What’s a Chatbot and Why Do Insurers Need One?

Big announcement! We’re now partnering with Elafris to bring chatbot technology to our insurance software customers. What does that mean for you? Good things. Let’s talk about it.

First, let’s meet Elafris

Elafris is a firm that’s pioneering the use of artificial intelligence in chatbots. Its goal is to help businesses capture and retain millennial customers by delivering a type and level of service that meets their rapidly-evolving expectations, rather than sticking to an outdated status quo.

The expectations we’re talking about are not your father’s customer service. If you thought social was big, get ready to think even bigger: according to Business Insider, messengers have now surpassed social networks. “Users around the world are logging in to messaging apps to not only chat with friends but also to connect with brands, browse merchandise, and watch content,” BI Intelligence said. “The combined user base of the top four chat apps is larger than the combined user base of the top four social networks.”

Why work so hard to reach millennials?

Millennials are the fastest-growing demographic in the nation. They now outnumber boomers as well as gen-Xers, representing over one third of the workforce, with $200 billion a year to spend. These days, for a communication strategy to be effective, it must “adapt to what has become the norm for many,” Elafris said. It must engage millennials. Enter chatbots.

What is a chatbot?

Chatbots “are basically software that can conduct human-like conversation and do simple jobs once reserved for people,” said Fin24. The term encompasses everything from Asia’s software butlers to the new online messenger capabilities that Facebook is getting ready to unveil.

Through a combination of artificial intelligence and human input, a chatbot can send you personalized updates, answer questions, make purchases and more. Forbes put the value proposition this way: “Businesses will be able to interact with Messenger’s 900 million (and counting) users one-on-one, at scale.”

What can chatbots do for insurers?

Short answer, they can grow millennial market share. Email and phone may be good supporting channels for this audience, but as a core communication strategy? They don’t cut it. If you’re working with millennials, you’ve got to reach them in the channel of their choice.

Chatbots aren’t just a communication channel, though. “Bots have the ability to crunch huge amounts of data and quickly return results that are intelligently tailored to you,” said the co-founder of Digit, a financial services startup, according to Forbes.

If you’re trying to collect payments or sell add-ons, you don’t have to limit yourself to email and phone calls. If you’re working to reduce costs for customer support or claims management, you don’t need to build an app for that. If you want to fight fraud, you don’t have to wade through an endless Facebook feed. Chatbots can perform every single one of these tasks more efficiently than a human, and better yet, they can do so on the platform that millennials prefer, hands down.

The bottom line

Chatbot technology is essential for reaching millennials. Let’s be honest, it’s essential for anyone who plans to be doing business in the future. The technology is young yet, but make no mistake: we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in the months to come. When AI Trends predicted which industries would be adopting chatbots, its short answer was: “all of them.”

This is why we’re partnering with Elafris to bring chatbot technology to our customers. In addition to a strong, versatile core system, insurers need strong customer communications. Your success depends on it. Depend on us to deliver it. Request a demo to learn more.