Bavarian Insurance Company Awarded for Innovative use of Service Technology

• Alexa deployed as a new customer service channel
• Received Knowledge Award at recent USU World conference

A Bavarian insurance company, the Versicherungskammer Bayern, is breaking new ground in customer service. Together with Unymira, a business unit of USU, Germany’s largest public insurer successfully completed a cutting-edge project using Alexa as a customer service channel. The Versicherungskammer Bayern won the Knowledge Award presented at the USU World 2019 conference in Berlin for the implementation of its innovative customer service concept.

Since mid-2018, the Unymira and the Versicherungskammer Bayern have been developing a unique Alexa skill, which customers can use to find policy information and offers for insurance products. It enables customers to access the company’s knowledge management system via this new voice channel. Alexa can then provide information on policy details, coverage and for example, calculate pension entitlements. Unlike call centers, Alexa is available 24/7 with zero wait time. This service is made possible because the insurance company had already centralized its support and product information in USU’s knowledge base platform, Knowledge Center. With the information already linked to a chatbot, the chatbot could easily be extended to Alexa. The new version of the USU chatbot features intelligent dialogue control and sophisticated options for inquiry escalation.

Unymira is honoring the market-leading insurance company with the award for new, inspiring and successful ideas in the practical application of its knowledge management platform. "With our Knowledge Management Award, we’ve worked together with customers and partners to recognize those using our technology in new and visionary ways," says USU Managing Director Harald Huber, commenting on the motives for the competition.

"With this skill, we want to add a new sustainable support channel to our established knowledge management technology," explains Isabella Martorell Nassl, Head of Operations at the Group Insurance Chamber. "It was important for us to add value from the customer perspective by focusing even more on their needs and providing target group-oriented information during the development and design phase.”

The Versicherungskammer Group

The Versicherungskammer Group provides personal and property insurance. It is the largest public insurer in Germany and the country’s sixth-largest primary insurer. It is part of the Savings Banks Finance Group, making it a member of Germany’s leading and most successful financial network – together with savings banks, regional banks, regional building societies and “Deka” (the central asset manager of the savings banks).