SOR'UN - Out of Business

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

MAPFRE is the largest insurance group of Spain operating globally in Spain, Europe and US in insurance, reassurance, assistance and financial services field. MAPFRE acquired majority shares of Türkiye Genel Sigorta operating under Çukurova Holding in 2007 and became major partner of the company. In 2009, company was named Mapfre Genel Sigorta. Since 2016, the company operates as Mapfre Sigorta.

Our company currently offers services to 27 million customers around the world. MAPFRE aims to be a global and reliable insurance company. MAPFRE has a rich and diverse product portfolio that covers entire insurance branches. Our company is one of the strongest firms in insurance sector in Turkey.

I am working in Digital Transformation office. I am responsible from Digital Transformation Initiative that started in 2017. My role is to identify, track and accelerate Digital Transformation Projects in the company. I am personally responsible from 3 projects under this project portfolio. One of these projects is Chatbot and Customer Support from Online Channels.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire SOR'UN?

At first, we wanted to respond customer questions, complaints and recommendations on social media accounts 24/7 in fast and effective way. For the following stages, we wanted to support multi-channels structure on digital platforms and to enable sales on our social media accounts.

What were your goals for this project?

As many other companies on the market, we started to reach our customers via social media channels. Back in those days, we worked with a social media agency but our processes were extremely slow. For example, when a customer communicated us from social media, we used to ask contact information on the following day. After receiving contact information from that customer, we would transfer this information to our Complaint Management Department. Lastly, Complaint Management Department contacted that customer but this process might take days. But now, our customers can contact us from our social media accounts and receive responses almost immediately.

Although this response is not immediate, we are welcoming that customer on social media, collect necessary information, retrieve this information in a fast way and if our customer wants to have an offer, where 60-70% of messages are for general traffic insurance offer, we can immediately make them an offer.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have met with them in a digital event before we started this project. Meanwhile, we have started analyzing the business requirements internally and started searching for providers in the market. After setting our criterias and defining the processes, we prepared our Request for Proposal and shared with the providers that are on our short list. There were many departments involved in selection process such as E-commerce, Digital Marketing, IT and Information Security.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

At first, scope of the project was to meet incoming traffic insurance offer demands. We can to receive necessary information from the customer, give them an adequate offer and if possible, complete sales process in same chat flow. On the other hand, if customer does not want any offer and wants to convey his/her message, we want to eliminate social media agency from this equation and answer this message and deliver customer contact information to Complain Management Department.

We have completed first stage in 2 months period and our bot was live. In the following stages, we will start other projects such as providing different product offers, asking FAQs with NLP technology and integrating live support to this technology. Additionally, we are using Sor’un Suite product. Here, we can answer complaints and demands on website or chat platform.

What was the team composition?

As far as I know, there were different teams involved in the project from vendor's side. Account manager, an analyst and a developper and ux team. The size of the team remained the same during the project. The size of the team and their responsibilities were adequate enough.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

For me the greatest advantage is to instantly answer customer questions. As I have mentioned before, our problem was late responses to customer questions. In some cases, customer problems were solved before we even answered their questions. After starting to work with SOR’UN, we have automatized some steps. This way, we were able to answer our customers 24/7 and optimised our business process. Other than that, we can direct our customers who receive offers from Facebook to our sales channel to feed that channel.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We obtained results rapidly. Generally, we set timeline for these types of projects but going live might take 2-3 times more than this pre-determined timeline. We have started this project on November 2018. With all of our efforts, this project was live on 31 December 2018. I think this is incredible.

Additionally, SOR’UN team was proactive in the entire process. Sometimes they get back to us like “We have something like this here, should we do it like this?” before we even noticed. For example, when we needed help or asked for a meeting, they schedules that meeting in 1-2 hours and SOR’UN team worked with us until we found a solution to our problem. We are engaged in a long-term project with SOR’UN. We planned various projects and it is valuable for us to know that SOR’UN is by our side. Additionally, I have worked with numerous suppliers and I felt happiest with SOR’UN team.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

SOR’UN's young and experienced team makes them stand out from their competitors. I really feel like I am talking to a software firm. You have strong references. You are a young but also an experienced team. With the advantage of being a young team, you can fit to digital age.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I thought of one thing. If you have that, you will be amazing. You can rapidly find solutions to what we ask for but you can be more creative. For example, you can think about adding some games or jokes or trying different things. You can provide surprising user experience with these techniques and ideas. Focusing on these things will entirely differentiate you from other chatbot firms.