When Retention Is Key

BACKGROUND

For a major U.S. auto insurance carrier covering 19 states, retaining as many policyholders as possible is critical to success. The carrier decided they needed a new outreach solution that could engage their policyholders more effectively.

Sensitive Conversations At Scale

CHALLENGE

Billing communications are time-sensitive and can be complex to execute effectively at scale. Traditional outbound dialing has limited effect, as most people will not pick up the phone for a number they don’t recognize. Even with repeated calls, many policyholders will still fail to engage and risk losing their coverage.

When considering their payment billing outreach, the carrier found room for improvement at three points in the retention lifecycle: billing reminders, policies pending cancellation, and policies cancelled for non-payment. When looking for a way to address all three areas more effectively, they discovered Drips.

Personalized AI-Powered Outreach

SOLUTION

Drips created a coordinated group of campaigns using an AI-powered conversational outreach strategy. One campaign sent billing reminders to policyholders with upcoming payments, using persistent SMS conversation to prevent them from missing their due date. Another campaign engaged after the due date was missed and cancellation was pending. Using empathetic messaging, Drips encouraged these policyholders to correct the issue and keep their coverage. A third campaign engaged an audience whose policies were already cancelled but could be reinstated. This campaign was scripted specifically to express how urgent it was to make a payment and restore coverage.

By using SMS, Drips empowered policyholders to respond on their own terms, how and when they were most comfortable. And because the natural language processing (NLP) model was ready to respond and adapt to policyholders’ questions, we kept the conversation going for thousands of policyholders without needing additional client-side resources. Ultimately, these conversations drove policyholders to high-value inbound calls to fix their payment issues.

Compounding Benefits

RESULTS

By addressing payment issues at three points in the retention lifecycle, Drips was able to deliver a compounding positive effect for the carrier. Engagement for billing reminders decreased pending cancellations, while Drips’ campaign for pending cancellations reduced cancelled policies, and so on. At every stage, Drips used conversational outreach techniques, such as starting with a simple question, to deliver higher engagement than one-way push outreach. This improved both retention and the policyholder experience.

When driving policyholders to a phone call to make a payment, Drips achieved an average 12.6% transfer rate to inbound calls. Overall, Drips was able to help the carrier retain 6% of the policyholders submitted for payment billing outreach. This resulted in an estimated $5 million in revenue for the carrier.