Hybrid approach ensures seamless experience for insurance customers

Like many companies, Topdanmark – Denmark’s second largest insurance company – needs to tackle an increasing digitized business reality of multiple channels and touchpoints. With a market share of 17%, insuring both private, business and agriculture clients, Topdanmark covers everything from complex industries to home insurance for the student who just got their first apartment. It is crucial to find the right marketing setup to ensure that potential and existing customers are met with the right message at the right time and are guided on a consistent customer journey – no matter where they encounter Topdanmark..

“We have a vision that the customer should feel recognized and understood across all touchpoints,” says Jens Green, Corporate Marketing Director at Topdanmark. “To ensure this, we need a hybrid marketing approach that lets us combine our online and offline touchpoints in the same workflows. For example, plans around personal and phone meetings need to combine seamlessly with the newest digital possibilities.”

A delivery model based on data insight

Topdanmark’s challenge was that the digital channels and direct channels had developed separately and were not sufficiently linked to databases. This created siloes and channels and systems were not in sync. It was multichannel – not omnichannel. It prevented Topdanmark from creating a good flow of touchpoints and communication across channels, making for a disjointed customer journey.

The SAS^® Customer Intelligence 360 platform was considered for a revamped customer experience approach. During the process, the SAS team demonstrated how Topdanmark’s use cases would be handled in the new setup, assigning tasks according to value streams in the customer journey. The functionality and ability to process workflows convinced the Topdanmark team to go ahead.

Sanne Thomns, Omnichannel Manager at Topdanmark, headed up the digital transformation project leading to the new hybrid marketing approach.

“We really see the CI 360 platform as a quantum leap as compared to the previous platforms,” says Thomns. “It is amazing how much this has evolved from marketing automation. We have great expectations of the planning module and the workflows it should give us. For example, when data is ready, copy should be getting ready – and really, it all starts with data. The modules will guide the process forward and help us orchestrate the work along the different parts of the marketing process, from data scientist to copywriter.”

Prioritizing effort and budget

In terms of marketing management and overview, the system will help identify bottlenecks: Where is the process stuck? What data are we missing? Every specialist function has its own manager so there might be different priorities. The tool will help us plan and prioritize, both in terms of time but also marketing spending.

Both Green and Thomns are happy with the work process with SAS.

“The CI360 platform itself has been a real ‘wow’ experience, but just as important, SAS has shown respect for our reality,” says Thomns. “For example, that the direct sales process is integrated into the platform. This has been a real differentiating factor compared to other vendors. And the fact that analytics is the foundation, as channels converge, means we can do real-time intelligent decision making.”

"It was also a huge factor in choosing SAS that they have been faithful to what they promised,” concludes Green. “They have not promised us functionality that is not yet available, and have shared the roadmap. We appreciate the honest and open dialogue."