How Bajaj Allianz Life is reorienting customer service with digital focus

Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company (BALIC) sees WhatsApp emerging as a “very large” digital services channel for its customers in the coming days, according to a senior official. Already, more than 20 different services are being used by its customers through WhatsApp, Kayzad Hiramanek, Chief - Operations & Customer Experience, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company, told BusinessLine.

Hiramanek said that BALIC has a WhatsApp platform that provides a human element (through live chat service), along with digitally trained responses (through the AI-enabled chatbot, BOING).

“This integration of both AI-enabled bot and live chat on the WhatsApp interface enables the company to be responsive to customers at all times. At any point of time, if the bot is unable to identify a customer’s query, the same query is routed to a live chat service, where the service representative responds to the customer,” he said.

This leads to two-way communication at all times and customers have 24x7 access to engage with the company.

“Within the first 25 days of launch of WhatsApp, the company has already seen 1.2 lakh customer opt-ins. Of those, around 50,000 customers have already transacted for different services, including document downloads, policy information,” he said.

Focus on self-service

Onthe impact of the customer experience reorientation strategy that the company has been pursuing in recent years, Hiramanek said BALIC had, over the last 2.5 years, leveraged tech/digital assets for this purpose.

The idea was to enable more and more customers adopt the ‘self-service’ route for more convenient and quick services. BALIC is now focussed on empowering customers with self-servicing digital services at their fingertips offering more convenience, and customisation by providing the human touch wherever needed.

“Self-servicing platforms have led to a reduction in the company’s branch walk-ins by 25 per cent (3.70 lakh in 2019-20 versus 4.88 lakh customers in 2018-19). About 2.5 years ago, the branch walk-in was around 12 lakh. Now, 4 lakh customers actively use the customer service web portal, Life Assist,” he said.

Grievance ratio down

Due to instant resolution and services on-the spot, the grievance ratio has reduced from 82 as on December 31, 2018, to 55 as on December 31, 2019 (grievances per 10,000 policies issued).

Due to a well-defined digital payments ecosystem, including card, wallets and UPI, the company’s digital payments have crossed 54 per cent in year-to-date December 2019 (30 per cent).

As a result of strategic customer experience interventions, which included digitising the physical, and humanising the digital, the company saved around ₹5 crore in terms of its operating expenses, he said.