How chatbots will change insurance

Rose is possibly our best employee. Supporting clients is literally the only thing in the world she cares about. It’s wired into her very being, which is why clients love working with her. She can help you insure your car from start to finish, without involving anybody else. Rose, and others like her, are well on their way to changing the future of insurance. Sure, she’s just a bunch of complex algorithms, but then, aren’t we all?

Unlike us, though, Rose’s algorithms aren’t biological. Rose is a chatbot. Not the old-school, keyword-driven, unable-to-deviate-from-a-pre-programmed-system type of chatbot. Rose, the Naked Insurance chatbot, hails from a brand-new generation of “thinking” bots. Her intelligence, though artificial, is also very real. On an interaction level, we believe she’s almost as good as a human but with superhuman levels of speed and expertise. This is what makes her and others like her perfect for technology-based client service. More “mind” than “machine,” chatbots like Rose make once admin-heavy, time-consuming tasks like buying insurance a breeze. Simply put, with AI-based chatbots, complicated processes feel quick and simple.

We’re not saying that Rose is here to replace our human employees. When you find yourself stuck on the side of the road without fuel, you pretty much need human help. For times like these, the humans on our emergency line will sort you out. Our Naked support team is also always there to answer questions or take care of any of your issues by phone or text. They’re doing amazing things and receive great feedback from clients all the time.

That being said, we’re still super stoked about Rose shaking the insurance industry up a bit. She’s the personification of our goal of pioneering innovative, client-driven insurance. In short, we believe that Rose is here to stay. Here’s why:

Rose is fast

AI is simply faster than humans. This is an obvious one. Errors and distractions are eliminated, plus links to external databases mean less back-and-forthing.

On top of that, Rose saves you time on an even bigger level, because she lets you buy car insurance online from start to finish, in a single process, without ever having to talk to a call centre agent. In fact, with call centre-based business models, it’s pretty much impossible to add a tech process where everything is truly self-service. At Naked, it’s only you and Rose, and she pretty much does it all – she starts your insurance at the click of a button. She helps you inspect your car and even generates the letter that proves insurance to give to your dealer. It all happens on the app in a few minutes, no phone calls are necessary, any time of night or day. Read more about why we extended Rose to include this feature.

Rose saves money

Because we have one super diligent chatbot instead of dozens of call centre agents, we have fewer salaries to pay. This reduces our costs and allows us to give you lower premiums – which is what it comes down to, right?

Rose also cuts out another painful element of traditional insurance: negotiation. With her, you know you’re paying the best price and not missing out on a better deal if you fail to haggle with an agent. Here's why we did it.

Rose keeps it simple

The beauty of a good chatbot is no matter how complex the backend systems are, the process always feels simple and pain-free for the user. She wraps her head around it (or she would if she had one) so you don’t have to.

With Rose’s quick, simple questions, we find that more people complete the entire quote process – compared to when we ask them to fill out screens of online forms. It just feels as if you’re answering simple yes/no, one-line or multiple-choice questions, but Rose is using a complex decision tree to steer the conversation. She decides which questions to ask, and in which format, based on your responses. In this way, the process becomes simple and linear, like a text conversation, as Rose guides you from one step to the next so that you don’t feel overwhelmed.

Rose is consistent

Rose lets you feel like you’re chatting to a friend rather than a machine. In this way, Rose really “lives” the Naked brand. She is friendly and eager to help, bringing consistency and accuracy to each interaction while still offering a warm, relatable friendliness.

Rose is nearly human

Before we had Rose, we had a graphically animated character called Ben that clients could chat to. Ben was great, but he very clearly belonged to a digital realm.

In contrast, Rose is so “human” that clients even sometimes mistake her for one!

Although we believe that companies should always be transparent about whether or not clients are interacting with a human, we still feel that chatbots becoming more like people is pretty awesome. The dream is to develop chatbots that are so sophisticated that you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from a human without being told. We want you to be left feeling that your customer experience had been just the right mix of empathy, efficiency, and of course, genuine intelligence. We already find that many of our clients are corresponding with Rose as if she were human, which is great.