Insurers take social media route to promote business

Insurers are also exploring methods of helping customers renew their policies using social networking accounts

Insurance companies in India are using social networking sites to attract prospective customers. Apart from offers on their products, they’re exploring methods of helping customers renew their policies by using their social networking accounts.

Rakesh Jain, chief executive officer of Reliance General Insurance, said: “Young Indians are best connected in social media. As insurers, we believe this is the fastest medium to connect with our customers. We have made our online platforms very user-friendly and very prompt on response. Our online platform is capable of transaction and issuance of digitally signed policies instantly, for most of the retail products.”

Initially, the presence of insurance companies on Facebook and Twitter was restricted to purely branding activities. However, they now say the activities have expanded to segments such as product offers, new product marketing and instant responses to customer queries. In the near future, policy-related data and reminders on renewals through Facebook messages will be on the cards.

Gunjan Ghai, vice-president, marketing & e-commerce at Tata AIG General Insurance, said: “We strive to build customer relationships and offer customer service through our presence on social networking sites. We visualise that in the not so distant future, our customers will interact with social media to manage all the processes that are currently managed by (our) branches.”

Ghai added they’d used social media presence for not only marketing and branding but for responding on customer issues. They were present on Facebook and intended to be so on Twitter, too, he said, using it to manage feedback.

Insurers have researched the customer presence on these networks. Rishi Piparaiya, director, marketing and bancassurance, Aviva India, said their research had shown 95 per cent of their target group was on social media platforms and 74 per cent were happy to engage with brands and services.

He said they had a robust presence on both Facebook and Twitter. “Around 70 per cent of the audience engaging with us are in the age group of 25-44 years, with 225,000 ‘likes’ on the page.We have a presence on YouTube and are looking at developing a more comprehensive strategy to tap both LinkedIn and YouTube in the near future,” he said.

Piparaiya says one aim is to have brand Aviva being an enabler to a richer parent-child relationship, with content around education, entertaining activities to do with your child, tips on smart parenting, and, of course, preparing financially for their future. The company, he said, had a customer and a product centre on Facebook, leading to their website, to finalise sales for online products.

Sevantika Bhandari, director-marketing, Max Bupa Health Insurance, said they welcomed feedback, even it was negative, from customers on these social media sites. Max Bupa is present on both Facebook and Twitter. She said, “All kinds of feedback from customers is valuable for us. Our motive to to make people healthier and our activities of engaging customers online revolves around this idea.”

It is not just private companies expanding aggressively in the social media space. India’s largest insurer, government-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India, is present on Orkut, Facebook and Twitter via its ‘LIC India Forever’ handle. The activities include product information and updates on launches. It also has a dedicated YouTube channel for promotional activities and information on new products.

A DIFFERENT PLAYING FIELD

• Apart from offers on their products, insurance companies are exploring methods of helping customers renew their policies by using their social networking accounts
• Initially, the presence of insurance companies on Facebook and Twitter was restricted to purely branding activities
• However, they now say the activities have expanded to segments such as product offers, new product marketing and instant responses to customer queries
• In the near future, policy-related data and reminders on renewals through Facebook messages will be on the cards
• It is not just private companies expanding aggressively in the social media space
• India’s largest insurer, government-owned Life Insurance Corporation of India, is present on Orkut, Facebook and Twitter via its ‘LIC India Forever’ handle