Customer Relationship Management

Social media tools and the insurance industry

Chatbots and social media in the insurance industry

Insurance and social media tools are likely not two concepts which cross your mind at the same time. In their Venn diagram, you’d imagine the most minuscule overlap. But that’s where you’d be wrong. Facebook Messenger, in particular, is proving to be one of the more popular social media tools with insurers who enjoy its ease of use and positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Indeed, looking at industries, insurance is possibly the least sexy, seemingly the least likely to embrace new technology in the digital space. But, again, that’s where you’re wrong. According to the Global Trends Study 2017, the insurance industry invests an average of $124 million per company in artificial intelligence (AI). That’s a massive $54 million more than the average of all surveyed industries.

Chatbots are at the forefront of AI technology used in the insurance industry. For example, earlier this year we saw the launch of Singapore Life’s first self-learning chatbot. Its goal was to make life insurance easier to understand and more accessible to the public. And anyone who has ever been faced with filling out the scores of forms needed for life insurance will tell you, that’s a huge gap that needs to be filled in the insurance market.

Called SingLife Chatbot, it can be interacted with via Facebook Messenger or through the company's website. The chatbot uses predictive modeling and helps to provide life insurance coverage in simplified steps.

“Consumers can now calculate their life insurance needs in under two minutes. The SingLife chatbot is able to reply to free-form text chat that includes a wide-ranging gamut of words, nuance, subtext, and even emojis and colloquial terms and phrases.

“All queries are kept succinct and consumers can expect to view their recommended plan and life insurance coverage in a single at-a-glance snapshot,” Singapore Life says.

Looking at that example, the benefits seem clear. Sign us up to have help with complicated insurance decisions! So, here are four ways that Facebook messenger and social media tools can assist insurers and their clients.

Explain complex products to customers

Rather than customers having to read lengthy policy documents, they’ll instead be able to ask pointed questions of a chatbot. The chatbot is then able to answer the question using natural language processing (NLP) making the answer easily understandable. No jargon or insurance-speak for this chatbot. The chatbot will also be able to suggest policies and products based on customer queries and needs.

Drive brand engagement

Using Facebook Messenger combined with an AI chatbot means you’re able to give quick and accurate responses. This drives engagement between brand and customers, cementing a positive relationship.

Social media tools will help improve sales

Because chatbots are so quick to effectively and accurately answer questions, the time to action is reduced significantly. This lessens the number of drop-offs and increases purchases.

In addition, bots are better able to act as lead generators as leads which might previously have been lost can be accurately captured.

Accurate claims processing

Chatbots are able to receive queries and respond to claims. They’re also able to prompt the uploading of photos and specific documents. This makes processing the claims seamless and ensures speedy resolution.

Lastly, chatbots will also be able to send alerts on renewals, price increases, lapses in policy, and claims processing. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in (and why wouldn’t you?), Clickatell Touch is the tool for you. It’s a live chat, omni-channel customer service solution which enables businesses, like yours, to resolve customer queries through your website, social media tools, and chat apps – including Facebook Messenger!

Touch allows you to resolve customer queries faster and more effectively. That makes it the perfect match for the insurance industry. Just think, when your customers have questions about their car, health or home insurance, they want answers fast. And that’s exactly what Touch enables you to do.

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