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AI-Powered Customer Support: A Win-Win for Insurers and Policyholders
AI & MI InsurTech

AI-Powered Customer Support: A Win-Win for Insurers and Policyholders

By Rajarshi November 13, 2023 - 126 views

AI-powered customer support is a major catalyst for change in the global insurance sector, enabling numerous benefits for insurers and policyholders alike. The insurance industry has already shifted focus towards offering top-notch customer service with a more customer-oriented model.

As per several reports, in 2021, more than 40% of CIOs scaled up their budgets for implementing AI for their pilot projects in the insurance sector with an aim to enhance customer service. 

The customer base in the insurance and financial services sector now desires more personalized solutions along with quicker processing for inquiries, and enhanced security for personal information, among other customer-focused aspects. Here are some advantages enabled by AI-powered customer support. 

Insurer Customer Service- Benefits of AI in Insurance

AI in insurance has been a game-changer for the industry, offering several advantages for both companies and their policyholders in terms of insurer customer services and support. Here’s looking at some of them in a nutshell: 

  • Better claims handling – With customer support automation technologies, claims management has become faster and more accurate. Large volumes and notices can be processed swiftly without any hassles. Claims handling AI solutions can be easily integrated with third-party email and CRM systems along with email and document archival software. They enable quicker reading and understanding of claims and notices while interpreting and extracting data while carrying out replies, categorization, forwarding, CRM updates, and archival simultaneously. AI in insurance is improving customer satisfaction with faster claims processing and management along with better audits, routing, and detection of fraudulent claims. 
  • Document digitization for better customer service – AI-backed automation with OCR helps automate data entry of documents through easy integration with numerous third-party systems. OCR and NLP can simplify insurer-policyholder interactions considerably. McKinsey has also reported how OCR enables 80% cost savings for the insurance sector. Hence, the usage of AI can ultimately lead to improved KYC and onboarding procedures for customers. 
  • Better underwriting management – AI-powered customer support enables superior underwriting processes which can provide more assurance to customers while they apply for insurance policies. AI can evaluate on the basis of several decisions and regulations, while also enabling more accurate estimates in case of events that require the usage of coverage benefits. Contemporary AI systems can easily update third-party systems with information in real-time on the basis of incoming data. It is advantageous for customer service and support since customer information processing timelines go down considerably. This increases the chances of insurance requests getting accepted quickly. 

How Else Can AI-Powered Customer Support Help? 

AI-powered customer support is already revolutionizing the sector rapidly. Companies like Edelweiss General Insurance (EGI) have already set the ball rolling by introducing AI-based voice bots for enabling registrations of motor claims. This helps customers initiate their claims swiftly and seamlessly. This AI bot can easily interact with customers in English, Hindi, and even Hinglish. It also enables registration of claims in real-time on a 24-7 basis while offering round-the-clock support alongside. 

These AI-backed insurer-policyholder interactions go a long way towards simplifying customer support and service, answering questions, offering guidance and information, registering claims, offering support around the clock and streamlining claims management. Bots will also enable swifter resolution of claims along with enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency levels considerably.

Interactions can be easily automated while robotic interpretation of voicemails helps save time and enhance overall accuracy levels before calls reach human representatives. AI also enables automated customer support throughout multiple channels, which ensures better responsiveness and availability. It can also augment interactions with customers through augmented email tagging and messaging alike. 

AI in insurance can also analyze big data sets while suggesting relevant content based on customer location and behaviour among other aspects. AI can evaluate customer behaviour and sentiment to improve responses in the long run. It also builds personalized customer experiences, making it easier to bypass issues before they crop up. AI can help customer service representatives take care of their follow-up duties in time. Agents get help with writing in real-time along with insights from customer data.

Generative AI can hugely boost customer segmentation in analytics. It can easily identify customer similarities and patterns by evaluating huge amounts of customer information. This includes psychographic, demographic, and behavioural information. It helps in segmenting customers more effectively. Insurers can benefit from features like automated feature engineering, personalized recommendations, customer clustering, predictive modelling, and sentiment analysis. 

To sign off, AI-powered customer support helps insurance companies greatly in terms of enhancing their customer support and service functions with better guidance, quicker responses, and timely assistance. It is certainly the way forward for the industry, going by the recent trends. 

FAQs

How does AI-powered customer support enhance the insurance experience for policyholders?

AI-powered customer support boosts the overall experience for policyholders greatly. They can get instant and timely resolutions to their queries along with better engagement and understanding of their concerns. At the same time, they also benefit from faster claims registration, management, and handling along with quicker and more hassle-free onboarding and claims processing. 

What specific tasks and processes in the insurance industry can AI-driven customer support streamline and improve?

AI-driven customer support can not only improve, but also support various processes and tasks including customer communication and notifications, answering questions, providing relevant content, registering claims, archiving requests, following up with requisite channels, managing claims, and more. 

What are the potential cost-saving benefits for insurers when implementing AI-powered customer support?

Insurance companies can save time and money considerably on customer support and service processes by automating diverse tasks. From eliminating the need to manually store, archive, and gather data to doing away with paper-based systems, the cost savings are huge for insurance companies. 

How can insurers ensure the security and privacy of policyholder data while using AI in customer support interactions?

Insurance companies can ensure more privacy and security of policyholder information while deploying AI for their customer support-based interactions. This is possible with steps like data encryption, fraud detection mechanisms, identification of suspicious customer behaviour patterns with relevant algorithms, and more. 

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