Better Customer Engagement in the Insurance Industry: How to Onboard New Customers with Automated Conversation

There are clear advantages to utilising automated conversation platforms (a.k.a. chatbots) in the insurance industry like immediate responses to customer queries and efficient customer support. Automated conversation engines are available 24/7 to engage with your potential and current customers.

To throw some data into the picture, recent research shows that customers want self-service and they want to use mobile. In fact, it’s been predicted that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.

An automated conversation platform allows users to interact with your company via messenger apps on their desktop or mobile. The user can ask a chatbot for the information they need and receive it in natural conversational language, instantaneously. It’s a great way to capture their interest about a product and deliver more information at the exact moment they’re interested — that’s why chatbots can be a powerful tool when onboarding new customers.

It’s all very well telling you that a conversation engine/chatbot will help your insurance company onboard more customers, but how do you actually onboard more customers with this new technology? We’ve provided a few tips in the following discussion to help answer this question.

Alternatively, if you can’t be bothered reading the below and would like more information about automated conversation, you can fire away by clicking here for some friendly, no obligation advice.

But it’s truly worth reading on, honestly….Here’s a few tips on how to onboard new customers with a chatbot….

Through your website

Website integration

With an enterprise customer engagement platform you can deploy a chatbot that integrates with your website. It’s sort of like accessing Facebook Messenger directly from your website. As there are more people using Messaging Apps than social media now, it’s a fantastic way to meet people where they already are, and it’s easy for them to use on mobile too.

When on your website looking for insurance, many potential customers may take the opportunity to chat instantly instead of sifting through your website, finding and filling out forms, sending an email or picking up the phone. There’s a higher chance that this customer will interact with your company via the chatbot. The chatbot then becomes not only a more efficient and effective means of contacting your company, but an instant source of information.

Once the potential customer is interacting with the messenger bot, you automatically collect certain information about them like their name, location and profile via Facebook. The conversation with the bot is a chance to collect further details which can assist with suggesting a policy that’s right for them and providing a quote, and signing them up as customers.

If a potential customer starts the discussion, is uncertain and leaves the conversation but comes back at a later date, the conversation will continue where it left off and the bot will remember the personal details about the user. This is a great way to build brand loyalty which is especially important with insurance products — although I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that! Often with email or call centres, the potential customer has to start the process from the beginning, sits waiting in the queue again, or is transferred to another person. These are not ingredients for a good customer experience!

By integrating your chatbot with your website, your website effectively becomes a lead generating machine operating 24/7.

Specific call to action

Not only can you link your entire website to your bot as mentioned above, but you can create specific calls to action on particular pages of your site that link to a conversation with the messenger bot.

For example, you may have a fantastic blog that’s getting lots of views but you find that people just aren’t converting. In this instance, you could create a call to action (CTA) to “Find out more” by speaking with your bot. The advantage of a CTA to a bot as opposed to asking a customer to provide their email address, is that messages sent via conversation engine frequently experience open rates of 50–70% (compared with only 5–10% open rate for email).

<< Relevant: 5 Ways Automated Conversation Can Revolutionise the Insurance Industry >>

Facebook Ads

Another way to onboard new customers with your insurance bot is via Facebook Ads Manager. You can create a Facebook Ad that encourages people to start a conversation on messenger where the chatbot will start interacting with them.

This is a great way to reduce customer acquisition cost as you can target your ad to specific audiences.

Compare this to other Facebook Ad strategies which often require people to fill out a form, go to a website or provide an email address, and you are likely to receive higher engagement and conversion rates, and onboard more customers — we like the sound of that!

‍Facebook comments

An insurance conversation platform is also capable of automatically replying to comments on your Facebook page.

For example, if you share a blog post about the importance of having home insurance, your bot can automatically reply to any comments by asking those interested people questions, which can then help you in providing a homeowners insurance quote. Yet another way to onboard new customers with automated conversation! Yipee.

Conversational design

Once a user is interacting with your bot, there a few golden rules around conversational design that will help convert the user into a customer. Here are some key ones that are absolute musts:

1. Always tell the user they’re speaking with a bot — for example, “Hi, I’m Fred, your friendly insurance bot.” You don’t want the user to think you’re trying to trick them — they’ll figure it out eventually.
2. Tell them how to use the bot — for example, “If you would like help with policy suggestions type ‘policy suggestions’ below, or if you’d like to make a claim, type ‘make claim’ below.” Clarity is key — there’s no use in having a chatbot if a potential customer doesn’t know how to use it.
3. Always allow the user to choose to speak with a human. Whether it’s to escalate a complex issue or simply the user’s preference, the potential customer may prefer to speak with a human at some stage during the interaction. This handover is just as important as the bots ability to capture potential customers and serve them.

‍If you work in the insurance industry and would like more information about automated conversation, contact us by clicking here for friendly, no obligation advice.