Case Studies
Improving insurance customer engagement: How Zurich UK was able to streamline the claims process
In an effort to better meet the evolving needs of today’s consumers, Zurich UK, a leading insurance provider, turned to LivePerson to help provide support for customers using the messaging channels they know and trust. During a recent pilot, the company was able to reduce the time to agree settlement to just 13 minutes on average for customers making a contents insurance claim.
The journey in numbers
149%
increase in messages
+69
NPS
13 min
Average claim time
6k
proactive messages/month
Open the PDF for the full insurance customer engagement case study, or keep reading below.
Insuring innovation
Zurich UK, a subsidiary of Zurich Insurance Group founded in 1872, has a long history of innovating in the insurance industry. From their commitment to their community and sustainability efforts to their customer-first digital transformation, the team at Zurich is all about providing their customers with attentive and reliable care in their moment of need.
Challenge: Streamlining and modernizing the insurance claims process
When customers file a claim, they’re not having the best day. And taking up too much of their precious time to submit a claim is the last thing any customer wants to deal with. That’s why Helen Rogers, Head of Claims Digital Experience, and her team at Zurich turned to LivePerson to help boost customer satisfaction with access to more digital channels for communication and easier claims processes — so they can get back to their day faster.
“Historically, email and phone were the only ways to communicate with us… We wanted to give customers more choice and become more digital.”
~ Helen Rogers, Head of Claims Digital Experience, Zurich UK
Solution: Streamline claims process with IVR deflection to WhatsApp
The first step to reducing the time it took to submit a claim was to get insurance customers off the phone and onto a messaging platform. Zurich turned to LivePerson’s IVR deflection solution, Voice to Messaging (also known as conversation shifting), to send users to web chat, SMS, or WhatsApp. The WhatsApp integration has been found to be particularly effective because the users can see if their messages have been read by the agents. This comes in handy when “customers want responses straight away and know that you’re there for them in their time of need — without them having to chase us for updates”, shared Helen.
WhatsApp allows the Zurich team to support customers with an end-to-end messaging journey for claims processing. From filing the claim and uploading documents via the camera app, to proactively messaging customers about the status of their claim and claims resolution — the entire process can be managed over WhatsApp. But it’s not just WhatsApp. Messaging on all digital channels has been well received by their customers. In 2023, Zurich saw a 149% increase in chats year-over-year.
To elevate the messaging customer journey even further, Zurich built a video chat tool called Hello Zurich to make communicating with customers even easier. Using their messaging channels, Zurich can send a personalized video link to customers who would like to video chat about their claim. This face-to-face interaction builds trust and allows agents to capture visual information about the claim — resulting in more accurate assessments.
“With LivePerson, Hello Zurich, and all the technology that we’re employing, it allows us to give customers more choice, be more proactive, and assess claims faster.”
~ Helen Rogers, Head of Claims Digital Experience, Zurich UK
Results and outcomes
Faster insurance claims service – During the pilot, Zurich was able to reduce the time to submit a claim over WhatsApp to just 13 minutes for customers making a contents insurance claim. Zurich plans to expand the service into other lines in the future.
Better customer experience – The digital transformation of Zurich’s insurance customer engagement has helped them to build better rapport with their customers while making the claims process more convenient and efficient.
Improved agent experience – With messaging, agents can help more than one customer at a time while still delivering an exceptional experience.
“A claim never used to take 13 minutes, but with this digital transformation, we’re able to put the customer first and get them through that difficult time as quickly as possible.”
~ Helen Rogers, Head of Claims Digital Experience, Zurich UK
Taking the agent experience and insurance customer engagement to the next level
With the success of their digital transformation to messaging channels helping increase customer engagement, Helen and her team are looking to further improve the claims processing service for agents and customers alike. Exploring uses for generative AI in their customer and agent experiences and leveraging conversational intelligence to better understand their customer intents and journeys are top of mind for the insurance company as they look to continuously improve their digital customer conversations.