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Many companies are using chatbots to improve the customer experience, including those in the insurance sector. Are chatbots right for your agency? Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pro: Chatbots save you money in expanding your capacity.

Chatbots are designed to mimic a conversation between humans over text. Your customer types questions into the chat box, and the chatbot response with questions or information. Chatbot capabilities have improved to the point where many provide a seamless customer service experience, and customers may not realize they’re speaking to a bot at all.

You can expand your customer service capabilities by employing chatbots to handle initial issues, and pass the escalated issues up to a smaller in-person team. This can be very helpful to a smaller agency that doesn’t have the budget to employ a large customer service workforce.

Pro: They’re more convenient for customers.

Another point in favor of chatbots is that they make your customer service more accessible. Customers can talk to a customer service chatbot at any time, and many of their questions can get resolved that way while your team is out of the office.

Pro: They can collect data.

Many chatbot programs have the ability to collect data as they answer questions—information on customer satisfaction levels, what questions customers are asking, and more.

This data can help you pinpoint opportunities for improvement and keep tabs on the challenges your customers face in obtaining and using their insurance policies.

Con: they don’t replace in-person agents.

Chatbots are able to help your customers complete basic tasks, help them purchase coverage, or answer frequently asked questions. But they can’t answer more complex questions, and they don’t completely replace in-person agents.

Even very advanced chatbots can’t handle every administrative issue or thorny question a customer might have. When deciding to use a chatbot, it’s important to know exactly what tasks you want it to handle, and be sure it’s equipped to handle those tasks and connect your customer to your in-person team when they need more advanced assistance.

Chatbots can be a very powerful tool in improving the customer service experience. But it’s important to understand what tasks you want the chatbot to handle, and what its limits are. Integrating chatbots with in-person service agents often provides the best of both worlds.