In today’s business landscape it is more important than ever to be able to offer customer support in the most effective and cost efficient way possible. In no other industry is this more important than in financial services, especially the Insurance industry. Hunting for customers and capturing them under the provider’s canopy of coverage products such as life, auto, property, flood, commercial, and so on, is challenging enough, but actually servicing those customers is a mammoth undertaking. Whether you’re the king of the jungle or the gazelle trying to survive yet another day in our global economy under current conditions, the insurance industry has been trying for years to improve their service in the hopes of increasing conversion rates of web site visitors into customers, and up-sell single coverage customers into complete package subscribers, ultimately increasing their lifetime customer value. Insurance companies have been forced to deal with the unknown recently as many of us have, but today is a great time for these organizations to re-think their approach to online customer support and online visitor support while focusing their attention on the architecture of their customer-facing applications. In the claims department there are many instances where Co Browsing makes complete sense, whether a customer needs assistance filling out a claims form or they’re simply following up on an existing claim, the ability for the carrier to quickly help that customer is in the best interest for all parties involved.

Long gone are the days of the Wild, Wild West of the Internet when the “anything goes” mentality was the law of the land. Today, it’s dog-eat-dog in the online business world as companies compete for the same prey and drink from the same watering hole, while evolving in order to hunt more effectively. It is no longer enough to just have a website with information about your company; it is not even enough to have an interactive website with flashy graphics that look cool. Web users expect more from web sites and their attention spans have become even shorter than before. Companies typically have about 8 seconds to capture the attention of a web visitor before the visitor either leaves the site or decides their next move and hopefully browse within. This is why your website’s home page should be optimized to capture your audiences’ attention and communicate your services within this small window of time. With that said, it is important for your customers and web visitors to know that they can reach out for live help at anytime and feel they are being taken care of.

When offering live help, it is very important to make sure the vehicle in which you deliver that live help is effective and easy to use. Co Browsing, also known as Collaborative Browsing is a somewhat new experience to web users and even more new to companies using it to offer live help to their customers. Insurance companies are learning that their web visitors would much rather service themselves but are often limited in their ability to do so and are forced to contact someone for live help because of complex forms or web site navigation that is not intuitive. Co Browsing helps break down barriers between the web visitor and the support agent at the insurance company because it allows the agent to view the visitor’s screen to avoid confusion and to expedite live help. There are several Co Browsing tools on the market today, some are clunky and require a download for both parties, and some are light, easy to use and do not require a download or installation. LiveLOOK offers the latter, a clean, light-weight easy to use Co Browsing solution that many people have found simple and have said “it just works”. Live help is an area of focus that many companies in the insurance industry are trying to enhance while not breaking the bank in the process. The next time you are on a website and have trouble or need help, contact their customer support center and insist that they offer live help with tools that are easy to use so that they can resolve your issue and the both of you can go on with your day. Co Browsing is a must-have for any company offering support to their web visitors but it is an absolute ‘no-brainer’ for the insurance industry as they try to accelerate the transition for their customers to self-service themselves. Insurance companies are in a unique position to use this ‘rebuilding’ period to their advantage and ultimately we hope they do what’s best for the customer because in the end, it affects us all in one way or another.