Will bots take over insurers’ jobs?
Insurers are currently dealing with a number of heavily inundated, slow back-office processes. In order to maintain a competitive edge in the insurance market, insurers need to regularly handle claims processing, underwriting as well as policy quotations. However, the huge volumes of repetitive business practices result in reduced customer satisfaction, profits and slow growth.
To dramatically improve profit margins as well as transform customer experience, insurance companies globally are turning to automation to streamline business processes and effectively serve customers. But what are the different types of automation insurers could use?
Insurers can automate their business processes with Robotic Process Automation, a software that mimics the user’s actions. By the use of these robotics, an insurer can keep human interaction as low as possible to get a smooth automated process.
But if you want to start making your work as a broker more efficient from the first customer touchpoint, you should start by implementing bots, like a chatbot or a voicebot. These software chat systems assimilate human conversations in order to fulfill a process or provide someone with information. But human interaction remains an essential part of the process for bots. Without it, bots aren’t viable yet. But what does this mean?
Start automating your insurance processesHow do these bots work for insurers?
All insurance companies are probably aware of the existence of these bots, but most companies have no idea what these bots could actually mean for your company. That’s why we made an overview of the customer journey of an insurers’ client with the use of bots.
So will bots take over jobs in the insurance industry?
The biggest risk, when insurers implement bots, is that they aren’t tested right. Most customers get the feeling they are talking to someone who has no idea what he/she (the bot) is talking about. The only solution is to test the bot and add a personality, but most importantly to keep it up to date, to keep teaching the bot. If not, a bot doesn’t help, it will backfire. Without a clear and distinctive use case for your bot, it is really difficult to create a great user experience. It also increases the risk that it is easier to do the same task in an old fashioned way instead of using the bot.
Just like humans, bots need to be trained. Since a correct training and learning process is essential in order for these bots to take over a job or task, human intervention will still be needed. Bots don’t know what rules lead to a certain outcome, that’s why we need human common sense to help train them. If bots are trained on representative and complete data, they can take over tasks so brokers save time. But they will also help brokers to work more efficiently. Bots are a quick and easy way to report new damage cases. Call centers nowadays have to repeat the same answers 90% of the time. When you place bots in between, you will be able to help customers quicker, more efficient, and reduce costs. Bots make it possible to process easy claims automatically and reduce the intervention of claims experts drastically. So they won’t take over your job as a broker but the job roles within an insurance company will transform. Human intervention will still be needed, but there will be different roles to play.
How to help customers quicker, more efficient, and reduce costs?