Chatbots have gained momentum in terms of application and use cases in recent years. They have practically touched every industry liberating humans of redundant, repetitive, or low-skill tasks. With Artificial Intelligence, chatbots tend to go beyond that and co-work with humans to yield fast outcomes, higher efficiency, and compelling user experience. Insurance as a sector is no different. The Insurance industry is one of the new entrants to harness the benefits of this revolutionary technology.
AI-powered bots improve sales while decreasing cycle times. They not only address user inquiries but also handle more complex processes like claim filing and goal setting. Insurers incorporate chatbots into these systems to successfully streamline the customer experience, reap cost savings, and shift processes from reactive to proactive.
Where is a chatbot helpful in insurance?
Buying insurance is a critical decision for any customer. The customers desire proper data to back up their insurance investments and the best possible purchasing experience to ensure they get what they want when they want it. This is substantiated by research, which indicates that 47% of buyers are more likely to buy a product from a chatbot. This is largely owing to a bot’s ability to respond to queries and simplifying the purchase. Another study suggests that 53% of people are more likely to buy a product from a provider that they can reach out to on a chat app. The conversations over a chat can often be a replacement for the ample research and browsing through several web pages to find information. Also, with the booming digitization across the globe, policyholder and consumer expectations are also witnessing modifications. Insurance companies need to mitigate through all these roadblocks to sustain in the digital era.
Chatbots can solve these challenges by optimizing the digital customer journey and providing relevant information at each step. With many serviceable areas in insurance processes, they are poised to play an important role across the insurance value chain, including pre-purchase, purchase, customer service, and back-end operations. They offer 24x7 customer service, lower processing time, faster resolution and straight-through processing, leading to increased customer satisfaction.
Customer awareness
Chatbots can take up the redundant task of educating the customers on various static FAQ’s like - process flow, policy comparison, and policy suggestion based on a rich database.
Claim processing and payment assistance
Chatbots can be of tremendous help if programmed to address your customer’s insurance claims. This one task comprises the majority of an insurer’s daily workload. Additionally, chatbots can also follow up with customers regarding existing claims and notify for payments. The entire cycle will be simplified with just a conversation!
Lead generation and conversion
Chatbots also come in handy for customer segmentation and preference recognition. They can easily identify the query and consumption patterns (along with basic user info) to suggest the most appropriate offers. Also, their 24*7 availability and quick responses help in converting potential customers and generate more leads.
Pre-sales and sales
An insurance chatbot not only bridges the gap between potential customers and your brand but also segments the customer base contextually. The data on user preferences can be instrumental for the sales team to get a clear picture of potential customer needs. With a chatbot, the leads that lie at the bottom of the purchase funnel can be assigned to the sales representatives for better targeting.
Customer experience and feedback
Where company websites are a common brand touchpoint, they become much more interactive and engaging for users with chatbot integration. It is obvious that chatbots can weave superior customer experiences by omitting the need to reach out to personnel or skim through multiple webpages. They can also collect valuable feedback for the brand, product, or even website development.
Chatbots are becoming the industry norm
Many insurance agencies are deploying chatbots for similar use cases and view it as a profitable investment. Few companies have come up as the most viable choices to help deploy customized chatbots with multiple developments and hosting features.
A.ware – Senseforth’s proprietary chatbot building platform is dedicated to solving the challenges faced by both users and providers in the insurance industry. A.ware comes with pre-built industry models to help accelerate the process of training the chatbot. Bots built by the company are being used by the Max Life Insurance Company, ICICI Lombard and Future Generali, to name a few.
Conversational insurance is the future
Today, chatbots are providing innovation and added value to the insurance industry. They provide quotes and 24/7 immediate cover to customers to help insurers process claims faster. Insurance chatbots can basically be deployed as a customer’s personal insurance manager while equipping the sales team with valuable and contextually relevant insights at the same time.
This promises a solution to the complexity of insurance transactions, which are traditionally characterized by manual, time-consuming processes like form-filling and background checks. That said, the surge in their popularity is justifiable and it is safe to predict a continual escalation. The Insurance industry is soon to become seamless and chat-intensive!
