AXA Partners: Automating roadside assistance with WhatsApp

AXA Partners forms part of the global AXA Group, they
provide a comprehensive range of assistance solutions, from auto, home to travel and serve their customers through B2B and B2C channels.

In addition to their other services, AXA Partners also offers roadside assistance. Recognizing the urgent nature for roadside assistance requests, they needed to expand their digital channels to provide real-time support to customers.

Aligning with customers demand for instant messaging services and improving communication during the provision of roadside assistance, AXA Partners decided to pursue digital solutions that could automate simple claims, freeing up capacity for  the resolution of complex cases.

After considering numerous WhatsApp Business Platform providers, AXA Partners chose to partner with Infobip. They were impressed by our hands-on support for the channel, our chatbots’ configuration capabilities, our platform’s scalability, and seamless integration capabilities with their Customer Management System (CMS).

Our partnership kicked off with a small-scale pilot of a WhatsApp chatbot, and our cloud contact center solution, Conversations, to test the effectiveness of more digital customer engagement and support. The pilot’s success highlighted opportunities for further automation to streamline customer interactions.

As a result, they implemented our chatbot-building platform, Answers, which integrates seamlessly with Conversations. And to make the customer journey even more efficient, AXA Partners integrated their chatbot with their CMS using Answers’ open API.

AXA Partners enhanced customer support by automating simple tasks like opening support tickets for simple cases like flat batteries, and providing real-time updates via WhatsApp. Customers can share their location, enabling faster and continuous assistance, while agents can manage multiple conversations efficiently and deliver quicker service.

All of this builds more confidence in AXA Partners’ customer base as they move towards a more effective omnichannel customer journey.

It was crucial to be able to migrate seamlessly from our previous support solution to Conversations with no interruptions in service for our customers.

This included migrating all existing tickets and agent data, continuing to support all ticketing use cases during the migration, and ensuring complete data security and compliance with all privacy regulations in every region.

The WhatsApp chatbot exceeded AXA Partners’ expectations right from the start. They saw a significant increase in overall digital interactions, with approximately 20% of uncomplicated cases now opened through WhatsApp without human intervention.

This shift sped up response times and freed up agents to focus on more complex customer needs. In the pilot phase alone, they saw 6,000 chat interactions in the first six months.

The impact of our solutions wasn’t just reflected in operational metrics; it resonated with customers, too.

While customers can still log roadside assistance requests via phone or the AXA Partners web app, they appreciate the speed and convenience of WhatsApp, whether they’re stuck on the side of the or simply seeking updates on their requests. They also prefer WhatsApp when the connection is too weak for a call or there is too much noise to talk on the phone.