IMS announces new industry partnership with conversational AI platform provider SmarTek21

Deployment by IMS sister company Carrot Insurance demonstrates the effectiveness of digital self-service within connected insurance programs

Waterloo, ON (May 26, 2020) – IMS (Insurance & Mobility Solutions), a subsidiary of Trak Global Group (TGG) and one of the world’s top three providers of connected car data solutions to insurers, mobility operators and governments, is pleased to announce a new partnership with SmarTek21®, an industry leader in accelerating digital evolution and transformation for companies.

IMS chose to partner with SmarTek21 to integrate its SmartBotHub Conversational AI platform within Carrot, the UK direct-to-consumer digital insurance business owned by IMS parent company, TGG. In addition to adding self-service support to Carrot’s end-to-end digital customer experience, it also allows the chatbot technology to be tested live in market before IMS makes it available to insurers as a module within the Carrot UBI platform, launched earlier this year.

To further streamline the digital customer experience offered to its UK customers, Carrot has been increasing the provision of alternatives to voice-driven communications over the course of 2019. With this implementation, SmartBotHub was layered over Carrot’s existing webchat platform to ensure that 100% of all chats could be initially handled by a bot. However, early results from this deployment indicate that not just initial interactions are being handled by bots, as to date approximately 40 percent of customer query chats are managed by the bot from start to finish and the average chat time has decreased by approximately 2.5 minutes per chat, offering significant productivity gains and boosting customer satisfaction.

Roll-out of the SmartBotHub platform has proved to be incredibly timely, as many critical front line workers insured by Carrot in the UK who needed to make COVID-19 related changes to their coverage (such as increased mileage allowance or addition of business use) were able to do so on a self-serve basis, quickly and conveniently.

“We believe that delivering a high quality, end-to-end digital customer experience is a critical success factor for any connected auto insurance proposition”, said Andrew Brown-Allan, Chief Marketing Officer at TGG. “The integration of Smartek21 as a digital delivery partner within the Carrot modular UBI platform is already returning significant benefits for our direct-to-consumer business in the UK. It’s a great example of why Carrot is the perfect sandbox for experimentation around new technologies and methods of engagement – uniquely, we can identify what works, refine it, and then make it available to IMS’ existing customers and all other insurers to apply to their own programs, on a tried-and-tested basis.”

SmarTek21’s SmartBotHub has been recognized by Gartner for the second year in a row as one of the industry’s leading Conversational AI platforms. With the ability to be deployed on-premise or in the cloud, SmartBotHub helps customize and personalize customer experiences by bringing an even richer set of features for creating best-in-class digital conversation experiences and delivering value to market. SmarTek21’s conversational AI technology specializes in increasing efficacy and triaging of customer requests and reducing support costs with intuitive self-service tools. By increasing the availability of service options to 24x7x365, increases in both customer retention and customer satisfaction are being realized.

“We are seeing the onset of a technological revolution within the insurance sector, primed by conversational AI and other advances such as robotic process automation,” said Jon Kirk, SmarTek21’s Insurance Industry lead. “The inclusion of SmartBotHub as an available module to IMS’s existing UBI customers, and other interested insurers, is the first step we are taking to develop more complex self-service opportunities and proactive communications linked via APIs to existing client software solutions. Early adopters within the insurer and broker community will have a significant competitive advantage as they benefit from both a service and efficiency perspective.”

For more information on how to access these capabilities as part of the Carrot UBI platform, contact IMS.

About IMS

IMS (Insurance & Mobility Solutions), part of Trak Global Group (TGG), is a global provider of connected car solutions, services, and analytics to insurers, mobility operators, OEMs and governments. IMS is the developer of the cloud-based IMS DriveSync® connected car platform which has received industry acclaim for its ability to offer customers a data source-agnostic, multi-device strategy through which a multitude of B2B and B2C propositions can be taken to market. For more information, visit at www.ims.tech.

About Trak Global Group (TGG)

Trak Global Group (TGG) is the UK-based holding company and owner of IMS (Insurance & Mobility Solutions), a global provider of connected car solutions, services, and analytics for insurers, mobility operators and governments, and Carrot Insurance (Carrot), a B2C telematics insurance broker in the UK and digital insurance platform available to insurers internationally. For more information, visit www.trakglobalgroup.com.

About SmarTek21

SmarTek21 is a global technology solutions company that provides data and AI services and software to help ensure that businesses can employ data as a strategic asset and as the foundation of a dramatically improved ability to engage with their customers. SmarTek21’s flagship conversational AI and data management solutions help transform the relationship between an organization and its data so that users – both internal and external – can more naturally interact with applications, services, and brands through text and even voice with greater context, richness, and personalization. In doing so, SmarTek21 helps its clients to compete and thrive in a data-driven world. Founded in 2006, SmarTek21 is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington. For more information, visit smartek21.com.

About Carrot Insurance

Carrot Insurance, part of Trak Global Group, is a UK-based, award-winning, telematics insurance business. In 2015, Carrot received the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award for its work in reducing driver accident frequency, and launched Better Driver, one of the first app-based connected auto insurance products in the world. Carrot offers both hardware and app-based solutions to its policyholders, and has won multiple awards, including ‘Claims Partner of the Year’ in 2017 and ‘Best Consumer App” at the Insurance Times Tech & Innovation Awards in October 2019. For more information, visit www.carrotinsurance.com.

Source: St. Nick Media Services on behalf of IMS

Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Carrot, Insurance & Mobility Solutions (IMS), partnership, platform, Self-Service, Usage-Based Insurance (UBI)
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