Same team, three to four times the customers: Turaco’s claims desk on WhatsApp

Turaco is a Nairobi-based insurer whose customers mostly use WhatsApp for their policies and claims. A Lua agent now meets those customers first. The same team of under 30 people serves three to four times as many of them.

At a glance

• Three to four times the customers served by the same team of under 30
• First replies that used to take around 15 minutes now often arrive in under a minute
• Claims close in about a third of the time
• Open around the clock in Kenya and Uganda, holidays included

Before

Turaco’s customers use WhatsApp every day for questions about their policies and for claims, and a team of under 30 answered them by hand, one customer at a time. Most of the messages were the same questions, over and over. When an associate got a complicated claim it slowed down every customer waiting behind it. The team moved people between ticket queues on busy and quiet days, and holidays left a backlog. An associate could have ten tickets open at once. Turaco’s target for a first reply was five minutes, and in practice it was around 15.

The build

Turaco’s customers write in several languages, including Swahili and Luganda. They send several documents at once and report claims on behalf of other people. Answers have to match the cover and waiting period on the customer’s own policy, and claims have to be recorded correctly in Turaco’s own claims systems.

We worked with Turaco’s team to map their claims process, including the exceptions, and built a WhatsApp agent around it. Philip Ndegwa’s team connected the agent to Turaco’s claims systems, so it can look up a customer, check their cover and open the claim without anyone retyping it into a second screen. Together we set which cases the agent takes and which go to an associate, such as life claims. It works through the night and on public holidays, in Kenya and Uganda.

Turaco’s QA team reviews the agent’s conversations every day, and what they find goes back into how the agent works.

Results

The same team now serves three to four times as many customers. Charles Opuba, who leads claims quality at Turaco, puts the difference like this:

“An agent can respond to multiple customers. At a go.”

An associate talks to one customer at a time. The agent can be in many conversations at once. First replies often arrive in under a minute, claims close in about a third of the time, and customer survey feedback is better.

The routine questions and the paperwork go to the agent. Turaco’s associates spend their day on the claims that need judgement and the customers who need a person. Turaco’s data team now runs a support agent on Lua as well, and staff have built agents of their own.

Groundwork

Writing the replies is the easy part. The claims process, the system connections and the rules for passing a case to a person have to be built around the company, and the groundwork is what lots of companies skip: working out how Turaco really handles claims before building anything, then connecting the agent to its systems. We do it properly, and we know how to set it up. The result for Turaco is more capacity without more headcount, and better work from the people it already has.

About Turaco

Turaco is a Nairobi-based insurer.

Published with Turaco’s permission. Figures are Turaco’s own.