[ACCI-CAVIE] According to Genpact, 87 per cent of insurance brands invest over $5 million in Artificial Intelligence related technologies each year.

An insurance chatbot is an AI-powered virtual assistant solution designed to cater to the needs of insurance customers at every stage of their journey.

Much like a human insurance agent, the chatbot asks customers questions about their requirements alongside other details.

It can offer personalised policy recommendations, help compare two or more plans and help get a clearer understanding of policy options by answering any follow-up questions.

It offers a swifter and more efficient customer care experience particularly when it comes to filing a claim. Instead of you having to follow up on a claim with a customer care representative, you can simply tell the chatbot the nature of the claim.

It can simply pull up the customer’s policy from the insurer’s database or CRM system, ask the customer to provide additional details and then immediately initiate the claims filing process.

This chatbot can seamlessly resolve queries end-to-end while redirecting the remaining 20 per cent of complex queries to human agents.

Using it significantly reduces an insurer’s customer support costs since a single chatbot can handle the volume of queries that would otherwise require a large customer care staff.

It is also easier and cost-effective for an insurance brand to scale up its customer support capacity using an insurance chatbot.

They can actually work complementing the efforts of insurance agents and helping them carry out their jobs more effectively.

With its automating routine, mechanical tasks, the insurance agents can focus their attention on solving more complex customer care issues and having more meaningful interactions with current or prospective customers.

They also help to enrich agents’ interaction with customers by gathering data about customers’ intent and requirements providing the agent with more context about what the customer wants.

They are a great tool for lead generation as they acquire visitors on the insurer’s website and other digital touchpoints with intelligent prompts.

It also keeps the visitor engaged by answering their queries and offering relevant information, asking them questions about their insurance requirements, and collecting their details over the course of the conversation.

The engaging interactive lead on it leads to more conversations as compared to traditional long and static lead forms.

When equipped with an AI-powered recommendation engine, it can offer personalised policy recommendations to a prospect.

By offering not just general information but also concrete recommendations, it increases the likelihood of the prospect exploring the purchase further.

As conversational AI and other AI technologies continue to evolve, the capabilities of these chatbots will continue to expand.

From accessing insurance voice assistants through smart speakers to instantly getting insurance on demand while on the move, insurance is going to become more accessible and the customer experience even smoother in years to come.  

By Charles Okwemba