07 September 2022
MTN subsidiary and African Insurtech, aYo Holdings, has launched a WhatsApp channel with Clickatell to let customers in its African markets easily submit documents as part of the claims process.
Users can also access content like FAQs, videos, voice notes, and brochures, all within WhatsApp.
For customers, this means being able to quickly and easily access as many services as possible, in their own time, and via a preferred channel, the companies said.
For insurers like aYo, automated customer engagement via WhatsApp is boosting revenue with cost savings five times that of call centres, and 25 times that of branch engagements, while minimising premium defaults - more details below.
“At present it will cost the average insurer R20 to R25 rand to service a client or broker via their call centre,” said Werner Lindemann, Clickatell’s commercial senior vice president for Middle East and Southern Africa.
“While this is substantially better than a branch engagement which can reach up to one hundred rand, using chat to optimise and automate the engagement can drop this cost to around 4 Rand per engagement. That means insurers can deliver successful customer engagement over channels like WhatsApp five times cheaper than a call centre and twenty five times cheaper than if a client walks into a store or branch.”
Lindemann added that these substantial cost-takeout benefits have quickly captured the attention of C-level executives in the insurance industry.
The privacy of the chat channel is also particularly useful as more and more consumers miss, or are late in making premium payments,” he said.