The insurance world is growing fast in terms of technology. From the rise of AI, blockchain, and now chatbots, innovations are helping make the life of insurers and their clients easier. In this Pacific Prime article, we take a closer look at chatbots and how they affect both the insurer and the policyholder.
What are chatbots?
Chatbots are a feature that allows policyholders to ask questions, discuss, and even make claims via an online chat service. By integrating chatbot services, insurers will be able to speed up customer service processes, which usually take a long time and resources. Several insurance companies have already integrated chatbots as part of their system to improve customer support.
How insurance chatbots benefit customers?
Insurance companies are increasingly using artificial intelligence to sell policies and assist customers with insurance advice, increasing overall customer satisfaction. In particular, chatbots benefit customers in two areas: getting help during the claims process, and accessing information in real time.
Accessibility on making claims
Chatbots bring about significant benefits for policyholders as it makes communication easier. Policyholders don't have to wait to get connected to representatives and wouldn't have to worry about timezones. Someone traveling in Europe and having to make a travel insurance claim, can simply send a message to the chatbot rather than go through the hassle of connecting to customer support. On top of that, there are even chatbots that are connected to Facebook, through Facebook's Messenger Bot store.
Accessibility on finding information
Browsing through a website in order to find the information you are looking for can be a time-consuming task. By utilizing the chatbot function, policyholders can get answers easier and straight to the point of what they are looking for. The answers will also be accurate as the chatbots are programmed to link the website's FAQ.
How insurance chatbots benefit insurers?
Insurers worldwide are starting to incorporate chatbots largely to save money and time, but also to use the AI-powered chatbots ability to store and compute on the data it receives to improve their products.
Saving costs
Offering chatbots services for their policyholders, insurers can save costs on human custom supports. Chatbots will be able to provide the same information as customer support and rather than having to be paid monthly wages; chatbots are a one-time payment. The organization will also be saving on other aspects like bonuses and other overheads.
Instant first notification of loss
Since chatbots work similar to an instant messaging service, claims can be made and attended to immediately. Insurers will be able to work with policyholders faster, right from the moment they received the first notification of loss. This allows insurers to draw up more accurate policies in the future and altogether lessen down the investigation time.
Chatbots in the real world
As seen from the paragraphs above, chatbots are useful for both insurers and policyholders. The two chatbots that can be seen as leaders in their field are Zurich's Zara and Pluto's Facebook bot.
Zara is Zurich's chatbot and has been working quite well for them. Thanks to its sophisticated ability to collect and process "first notification of loss" data from the clients, Zurich can start the claiming process almost instantly. Besides documents, Zara also collects dashcam images plus videos and stills of the damages.
Pluto is an example of an insurance chatbot that is integrated with Facebook. Due to Facebook excellent bot service, Pluto can receive payments, send/receive images, share, view websites, and even call out for human support. And since most of Pluto's clients have a Facebook account, it takes away the hassle of creating a new account on a website. It also provides a smoother experience as the majority of people are used to the functions of Facebook's messenger.
Technology in the insurance world
The ever growing technologies in our world have not left insurers and the policyholders behind. Blockchain, AI and chatbots are only among the few things the insurance industry can innovate upon.
Blockchain will help claims to be funded faster, and information to be kept secure. Artificial Intelligence allows insurers to gain information from devices like a smartwatch about policyholders' health or lifestyles. With this information at hand, insurers can increase or decrease premiums according to consumers behavior. Chatbots will help insurers and policyholders communicate instantly, thus speeding up the investigation process.
Find out more with Pacific Prime
For more information on what is going on in the insurance world, visit Pacific Prime's website and access the Prime Guides page for more resources in the form of insurance industry's reports and health and insurance guides. You can also contact us for free impartial insurance advice, and free quotes.
