Chatbot delivers cutting-edge customer service

Information access challenges

As part of Belfius, an integrated banking and insurance company, Belfius Insurance serves people across Belgium with an authentic local approach.

But whether a customer belonged to the private, wealth, retail or omnichannel segment, information access was one of the main challenges for Belfius contact centre agents and insurance agency staff. The information they needed often was spread across several siloed systems that were outdated and difficult to search. And that meant the Belfius support desk had to field a large volume of inquiries.

“If agents were struggling to find the right answer quickly, it was much easier for them to call the back office for help,” said Pascal Buyle, Head of Non-life Policies Retail at Belfius Insurance. “Our support desk operators were becoming sales assistants, answering the same general questions over and over again. They were flooded with calls, which resulted in unnecessarily long wait times.”

Of these inquiries, 80% were dealt with over the phone and 20% by email. While the average call duration was short, the sheer volume wasn’t manageable.

Previous success establishes trust

To find a future-proof solution, Buyle contacted several vendors. He wanted to use all available information to efficiently address general questions using a chatbot solution.

Business & Decision, an IT consulting company, demonstrated how the Genesys DX™ solution helped another client overcome similar challenges. Buyle felt the proposed solution provided an excellent fit: It offered the features, reporting and dashboard options he was looking for — plus an outstanding user experience.

“Also, Business & Decision inspired trust in me,” said Buyle. “I believed they could fulfill our needs, and the proof of concept (POC) confirmed it. The fact that they’re a Belgian company was even more beneficial.”

Getting the project underway

To ensure the project met strict security regulations — including cloud security and GDPR — the consultants worked onsite at Belfius two days a week. “They sure did their share of problem solving,” said Buyle. “We were working against very strict deadlines, and together with Business & Decision, managed to meet each and every one of them. They favored an approach of joint decision making, another quality we strongly appreciated. I’m convinced that by combining both our input and theirs, we achieved a stronger result.”

Once the organisational challenges had been addressed, the implementation was simple. It involved building a knowledge base, creating a widget on SharePoint, adding content and testing. The POC contained 65 answers and proved the concept successful. The knowledge base now contains an additional 888 answers, and every ticket serves as a learning case.

“Using an agile methodology, Business & Decision guided us to implement the solution to the point where, today, all of our agents are able to work with Genesys DX, and enrich the chatbot content permanently,” said Buyle.

Reduced call volume and shorter response times

Less than five months after the rollout, the call volume for the Belfius “Car” product was reduced by 20%. And for the less complex Belfius “Assistance” product, the call volume decreased by 30%. As a result, response times shortened.

“Besides the reduction of call volume, the chatbot allowed us to centralise our knowledge,” said Buyle. “Even new support agents can easily access information. Also, its availability outside office hours results in higher conversion rates. A convenient bonus is getting intelligent insight regarding the real issues at hand, which enables us to identify knowledge gaps at our offices and with our knowledge workers.”

The Belfius team is planning to extend the FAQ bot to their “Fire” and “Family” products. “Our end goal is to have all tickets and communication, including file-specific questions, handled through the FAQ bot, escalating to either live chat or a phone call to the right person with the right priority,” said Buyle.

“Agents and consultants highly appreciate Genesys DX,” added Buyle. “The number of questions addressed through the chatbot is rising by 25% a week, which speaks for itself. Our customer surveys also show very positive results. We are able to service our customers instantly and efficiently, just as you’d expect from a large, fast-growing banking and insurance company of today. We aim to reach an overall reduction of incoming calls by 30%.”

Future collaboration

Belfius is looking forward to continuing its collaboration with Genesys and Business & Decision. “We’re already considering expanding the chatbot into our other divisions, including the banking department,” concluded Buyle. “This means the role for Business & Decision within Belfius will be ongoing. We’ll also call upon their expertise to help us establish the integration between Genesys DX and our new management program to further develop our customer engagement strategy.”