ChannelSoft helps insurers with marketing

New technology has generated new marketing channels for the insurance industry and will keep changing the industry, said Zhang Xianghui, president of ChannelSoft Corp on June 27.

ChannelSoft, set up in 2000 in Beijing, provides Call Center On Demand services to about 40 insurance companies in China. Zhang said insurance companies can do telephone-marketing more easily as they can just rent call-center services rather than build a call center from scratch. He added that an insurance company can increase or decrease the number of call-center units they want according to their needs and adjust as needed.

Zhang Huiyao, vice general manager of Bancasurance Department of Shin Kong-HNA Life Insurance Co Ltd, told chinadaily.com.cn on June 28 that his company has 100 to 200 telephone-marketing units now and is considering expanding.

"Renting call center units from ChannelSoft can be an option, but we may order only some services as we do not need all they provide," said Zhang, who is also in charge of developing new marketing channels for the company.

However, even as insurance companies may not need all services as they are at different development stages, ChannelSoft has been trying to integrate telephone-marketing with Internet marketing, including mobile Internet marketing, social media marketing and micro-blog marketing, Jiang Ruiqi, assistant to the chairman of ChannelSoft, said on June 27.

Jiang said ChannelSoft is in talks with Tencent to add insurance policy-searching functions to WeChat, a popular smartphone social networking application.

ChannelSoft has held the Insurance New Channel Development Forum each year since 2010, and this year's forum was held on June 27 at the Dongdaihe New Area of Suizhong county of Huludao city in Liaoning province.

"Each year, we see changes in new channel development, and some are the result of competition, while others are the result of technologies that bring new business models."