches. Banks and credit card companies can analyze their customers’ spending habits and needs and offer tailored campaigns. For example, if the customer’s spending is based on education, they might get discounts or bonus points in that area. Also, easy access to rewards and bonuses through digital platforms increases customer participation. Some banks, by offering rewards such as high-interest savings accounts or investment tools, reshape their loyalty programs to be focused on financial aims.
In the insurance sector, loyalty programs generally aim to increase policy renewal rates of the customer. These might include special discounts or additional services for long-time customers. For instance, a car insurance company might offer lower premiums or additional securities to customers who renew their policies yearly and don’t have any accidents in their history. Digital channels make these loyalty programs more visible and easier to access and customers’ access t to these programs through digital channels provides the companies with the data necessary to offer more a customized experience. For example, the Artiwise VoC Platform, with its sector-based and pre-trained artificial intelligence models, allows the fast reporting of customer feedback data in the POC process. This helps new models get quickly adapted in case of an increased need for customization.
Data Privacy
According to Forbes research, 50% of customers are open to sharing personal information to get a more personalized experience. However, this data needs to be protected to ensure customer trust and loyalty. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and machine learning are used to identify and prevent. potential security flaws. Additionally, customers now like to see and control how their data is used, providing this opportunity and ensuring data safety is a critical factor in improved customer experience.
Companies Benefit from The Technology
Many companies successfully implement innovations that transform customer experience. Apps evaluating customers’ sentiments by analyzing their messages in terms of tone, intent, and urgency are developed. These apps assign an emoji to customers’ emotional state and help the agents prioritize angry customers first. Loyalty programs offering points, gifts, and trial-sized products based on spending are created and customers’ increased purchase is rewarded with higher discounts, full-sized products, etc.
In the finance sector, companies tend to give offers based on spending habits, using artificial intelligence and data analysis. This personalized experience might be the key to improved customer experience. According to world-renowned customer experience expert Shep Hyken’s research, 81% of customers opt for companies that offer a personalized experience. The insurance sector also takes advantage of artificial intelligence to quickly review insurance demands and improve customer experience. Customers are able to apply for policies in a matter of minutes and damage claims get just as quickly solved. In 2024, some companies claim to have provided 50% faster payment for damage claims with their AI-powered systems.
Future of Customer Experience in Finance and Insurance Sectors
Customers are undergoing a huge transformation in the finance and insurance sectors. Soon, hyper personalization will become even more prevalent, and customers will have more relevant experience. Predictions will become more data driven. For instance, an insurance company can predict conditions of a customer’s car that pose a risk of an accident and remind insurance renewals to inform their customers of potential issues.
AI is also expected to become even more human-like through constant training and interact much better with customers. This isn’t to say they’re going to replace the human touch, but they will allow the human agents to deal with only important issues, saving time and money.
Data privacy will also become more important with the increased storage of personal information and financial data in the digital sphere. Adhering to data protection laws, offering safer data management systems, implementing blockchain technology, and using secure encryption systems will be part of companies’ routines.
New Age of Customer Experience
2024 was a year of great transformation in terms of customer experience, which, if done badly, according to Forbes could cost companies up to $3.7 trillion annually. New technologies allow companies to respond to customer demands faster and in a more personalized way. The loyalty programs, artificial intelligence, data analysis, and digital platforms considerably increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs with their automation features.
However, sector leaders need to continue to innovate focusing on the hardships of the future, especially in terms of data privacy, and changing customer expectations. They need to be prepared to improve customer experience even further in a time of fast-paced technological advancements and digital transformation.
Customizing Customer Experience in the Finance and Insurance Sector: Artiwise!
As Artiwise, we are ensuring sustainable customer satisfaction with artificial intelligence and providing solutions through our platform that transforms customer insights into effective strategies. A positive customer experience is very important, but what is critical is to make it sustainable. With artificial intelligence models based on your sector, you can understand your target audience better, present customer insights with root cause analyses and periodical comparison reports and plan your 2025 actions proactively. Explore our AI-powered Voice of the Customer (VoC) platform to ensure end-to-end sustainable customer satisfaction and discover every stage of a customer’s journey.
