Eleviant is to Elevate & Scale. Eleviant Tech symbolizes business transformation and reinforces our mission to help clients elevate and scale their business.
It’s 2024 and every industry is going through an inevitable technological shift – one that began only a few years ago. Insurance is feeling that shift as much as any industry right now.
The slow and steady adoption of new technology has helped agencies prepare for the future, but hiring and retaining top talent remains an issue. With turnover rates ranging between 8% to 15%, especially with a majority ageing workforce, insurance brokerages have leaned towards automation and outsourcing.
Even though offloading administrative tasks to virtual assistants has been historically beneficial, the entry of tech-advancements like chatbots and automation (RPA) have become compelling alternatives.
In this quick read, let’s explore which options are the right fit for your agency – chatbots, virtual assistants, or Intelligent Process Automation
Chatbots: The Baby Step Towards Automation
Chatbots have become one of the most common automation tools of the last decade.
For almost every website you visit, you’ll notice someone in the corner welcoming you. This bot stands at the ready to answer any of your questions as and when needed.
The rules of customer service have changed. The modern expectation of around-the-clock service created a need for more scalable solutions than an exclusive reliance on call centers. In addition, chatbots are cost-effective and multilinguistic.
For insurance brokerages looking to venture into automation, chatbots are accessible and easy to launch. They can be at the front line of your customer service and help your clients with basic questions that don’t need human intervention or intelligence. Chatbots answer FAQs, schedule appointments, and collect basic client information.
However, chatbots do have their limitations. They are confined to pre-programmed responses and cannot handle many of the more complex customer questions. Even with the advancement of chatbot tech with the help of GenAI, you still need humans to handle complex customer interactions.
Virtual Assistants: Taking Customer Service to the Next Level
Virtual Assistants (VAs) are like having a highly trained and experienced team member by your side, albeit remotely. Unlike chatbots, VAs are humans and can handle a wide range of tasks. Usually, insurance brokerages offload most of their rote, monotonous administrative tasks to VAs. Apart from the monetary benefits associated with wages, hiring, and onboarding, there are few other VA benefits:
On-Demand Staffing: Agencies can hire VAs based on project requirements or during renewal seasons when the workload increases, ensuring they only have the workforce only when needed.
Diverse Skill Sets: Agencies that need to tap into specific Agency Management System expertise or don’t have the capacity to perform certain tasks like accounting and bookkeeping can hire VAs, without the need for hiring and training.
Expand Your Reach: Agencies can take advantage of the remote nature of VAs and tap into a worldwide pool of skilled professionals often at lower costs compared to local in-house staff.
Still, hiring virtual assistants presents a few challenges. Communication and time zone differences can hinder collaboration. The remote nature of VAs also brings in their fair share of human errors, integration and productivity challenges.
Intelligent Automation: Your Back-Office Automation Powerhouse
With Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as its core, Intelligent Automation has been the go-to technology for brokerages for quite some time now. Its usage is only growing.
With multiple repetitious, and rule-based AMS tasks such as direct bill, document retrieval, and policy renewals, agencies have turned to RPA bots. Agencies can automate the entire AMS process and give back time to their employees to perform more high-value tasks.
Imagine the possibilities: fewer errors, faster turnaround times, reduced operational cost, better customer experience, and much more. Having an RPA bot is like having a dedicated team member who never gets tired or takes coffee breaks.
No matter the volume of tasks, be it a hundred or a thousand, RPA bots complete them with speed and precision.
Choosing Your Support Network
While each of these options have its own strengths, you don’t have to choose just one.
Carefully considering your brokerage’s unique needs and goals, you can create an automation strategy that drives efficiency and customer satisfaction.
The key is to start small and scale up. Identify one or two manual processes where RPA bots can make the biggest impact and focus your efforts there. With RPA taking care of the repetitive, mundane tasks, you can offload complex agency processes and much value-add/revenue generating tasks to VAs and get the best out of your investments. For general customer service that would drain the time of a valuable VA, a chatbot can serve your needs well.
Closing Thoughts
The insurance industry is undergoing a digital revolution, and automation is at its heart. Chatbots, virtual assistants, and RPA offer unprecedented opportunities for agencies to operate more efficiently. Remember, automation isn’t about replacing humans. Rather it empowers them. Don’t be afraid to experiment and iterate. The automation journey is an ongoing one, and the best results come from continuous improvement.
Ready to take the next step? Explore our RPA solutions or contact us for a personalized consultation. Let’s build a smarter, more efficient insurance agencies together.
