Customer Experience Trend Watch

This week, three large insurers, Allianz Life, MetLife and New York Life announced senior level talent acquisitions that underscore the increasing importance of customer experience. This signals a trend that insurers are recognizing the importance of customer experience and responding to increasingly sophisticated customer expectations for multi-channel interactions with their insurers. 

Karen Furtado, a partner at insurance technology and consulting firm Strategy Meets Action sees these developments as an important and emerging trend.

“For insurance companies, they are getting it; customer experience is a real differentiator. They really need to think it. It’s of strategic importance,” Furtado said. “This is being talked about at the board level, it’s not just an operational-level conversation in IT. So whether it’s in marketing or another silo, it’s an officer-level position and companies are moving in this direction. They realize now that they have to drive the connection to the customer and they need sound strategy for execution. Insurers have a lot of technology, but they need to be more holistic in how it’s applied.”

Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America hired Jamie Plesser as director of interactive strategy and execution, where she will be responsible for leading digital strategy for social and emerging media, email and social channels, and website experience. 

MetLife Inc. hired Rebecca Tadikonda as chief enterprise strategy officer, responsible for driving top-line and bottom-line financial performance. Tadikonda previously was with Bain, where she counseled insurance clients on large business transformations, global growth strategies, the customer experience and operational excellence.

Matthew Grove joined New York Life’s Insurance and Agency Group as chief administrative officer, responsible for oversight of strategy development, new business operations, quality assurance, compliance and finance functions. Grove previously was chief marketing officer for Jefferson National, an insurer focused on the RIA market, but also ran his own technology consulting firm focused on building enterprise software for financial services firms.

Chris McMahon is a senior editor for Insurance Networking News.

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