5 Key Benefits of Chatbots and Virtual Agents

As the technology becomes more sophisticated, virtual assistants and chatbots will be able to expand their reach and offer greater service to the insurance industry. Both insurers and their customers stand to benefit from the widespread use or chatbots:

1.
Simplifying complex terminology: chatbots/virtual agents can use simple conversational terms to explain the often-confusing jargon of the insurance industry. They offer customers an easy short-cut through often overwhelming processes, such as onboarding and claims, increasing customer engagement and improving customer satisfaction.

2.
Taking on repetitive tasks: NLP-powered interfaces are primed to take on the often tedious and inefficient work of agents who are required to answer similar questions time and time again. By programming the chatbots/virtual agents with scripts for answers to frequently asked questions, agents are freed up from more repetitive tasks to focus on more complex and valuable work.

As the technology develops, virtual agents will be able to suggest solutions based on mining the customers for their intent. The faster the virtual agent is able to offer intelligent solutions to customer questions, the quicker the call can be resolved, increasing efficiency and improving resource allocation throughout the organization.

3.
Reducing customer service representative’s time: when a chatbot transfers a customer to a human customer service representative (CSR), after ascertaining that it isn’t equipped to resolve the issue, the chatbot transfers all the information to the relevant CSR. This means the customer is not required to start from scratch and explain the issue for a second time. Rather, the CSR can simply continue the handling of the called based on the customer’s previous interaction with the chatbot. This increases the CSR’s efficiency and the customer’s satisfaction.

4.
Streamlining processes: chatbots can already resolve many straightforward processes, such as settling simple claims. By cutting this time down from weeks or months, to hours and even minutes, costly labor is preserved and customer satisfaction experiences a jump.

5.
Reducing mistakes: when programmed properly and paired with the right core policy system and digital suite, chatbots act consistently, without variance (unlike human beings, who unfortunately can be prone to errors and inconsistencies between agents).

For more information, please check out our white paper, Insurers Can Benefit from Natural Language Processing (NLP), which outlines the advantages of NLP for insurers and explains what is needed to maximize NLP.