Leveraging Voice AI to boost your insurance customer service is an attractive idea – but is it worth the investment? While any new technology will require some time and money to deploy, Voice AI is surprisingly easy and inexpensive. But you can’t just look at how much Voice AI will cost you. To calculate the true ROI of Voice AI, you also need to consider how much you’ll save and how much more you could earn.

What Can Voice AI Do for You?

Voice AI can engage customers with human-like conversation. It can also integrate with your other systems to enable task resolution. Up to 80% of calls can be resolved by the Voice AI Agent without the need for human involvement. When resolution is not possible, Voice AI triages the call and transfers it to an appropriate human representative.

Without Voice AI, insurers would have to pay employees or call centers to answer phones, handle routine inquiries and transfer calls. The costs can add up, especially when a company is growing.  

Employee Compensation and Turnover Costs

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual salary for a customer service representative is $39,680 per year as of 2023, or $19.08 per hour. However, salary is only one part of compensation. Employers also need to pay payroll taxes, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation insurance, as well as any other employee benefits. The Small Business Administration says that total compensation typically runs around 1.25 to 1.4 times the salary. To be conservative, we’ll go with the low end of 1.25. This puts total compensation for one customer service representative at $49,600 a year or $23.85 an hour.

If you have a small call center with 10 customer service representatives, you’re already looking at $496,000 a year in compensation costs. You true costs will likely be even higher due to turnover. 

According to TechRepublic, the average turnover rate for call centers is 30% to 45%. This means a call center with 10 workers can expect to lose at least three workers a year. Gallup says the cost of replacing an employee ranges from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary. If we go with the low end and say it costs one-half the salary, that’s $19,840. Multiply that by three, and you get $59,520. Add this to the total compensation costs, and you’re looking at $555,520 a year.

How Voice AI Can Result in Savings

A call center with just 10 workers costs more than half a million dollars a year just in hiring and compensation costs, and this doesn’t even consider additional costs like office equipment and employment practices liability insurance.

Let’s say your insurance company is growing. Your call volume is increasing as a result, and you determine that you’ll need to double your call center workforce over the next year in order to keep up. That means your employee compensation costs will double. You may also need to move to a large building.

Or you can adopt Voice AI. Voice AI typically costs less than half of what it costs to hire one employee. Even better, a Voice AI agent never calls in sick, never has a bad day, and never quits. They are trained upon arrival. You don’t have to worry about salaries, payroll taxes or rising wages. 

With Voice AI, you can answer 100% of call with no wait times – without doubling your workforce.

Employment Costs Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Voice AI won’t replace all human workers. However, with the ability to resolve around 80% of calls without a transfer, Voice AI can certainly reduce the workload. It can also give your human representatives more time to deal with high-stakes calls. 

This could result in more savings than you realize. Accenture has estimated that insurers stand to lose up to $170 billion over a five-year period due to poor claims experiences. Meanwhile, LexisNexis says auto insurance shopping has surged to “nuclear” levels as more and more policyholders look around for better deals. This is a huge opportunity to gain market share, but both insurance carriers and agencies stand to lose business if they don’t answer the phones quickly enough.

It’s hard to calculate the value of opportunity, and how much more you could earn if you answered every call 24/7 – even on weekends and holidays. If you add in Spanish-speaking AI, you can also potentially capture a sliver of the estimated $90-million-dollar financial services opportunity. Even though the missed opportunity is difficult to calculate, it certainly carries a cost. 

By helping insurers capture more opportunity and retain more customers, at a fraction of the cost required to hire just one employee, Voice AI provides undisputable ROI for call centers. 

Want to Learn More About the ROI of Voice AI?

If you’re interested in learning more about the ROI you can expect from Voice AI, it’s time to take the next step. Reach out to us so we can discuss your needs and the costs involved. Get started.

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