Your organization was founded to focus on insurance–but that doesn't mean that customer service isn't an equal priority. Keeping customers happy and providing them with the information they need--when they need it--is at the core of what you have to offer.

You may already know where to improve customer service, but making these changes can be challenging. Improving customer service isn't always easy between staffing shortages, recruitment problems, and insufficient capacity. Fortunately, conversational AI can help you achieve this.

Conversational AI equips insurance companies with the means to improve customer service and delight customers. But before we dive into that, it's important to understand just how important customer service is to your business.

By improving customer service, you improve the customer experience (CX). This leads to improved customer loyalty, customer retention, and ROI. By treating every customer as if they are your most valued customer, your business will see results in no time. So, how does conversational AI facilitate this? 

Ease Customer Concerns

There's no question that insurance companies see a significant amount of customer inquiries. After all, insurance is a crucial product–yet often a confusing one. Customers recognize that they need insurance but fail to understand which policy is right for them, what their policy covers, and more. As such, they look to your company for answers before making a purchase. 

According to McKinsey, insurers can take four actions to mitigate the digital challenges lying ahead:

• Work to deliver intelligent and personalized experiences seamlessly through proprietary and partner ecosystem channels.
• Deploy AI-powered capabilities at scale, such as machine learning models and tools, digital marketing, and end-to-end digitalization capabilities to drive automated decision-making across the life cycle.
• Strengthen their core technology backbone to enable speed, flexibility, and scalability across the enterprise stack.
• Rewire traditional teams to operate as platforms while adopting new ways of working and modern talent practices to enable a culture of innovation.

Customers want answers, and it's up to your organization to provide them. While traditional call centers include long waits, frustrated customers, and unclear answers, it isn't that way with conversational AI. 

Conversational AI allows insurance companies (and customers) to interact with either a human agent or a virtual AI agent. This may surprise you, but most customers prefer speaking with conversational AI agents over humans. Not only does this remove pressure from the situation, but it's often more effective. 

Conversational AI agents use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to conduct human-like interactions and respond intuitively. Plus, with your company's database access, responses are accurate and informed. This ensures that customers get a pleasant experience while obtaining all the necessary information–at no labor to your workforce. However, should a customer wish to speak to a human agent, your employees can use conversational AI as a resource for information, customer insights, and fast data gathering. Ultimately, it's a win-win.

Offer 24/7/365 Service to Customers

In our fast-paced world, where businesses are connected with people over high-speed internet networks and safe and secure mobile devices, your customers are quite accustomed to accessing data and services whenever they want. As such, customers expect access to your company at all times, and they aren't always patient.

Fortunately, conversational AI offers 24/7 customer support. This means that customers can get answers and resources whenever convenient. The easier customers get support, the more likely they will reach out to your organization and build a relationship. Consequently, they'll feel more comfortable making informed decisions–and purchases.

Provide Data Faster

Fast access to data is essential not only for customers but for your customer service team as well. If your insurance agents can't promptly access customer data or obtain accurate answers, your customers will likely grow frustrated. Soon enough, you'll find yourself stuck in a bottleneck due to untimely access to data. 

The slower each customer interaction is, the fewer customers your team can interact with. Consequently, customers will find your business unresponsive and take their business elsewhere. The good news is that conversational AI can help your team members work more efficiently and meet with customers faster and more effectively. 

Conversational AI can be highly valuable for maintaining existing businesses. For example, let's say a client's policy renewal is coming up. Instead of going through a manual renewal process and answering tedious questions with the client, you could program a virtual AI assistant to recognize the logged-in user and proactively ask the user if they want to purchase additional coverage or review their policy upon entering the website.

Conversational AI is the secret tool for your insurance agents, integrated with your company's database, as well as customer files and previous interactions. Suppose one of your agents is meeting with a customer and has an inquiry about the most recent update to their policy. The conversational AI agent can access the customer's previous interactions with your company, policy information, and other relevant information. 

This data will then be provided to your human agent automatically. With all the pertinent information needed for a successful interaction ready within seconds, your agents will be significantly more successful–and your customers happier.

Ensure Accuracy

In computer science, there is a famous acronym of GIGO, which stands for "garbage in, garbage out." It's a sobering reminder that you must pay careful attention to the quality of the digital information you have at your disposal in your insurance business.

Giving out the wrong facts or misinterpreting a data field could be disastrous for customers, who may then discover they were so misinformed about the nature of an insurance product that they leave, taking their business elsewhere. You don't want to risk giving out erroneous or outdated information.

And with that in mind, an important goal of insurance institutions is to provide more accurate data with as little friction as possible. You don't need to be concerned about the casual errors humans might easily make since your conversational AI solution will be programmed to use only the data you have vetted and verified for accuracy.

Transform CX with Conversational AI

Sometimes, established companies resist changing the fundamental ways they perform routine processes. However, times are changing–as are customer expectations. Today, customers expect accuracy, availability, and efficiency from your business. To achieve this trifecta, digital solutions such as conversational AI are necessary.

With conversational AI, you can transform how your business offers customer service. With faster response times, more accurate data, seamless customer interactions, and more, conversational AI makes improving customer support easier. Plus, conversational AI will support your current workforce, making it easier for them to succeed in their roles. 

Adopting conversational AI allows your insurance business to delight customers, opening the door to customer loyalty, customer retention, and overall business success. 

Want to see how conversational AI can work for your insurance company?