Cluetrain and the future of insurance

This is an interesting article from 'Confused of Calcutta', describing the lost promise of the Cluetrain Manifesto.  Maybe I should say delayed...

It describes how the hopes that Cluetrain engendered in believers like Confused of Calcutta (JP Rangaswami) and me of increasingly open conversations between companies and their customers - using the new technologies that 10 years ago began to enable such conversations - weren't initially realised.

Instead of openness, companies ran from the new conversations and retreated into themselves.  They built technological barriers (firewalls) around themselves to/and so (delete as you see fit) cut themselves off from their customers.  Their customers on the other hand, excited at the prospect of more and better conversations, swallow-dived (with tuck) into the fora that enabled them - social networks - and talked to each other.

Over the ten years since social networks began to transform how we (customers and consumers) communicate, some companies have been extraordinarily successful adopters of the entirely new business processes and models that the conversational enterprise demands; Zappos (as described in Delivering Happiness) is my favourite example.  Most firms however, and even entire industries - insurance is obviously my particular bug bear - have have been spectacularly luke warm on the whole subject.

At the end of the article, JP suggests that what we are seeing now is companies beginning to visit the places (social networks) where their customers already are and how they are beginning to enter the conversations.

I agree with JP that this is an interesting development - and not before time - but for me the really interesting developments will start when we see more companies changing their processes and business models to take account of what they hear in those conversations.  If you join a conversation and enough people in that conversation tell you the same thing, you won't be able to stay in the conversation unless or until you take on board what is being said.  For companies, I think this will mean more process and model change than many realise.

For an insurance example, consider this; risk and pricing knowledge - that which is most heavily guarded behind insurance company firewalls - is likely in the future to be generated faster, more accurately and more actionable form in social networks than by insurance companies operating alone.  This will have fundamental implications for insurers used to a business model that is founded on exploiting their 'better' risk and pricing knowledge.