The ambition to offer a distinctive range of online car and home insurance products in the Canadian market led to the launch of Onlia a few years ago. Onlia, backed by Achmea and Canadian financial services provider Fairfax, innovates in several ways, including telematics-based app Onlia SenseTM.
To optimise communication with customers, Onlia uses Conversational AI Cloud.
Read the PDFOne of the things that make Onlia's services unique is Onlia Sense, an app that coaches drivers and encourages safe behaviour. It is available to Onlia customers, as well as non-customers.
"The app is available to all Canadians who are interested in safe driving and want to optimise their driving habits", says Chris de Vries, Customer Solutions Development Lead at Onlia. "Of course, there are benefits for Onlia customers. By optimising their driving behaviour using the Onlia Sense app, they can earn rewards like cash back. If the app is linked to their insurance policy, proven safe(r) driving behaviour leads to savings. The app is literally a part of the customer journey and a product differentiator from competitors".
Contact moments with users (whether or not Onlia's clients) have grown since the app's launch. This prompted Onlia to consider how to improve online consumer interaction. Deploying a chatbot provided the solution.
"We wanted to be able to service customers in an always-on capacity, but also maintain a human touch. Ideally, consumers don't realise that they are communicating with a chatbot", says Anouk van de Laar, Customer Experience Manager Digital at Onlia.
"We started looking around and eventually we found CM.com's software, which we wanted to use both on the website and in the app. Initially, we started by answering standard questions. But over time, we have become more sophisticated, and our team is very proactive using the possibilities that the chatbot solution offers us."
Conversational AI Cloud is the all-in-one solution to automate and personalise digital (customer) conversations. All virtual assistants and intelligent chat- or voice bots are supported with Conversational AI and are easy to implement.
Chris de Vries states that for Onlia it was a joy to be able to use the 'out of the box' product for the deployment of their conversational strategy on the Onlia website.
"We were able to get started fast, we learned a lot in a short period of time, and quickly continued building on the front end."
App developer Valay Patel and his team were a little hesitant at first, as they had to build the chatbot from scratch. However, the implementation turned out to be so simple that it almost came naturally. Patel: "I had to explain to my team that building the chatbot for the Onlia Sense app from scratch seemed like a big job, but that the API was very easy to connect. Once we got to work, this clear structure proved itself and we were able to build step by step."
Within six weeks the chatbot in the app was completely up and running, including tests and bug fixes.
"We didn't have to call the help desk once, although they were always on standby. For Android and iOS we wrote separate code, nothing overlapped. The process was smooth, much better than we were used to with some other parties."
The chatbot is used in different ways. The web version focuses more on the insurance side and will eventually become more conversion-oriented.
"We have made the chatbot increasingly proactive over the past months and want to take the next steps with that," says Anouk van de Laar.
"Think about actively responding to the customer's web visit, with additional content that is relevant for the page they are currently on. If the customer is signed in to their online account, the chatbot can link to their data, so we can provide them with the information they need and in some cases, upsell them on products."
Want to learn more about the implementation, the developers' experiences, or discover the results? Read the full story.
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