SPB, the European leader in affinity insurance, called upon dydu to implement a chatbot to facilitate the diagnosis of breakdowns and reduce the number of requests to the after-sales service department.
Isabelle Eloir, Marketing Director at SPB, looks back on the project 5 months after its launch.
Can you describe your company and your role?
I’m the marketing director at SPB, a broker-manager and leader in insurance policies for household items. We co-design white-label insurance policies for distributor clients (retail, e-commerce, telco, banks, etc.), on a wide variety of products and risks. Within the framework of our partnerships, we develop extranet sites for sign-ups and claims, and manage the relationship with policyholders.
My team’s role is to support the sales reps and our customers on several levels:
- Market studies and monitoring, to keep up to date with the best practices
- Digital marketing and web design, to help them design their sales journeys and manage their customer relationship, including seamless claims management.
- Relationship marketing in order to improve sales, while complying with the IDD, Insurance Distribution Directive, issued by the ACPR (French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority), which regulates our profession.
In your opinion, what challenges do your customers face in terms of the digitalising customer relations, particularly after-sales services?
With more than 50 million policy holders, we handle 1 million claims per year. This is a crucial moment in our customer relationship. For many years now, we have provided customers with a digital journey to report mobile phone damage or theft. This has enabled us to increase online claims by 50%. This is already very good, but we want to further improve this rate to meet our customers’ expectations.
ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS
What issue(s) were you looking to solve with a chatbot?
Up until now, within the framework of warranty extensions, breakdowns of household and high tech appliances were handled over the phone. Lots of products, complex situations, risk of fraud… We found more than 750 different scenarios and therefore just as many obstacles to completely digitalising the customer journey.
Why did you choose dydu?
We made a request for information (RFI) and a request for proposal (RFP), and dydu came out on top because it was the only tool on the market that could provide us with:
- an interface enabling our customer relations experts to take control of the configuration of scenarios and subsequent bot training
- a natural language processing (NLP) model that is already well trained in managing spelling, grammar and syntax is several languages, enabling us to deploy it in all the European countries we operate in
- an editor-integrator that is as close as possible to our business needs and IT teams, enabling rapid and efficient deployment
- easy integration with our claims extranets
- the possibility to move towards a callbot, directly reusing the existing scenarios in voice
THE CHATBOT PROJECT
What areas does your troubleshooting chatbot address?
The bot currently handles online breakdown claims for all large household appliances, as well as some smaller products (such as microwaves, coffee machines), the TV and games consoles.
What steps were involved in the project?
We used an agile method and worked with a tightly-knit project team. This enabled us to deploy the chatbot is just ten weeks, from the first design workshops to the launch.
What benefits have you seen after implementing the solution? Time, productivity, image, satisfaction, etc.
Firstly, user satisfaction thanks to:
- customer service available 24/7
- a highly efficient interface – we handle 97% of claims directly in just 6 to 7 customer interactions
We have gained in efficiency because the breakdown details are sent directly to our service providers to anticipate repairs. Finally, our managers can focus on customers who prefer to use the telephone.
What aspects of the project implementation and management are you particularly proud of?
All of them! But more rationally, as far as we are aware, it is the only online breakdown claims chatbot in France. We were awarded the bronze trophy at the 2020 CX Awards in the best selfcare and chatbot strategy category, as well as the gold e-commerce trophy in the “Retail Innovation” category. Proof that start-ups aren’t the only innovators. An over 55-year-old medium-sized company can be at the cutting edge of technology too, with the aim of providing better service for its customers!
AND TOMORROW
Are you thinking of extending your chatbot’s scope, and if yes, in which area?
We would like to expand our “Products” category, provide a multi-lingual service, and maybe one day migrate towards a callbot.
