Ease of use and simplicity are key attributes for any brand seeking customer engagement and customer loyalty. For a brand that has made a name for itself through innovation and simplicity for its customers, Allstate Insurance added a new customer experience tool to its arsenal: A new account specific skill for Alexa.
Now, customers with an Alexa device such as Amazon Echo can ask Alexa for help finding the due date on their next bill or what the minimum amount due might be. For general consumers, Alexa can assist with locating the nearest Allstate agency office by zip code.
Allstate identified opportunities for customers and consumers to use voice assistant capabilities to receive information from a local agent. Customers can enable the Allstate skill from the Skills section of the Amazon Alexa app. Once the Allstate skill is enabled, customers can invoke the skill by saying: “Alexa, ask Allstate…” and find an agent using zip code search, find their agent’s contact information, or when their auto insurance bill is due.
“We really want to make it as easy as possible for customers to do business with us, and this skill makes it even easier for customers to access basic billing information or find their local agent,” company spokesperson Justin Herndon told Loyalty360. “In today’s world, we’re almost constantly surrounded by technology. Many people spend hours a day on screens of different sizes to manage both their professional and personal lives. At the end of a day, people don’t always want to have to go to a computer or pull out their phone just to find out basic information about their account or to find a nearby agent. This skill makes it easy because asking Alexa is, literally, just like asking someone in the room that has the information you need.”
Allstate officials understand that most people are very busy and the Allstate Alexa skill helps people have an additional method to quickly and easily access some basic information they may need.
“We value our customers’ time and this launch helps us continue to be an insurance company that’s easy to do business with,” Herndon added. “No one was specifically asking for an Alexa skill from us, but we have found that our customers always appreciate new ways that we find to reduce friction when doing business with us. We have had many positive reviews for other similar experiences (such as mobile ID cards and our QuickFoto claims process) so we thought a skill that makes accessing information easier would be positively received by our customers.”
Herndon said the Alexa skill simplifies the customer experience because asking Alexa “is just like asking someone in the room that has the information you need. And it is hands-free so there’s no need to stop what you’re doing at the time to get this information. The Alexa app also stores the answers to the questions you ask in a card right in the app, so you can even go back to it later to access the information−no need to even write it down.”