Insurance leader BGL Group adds Sabio intelligent Virtual Assistant to help simplify digital customer engagement

BGL Group works with Sabio to deploy Nuance-based solution to power Budget Insurance’s ‘Budget Becky’ Virtual Assistant solution

BGL Group, a leading digital distributor of insurance and household financial services to more than eight million customers, has chosen Sabio to design and build an intelligent Virtual Assistant capability for its online customers. Budget Insurance will be the first BGL brand to deploy the Virtual Assistant technology, having recently launched its ‘Ask Becky’ intelligent assistant to support online customers of it’s home, car and van insurance products.

Adding Virtual Assistant technology to its Self Service Centre (SSC) portfolio will enable BGL to provide customers with 24/7 online support to answer frequently asked questions, easily access policy documents, and update or edit details without needing to call. BGL will also use the Sabio Virtual Assistant to provide its agents with additional expert support. Sabio’s solution is based on Nuance’s advanced multi-channel intelligent assistant technology and will help BGL to reduce webchat and telephony contact volumes – freeing valuable agent resources to focus on more complex customer queries.

“At BGL Group we’re committed to giving our customers the power to choose how they want to interact with our brands, and our new Virtual Assistant solution is already proving an important option for our online self-service users,” commented Jayne Lansdell, BGL Group’s Associate Director for Technology & Process. “Initial trials have shown that our Virtual Assistant can successfully handle hundreds of different customer queries with 90%+ success rates and because it features intuitive self-learning technology, we’re able to fine-tune performance, enabling even more customers to self-serve at a time and place that suits them.

“Given the complexity of our multi-brand and omnichannel offering, we wanted to work with a supplier that combined enterprise intelligent assistant capabilities with proven conversational and knowledge management skills to deliver a high-quality Virtual Assistant experience for our customers,” added Jayne. “Sabio was able to demonstrate its capabilities in both these areas, while also bringing a real understanding of BGL’s Customer Excellence strategy goals, having already delivered a number of successful projects for us including Webchat and Speech Analytics capabilities.”

“We’re delighted that BGL chose to work with Sabio to design, build and deploy its new Virtual Assistant, and recognised the power and flexibility that our Nuance-powered solution can bring to their Self Service Centre proposition,” added Daniel Whaley, Sabio’s Principal Solutions Manager for Digital. “Successful Virtual Assistant solutions require particularly strong customer journey mapping and user experience design skills, and we look forward to working with the BGL team on both extending functionality and introducing Virtual Assistant capabilities to further BGL brands.”

Sabio – ranked as a Top Five Solution Provider in the latest Opus Research Enterprise Intelligent Assistants report – provides consultancy, design, development and ongoing optimisation services for Intelligent Assistant solutions. The company partners with Nuance to deliver solutions based on its Nina multi-channel virtual assistant. Sabio complements this technology with its own team of specialist conversational technologists and UX experts to create self-service and Intelligent Assistant solutions that support today’s evolving customer engagement models.

About BGL Group:

BGL Group is a leading digital distributor of household finance products to more than eight million customers. The Group is organised in two divisions: Price Comparison and Insurance Distribution and Outsourcing (IDO).

The Price Comparison division offers customers access to a growing range of Car, Home insurance and breadth products (including Life, Travel, Energy and Pet insurance as well as Utilities and Money products). comparethemarket.com is one of the UK’s largest and most popular price comparison sites and LesFurets.com is a leading player in the French market.

In IDO, our partnerships business, Junction, provides car and home insurance through some of the UK’s most well-known brands including M&S Bank, O2, Lloyds Bank and the Post Office; BeagleStreet.com offers life insurance through its simple, fast, online process; and our own insurance brands, Budget and Dial Direct offer tailored Car, Home, Life and Van insurance products all supported by our state of the art contact centres.

comparethemarket.com, Dial Direct and Budget are trading names of BISL Limited and BeagleStreet.com is a trading name of BGL Direct Life Limited.  BISL Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.  BGL Direct Life Limited is an Appointed Representative of BISL Limited.  Both entities are subsidiaries of BGL Group Limited.  Registered Address: Pegasus House, Bakewell Road, Orton Southgate, PE2 6YS. Registered in England no 02593690. More details are available on www.bglgroup.co.uk