Companies in the insurance sector recently equipped themselves with an intelligent voice agent, or "callbot" in order to deal with recurring call spikes, and hence improve customers' experience or to free their employees from low-value-added tasks.
A voice agent is an intelligent assistant available 24 hours a day. The callbot can talk with callers using their everyday words, and automate the processing of their simple requests.
In the contact center, voice agents are capable of routing and pre-qualifying calls, and even handling end-to-end use cases. But how do you choose which use cases to automate?
This article presents 9 use cases of voice agents particularly adapted to the insurance sector, which can be easily deployed in the contact center.
1. Automate certificate and document requests by phone
Contact centers are often called upon to handle requests for documents and certificates most especially during seasons where calls are at their peaks. For example, in September, a customer wants to obtain a school insurance certificate for his child? To avoid mobilizing agents for this kind of low value-added call, the voice agents identify and authenticates the customer using an insurance number or full name, and then triggers the sending of the certificate by email or regular mail.
If you want to know more about this use case, you can find a demo video of a phone conversation between a voice agent and a client, here.
2. Pre-declaration of claims
When customers contact their customer service department to report a claim or an accident, they are personally affected by a situation, and may be in distress. In such difficult situations, not getting a response from the company can lead to increased customer dissatisfaction and even bad reviews or churn. To reassure the customer that their request has been taken into account, the voice agent asks him the questions necessary to register his claim. It collects the caller's contact information and the time of filing, before transferring the call to an advisor or may organize for a callback.
If you want to know more about this use case, you can find here the testimonial of CNP Assurances who deployed a voice agent dedicated to the routing and qualification of claims related to life accidents.
3. Absorb call center overflow due to an unexpected event
During a one-time event related to the weather or natural disasters, insurance contact centers are often overwhelmed with calls to handle. When advisors can no longer handle such a large flow of calls, the voice agent takes over and activates in overflow. If no advisor is available, it records the customer's contact information, the nature of the problem and the time of the drop-off, and organizes a callback with an advisor in quieter times.
Since 2018, calldesk has been collaborating on this use case with COVEA Group's claims management department. Following the observation that too many calls were not being handled by agents during overflow situations, a voice agent was deployed to record customer requests and transfer them to agents. Policyholders are now reassured that their requests will be handled later, and advisors can handle these call spikes with complete peace of mind.
4. Qualify the eligibility of a claim
Many times, customers call their insurance in error, often to report damage for which they are not eligible for compensation. These same customers may react badly when they learn that they are not covered by their policy. These are difficult situations for the contact center agents to handle, as it is not uncommon for the customer to unload on them.
The voice agent asks the customer qualification questions and, if ineligible, explains the reasons to the customer. Customers sometimes get annoyed with the robot, but when they are then transferred to a human advisor, they are also much more courteous and polite. At least a voice agent has no reason to give in!
A total of 50,000 calls were received by CNP Assurances per year for a service of 6 advisors, 90% of which were not qualified. The voice agent, called Julie, asks the caller eligibility questions and checks whether it is appropriate to transfer the call to an agent. The customer's need is handled immediately and the advisors can refocus on their core business.
5. Follow-up of claims files
Many customers regularly call their insurance company to find out the status of their claim. In such situations, advisors are unable to move forward with the processing of files due to constant interruption by customer calls. The voice agent identifies and authenticates the person and the claim involved, and sends the caller information on the status of the case.
Also at CNP Assurances, the Julie voice agent is able to identify whether the caller has a file in progress and, if so, transfers it in priority queue to an advisor.
6. Simulate health reimbursements
Before choosing whether or not to use a health care provider, a client may want to know the estimated amount of reimbursements in relation to their health care coverage and the type of care involved.
The voice agent can be used to simulate reimbursement rights. To do this, it retrieves all the necessary information to give the customer an estimate of the amount of care to which he is entitled. Without taking up agent time, customers are supported in their efforts and can obtain answers immediately and independently.
For example, Swiss Life has deployed this use case with calldesk to help their customers quickly and independently know how well they are covered.
7. Automate simple phone requests with a FAQ
An estimation by McKinsey shows that, contact center agents spend 40% of their time on non value-added tasks. For example answering simple, ultra-repetitive questions from users. By deploying a voice agent that acts as a dynamic FAQ, the conversational agent identifies the nature of the problem and explains to the caller how to solve it independently. It can also send him a more detailed help note by sms or email.
8. Automate the pre-qualification of incoming applications
Managing inbound calls at the sales department level is rarely an issue. After all, who would turn away prospects? Yet many inbound calls may be unqualified, wasting valuable telemarketer time. While they are answering questions from an unqualified prospect, they may be missing out on other sales opportunities!
Deploying a voice agent may be the solution If you receive a lot of such unqualified calls. The voice agent asks callers a series of qualifying questions and decides whether or not to transfer them to the relevant department. The agent can then pick up the call and waste less time qualifying it thanks to a contextualized transfer (agent banner).
9. Fill a form by phone (quote...)
To help their customers resolve their issues many insurance companies have created assistive apps. Yet, a customer who wants to get a receipt will often tend to call the company because they often ignore the existence of the app, don't know how to use it or don't have access to it.
The voice agent can replicate the experience of the application on the phone channel. It will then take over the call, interview the caller to complete the form over the phone, asking open or closed questions.
And last but not least, here is a GIF representation of the automation matrix that our Product and Customer Success teams provide you with to identify the use cases to automate as a priority after the contact center diagnostic work!
And now you have a better idea of what voice agents can do for your contact center! The list of use cases is of course not exhaustive, and we frequently build custom conversational agents adapted to our customers' use cases.
Do you have an automation need? Contact us to find out if your use case can be automated.
Our teams can also perform a diagnosis of your contact center to help you design the voice agent that meets your needs.
