SMX Network, the Sales and Marketing focused community platform of InnoServ Group held its first virtual event on 11th February 2021, on the topic ‘How Gamification Can Bring Disruption in Sales in the Insurance Sector’.
The virtual event examined how the concept of Gamification plays a key role in the insurance industry that demands emotional connect with stakeholders even in this era of digitization.
The panel was moderated by Abhishek Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Xoxoday and comprised Vishal Kishnani, National Sales Head -Direct Sales, Future Generali India Life Insurance, Naushad Khan, Vice President- Head Agency Sales Strategy & Sales Automation, Bajaj Allianz Life insurance, Vaibhav Bhargava, Product Head – Privilege Banking, Sales Strategy & Transformation, ICICI Bank and Prasanna Lohar, Head- Digital, Innovation, DCB Bank.
The event also witnessed an interesting industry presentation by Swapnil Jain, CEO, ORAI Robotics.
During his presentation, Jain pointed out that 74 per cent of consumers prefer instant conversations when they are looking for insurance queries and that 56 per cent of consumers would prefer messaging over customer service calls. He also highlighted that communication needs to be unified when thinking of the new-age consumer; therefore it is necessary to offer communication where automation and AI can play a role.
In his opening address, Abhishek Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Xoxoday explained, “Gamification is about applying game dynamics and game mechanics to your business principles and these techniques can be utilised to either automate a process or change the behaviour of the target user.”
Adding his thoughts to the discussion, Prasanna Lohar, Head- Digital, Innovation, DCB Bank said, “Human/customer behaviour has changed due to mobile devices. The customer is being taught by apps about how apps should be. Virtual reality will become actual reality in the next 3-4 years. The customer experience plays a major role now. Gamification brings the science of how to make the customer experience better”.
Vaibhav Bhargava, Product Head – Privilege Banking, Sales Strategy & Transformation, ICICI Bank added, “Gamification is about creating an emotional connect with the user so that they experience themselves in that situation before taking any decision so they can have a feel of what this might bring for them. Gamification can be used in the BFSI sector in multiple ways”.
He added, “Now it has become all the more important for everyone to be connected to the customer’s journey. And because the pandemic has also played a role due to virtual engagement, this need has grown”.
Naushad Khan, Vice President- Head Agency Sales Strategy & Sales Automation, Bajaj Allianz Life insurance, remarked, “You can find multiple use cases for gamification. Gamification can help to enhance sales activities and help to make the sales team more productive. Any kind of technology you use has to translate into the business; if you cannot translate it into the business then you cannot arrive at an ROI”
Moderator Abhishek Kumar pointed out that even for gamification, it is very important to justify the objective and connect it to the business objective.
Speaking about compatibility of various devices working on different platforms, Vishal Kishnani, National Sales Head -Direct Sales, Future Generali India Life Insurance said, “The entire genesis of gamification is a behavioural science, and we have to bridge this behavioural science with the social network around. Obviously, if the application or device is not compatible we would not be able to get an overall consensus on the results that we want to fetch”.
He continued, “The larger issue of gamification, particularly in the insurance sector is to touch upon the behavioural science and the emotions behind it, so we have to have a framework that touches upon the key emotion parameters such as a sense of accomplishment, the progression into the gamification stages which creates an overall experience, comparison of the competition emotion, how it blends with the real-life simulation and social recognition”.
Kishnani added, “We also have to identify on which platform we are targeting which set of customers. We have to be clear about where our target audience is and where we want to have a presence”.