In today's fast-paced digital world, insurance agencies are constantly looking for ways to improve their customer experience and meet the demand for quick service. Unfortunately, agents are wasting a lot of time on the leg work portion of customer service.
Agents spend 60% of their time each day on tasks related to customer service. That includes finding the right information about their clients' accounts, analyzing that information, communicating it to their clients, and bridging the knowledge gap so the client truly understands what they are receiving. This can equate to around five hours a day! This is a lot of really valuable time that is being lost. Not only does it slow the response time to clients, but it also takes agents away from more valuable interactions with their clients.
Fortunately, technology has played a major role in transforming how accounts are serviced and has evolved to meet customers' ever-changing wants and needs. AI now offers a chance to take this a step further.
There are myriad ways AI can be integrated into marketing and servicing workflows, ultimately freeing agents to focus on what matters most: building relationships and providing personalized advice. As most of us are familiar with AI-augmented chatbots to automate claims management and generative AI to create content, let's take it up a notch and look at how AI can be used in your client communications to ensure consistency and compliance. Using AI to do these things will save your team time while increasing customer satisfaction.
Build Consistency Guardrails
The tone and style of your agency's communications may vary depending on who is sending the emails. Some customer success representatives may take a more formal tone, while others write to their clients like they would their friends. Some may provide many details, while others may believe in keeping email communication brief and to the point. This can be frustrating for your clients. They crave consistency and want to interact with your agency as if the brand is one trusted person.
AI can provide guardrails to your communications, ensuring they remain consistent no matter who sends them. It can detect the tone in an email and suggest changes that will keep it in line with your agency's predetermined brand standards. AI can also help the customer representative properly phrase the information so that it's easier to understand.
Using AI to enforce consistency across client communications will make your customers happy. They will appreciate the steady tone and easily comprehend the information being shared. After all, the information doesn't do your clients any good if they don't understand it! Your team will also be happier because AI will save them time and effort in creating that consistency. Before AI, your team would need to manually review emails for tone and length, but now they can do it with a click of a button. This is a win-win for clients and staff!
Employ Compliance Fact-Checkers
Compliance is crucial for any business dealing with sensitive information. This is especially true for insurance agencies, whose systems house confidential identification and health information. Exposing the information in your agency management system (AMS) would not only upset your clients but could have costly consequences for them. Things like incorrect invoices, stolen bank account information and identity theft will create financial issues and definitely not lead to happy customers. Your agents are human, however, so mistakes can happen. It's easy for numbers to be typed into an email incorrectly or for the wrong customer's information to be included in an email. That's why it's imperative to use technology to safeguard against those mistakes.
Think of AI agents as your compliance fact-checkers. These tools can use the information in your AMS to ensure that you are only sharing the information you want shared. They can even flag information that may belong to another client. Agents no longer need to worry about sharing confidential information with the wrong person. Not only does this save your agency from the consequences of costly E&O issues, but it also saves your team the time of manually double- and triple-checking this information. Most importantly, your clients will be happy knowing their information is safe and secure.
Make AI Your Customer Service Partner
AI offers a wealth of opportunities for insurance agencies looking to elevate their customer service. By strategically implementing AI-augmented tools into the client communication process, agencies can free valuable time for their agents to focus on building stronger customer relationships and providing personalized advice. While it's important to be aware of the potential challenges and frustrations associated with AI, the benefits of increased efficiency, improved customer experiences, and enhanced growth opportunities make AI an invaluable tool for success.
