Carrot customer contact centre goes fully digital with SmarTek21 chat bot technology
Carrot, the young driver telematics broker, has taken another step towards its ambition of becoming a wholly digital broker after signing a deal with SmarTek21 to roll out its SmartBotHub chatbot and ensure 100% of all Carrot customer interactions can be initiated with a chatbot.
Early results found that as well as handling the initial interactions, 40% of customer query chats were managed by the bot from start to finish and the average chat time decreased by approximately 2.5 minutes per chat, creating big cost savings and productivity gains.
Andrew Brown-Allan, CMO for Trak Global Group (TGG), which owns Carrot, said “Rolling out the SmartBotHub platform has proven to be incredibly timely during the lockdown, as thousands of critical front line workers insured by Carrot in the UK who needed to make Covid-19 related changes to their cover (such as increased mileage allowance or addition of business use) were able to do it quickly themselves.”
He went on to say that, having used Carrot as a live testbed for the chatbot technology, another TGG company, IMS – Insurance & Mobility Solutions, is partnering with SmarTek21 to offer this same technology to its international customer base.
“We think post-lockdown, consumers are going to demand a different, more flexible kind of car insurance. They weren’t happy paying premiums for cars that were stuck on their driveways for three months or more.”
“Alongside new forms of post-Covid insurance, such as flexible term length and the ability to pay by the mile, or on-demand insurance for customers using car sharing or working in the gig economy, consumers are already showing that they’re quite happy to do all their business with us digitally. Chatbots are an everyday customer experience feature across many industries now, so why not insurance too?”
Jon Kirk, of SmarTek21, said: "We are seeing the onset of a technological revolution within the insurance sector, primed by conversational AI and other advances such as robotic process automation.”
He added: “Our partnership with Carrot is the first step we are taking to develop more complex self-service opportunities and proactive communications linked via APIs to existing client software solutions. Early adopters, like Carrot, within the insurer and broker community will have a significant competitive advantage as they benefit from big customer service and efficiency gains”.