Conversational Agents for Insurance Companies: From Theory to Practice

TL;DR

This paper explores the theoretical potential and practical implementation of conversational agents in insurance companies, including prototypes for claim management and customer service, assessing their readiness for real-world use.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of chatbot applications in insurance, introduces two prototypes, and evaluates their effectiveness and maturity for practical deployment.

Findings

Prototypes demonstrate practical chatbot applications in insurance scenarios.

Evaluation criteria highlight strengths and limitations of current chatbot technology.

Insights into opportunities and challenges for SMEs adopting conversational agents.

Abstract

Advances in artificial intelligence have renewed interest in conversational agents. Additionally to software developers, today all kinds of employees show interest in new technologies and their possible applications for customers. German insurance companies generally are interested in improving their customer service and digitizing their business processes. In this work we investigate the potential use of conversational agents in insurance companies theoretically by determining which classes of agents exist which are of interest to insurance companies, finding relevant use cases and requirements. We add two practical parts: First we develop a showcase prototype for an exemplary insurance scenario in claim management. Additionally in a second step, we create a prototype focusing on customer service in a chatbot hackathon, fostering innovation in interdisciplinary teams. In this work, we describe the results of both prototypes in detail. We evaluate both chatbots defining criteria for both settings in detail and compare the results and draw conclusions for the maturity of chatbot technology for practical use, describing the opportunities and challenges companies, especially small and medium enterprises, face.