Originally published in Insurance-Canada.ca
The Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) are in the news every day on how these technologies are changing business as we know it. The impact of these technologies is predicted to have a seismic impact in a number of ways for insurers, not the least of which is how insurance companies communicate with customers.
With that in mind, at Messagepoint we saw the need for a new approach to customer communications management (CCM), one which applies artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to make content more manageable and improve its quality, thereby enhancing its performance. Messagepoint already employs modern approaches to content management in our CCM with intelligent content and template sharing, omnichannel support and advanced personalization. The introduction of the Messagepoint Advanced Rationalization and Content Intelligence Engine, MARCIE, adds a unique AI and machine learning-powered engine that will only continue to grow in its ability to help customers optimize the quality and effectiveness of their customer communications.
MARCIE’s powerful capabilities help automate and simplify the process of migrating, optimizing, authoring and managing complex customer communications. Four key capabilities that streamline the management of customer communications for insurers using MARCIE include:
- Migrating off legacy systems. One of the biggest barriers to the modernization of legacy communications is the daunting, heavily manual task of migrating legacy content off the systems that house them today. MARCIE harnesses the power of AI to streamline and automate the process of migration and content optimization so that organizations can readily take advantage of modern technologies, capabilities, and channels.
- Consolidating similar and duplicate content. MARCIE’s AI-powered Content Intelligence engine can analyze a massive library of existing customer communications and documents. This makes it possible to identify opportunities to consolidate duplicate and similar content for greater efficiency in managing, changing and authoring communications, as well as greater consistency in messaging. Applying these capabilities through Assisted Authoring that provides guidance as content is being authored in the system, helps to eliminate redundant work that many insurers face in authoring and re-authoring content. In addition, combining these new capabilities with Messagepoint’s intelligent content sharing enables organizations to centrally manage one common piece of content, such as a regulatory disclosure, to dramatically reduce change cycle times.
- Ensuring consistency and compliance with brand standards. An insurance company may send hundreds or thousands of letters, statements, confirmations, and other communications to customers each month, in both electronic and print formats. These communications are often created by numerous people and departments. They are also created for different purposes. Over time, they may have been modified, with language added or deleted for any number of reasons. MARCIE has the capability to identify elements of content that are out of compliance with an organization’s brand standards, ensuring consistency across all communications and channels.
- Communicating with customers at the appropriate reading level. In order to meet compliance requirements around reading comprehension of communications, it’s critical that insurers are automating the process of monitoring the reading levels of their texts. MARCIE automatically assesses the reading comprehension level of every communication created. The solution identifies those that aren’t at the appropriate level for your audience using Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid scoring; and then alerts you when you are out of alignment with the target readability profile for that piece.
- Expressing the right sentiment in every communication. With the customer experience always top of mind, it is important to ensure that all communications are consistent and appropriate in tone. Ultimately, the goal should be to view all customer communications from the customer’s perspective. MARCIE has the capability to identify the sentiment of your messages so that you can evoke the right feelings and emotions from your customers. This provides the opportunity to positively impact the customer experience across all channels, especially when authoring more complex communications or those that would traditionally be seen as negative, such as declinations.
The need for a solution like MARCIE stemmed from organizations still struggling under the weight of legacy customer communications systems that impede their capability to provide consistency across the customer experience. It will also be a critical enabler for organizations to achieve consistency across omni-channel experiences and accelerate the transition to digital channels for insurance organizations that are held back by old, cumbersome systems. We are excited that MARCIE will enable insurers to intelligently migrate, optimize, author and manage the complex content that is the foundation of customer communications. Technology like MARCIE makes it easier for highly regulated industries to manage their content, but even more importantly, drive consistency, brand alignment, and compliance across all customer communication channels.
