Zurich Insurance (Hong Kong) simplifies insurance customer journeys with WhatsApp
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Challenge
Zurich Insurance (Hong Kong) wanted to interact with customers beyond the traditional voice and email channels. It also wanted to transform a reactive service experience into a more convenient and proactive one.
Solution
With Twilio WhatsApp Business API, Zurich brought customer service onto a channel embedded in customers’ everyday lives. It uses WhatsApp for live customer conversations and keeping customers updated as their claims progress.
Zurich Insurance (Hong Kong) has served the local community since 1961 and has around 600 employees today. As part of the Zurich Insurance Group, it provides general and life insurance solutions to individual, commercial and corporate customers in Hong Kong.
For Raymond Wong, Head of Information Technology at the insurer, delivering great customer experience starts with convenience. Zurich’s customers and distributors can complete transactions, ranging from quotations and policy changes to payments and claims, through its digital platforms and contact center. But Wong also recognized that customers don’t always want to log in to a portal, download an app, sit in a call queue, or wait for an email reply.
Looking to expand its service options, Zurich identified WhatsApp as a natural next step: a familiar channel in Hong Kong embedded in customers’ everyday lives that could help them interact with the insurer quickly and conveniently.
"I don’t want to just push our own platforms or systems to our customers and distributors. I want to make Zurich available in whatever communication channel they use day in and day out."
Making customer service as easy as sending a message
Zurich turned to Twilio to add WhatsApp to its customer service experience. An established relationship, successful proofs of concept, and WhatsApp integration capabilities had already given Zurich confidence in Twilio. Cost was also an important consideration.
Using Twilio WhatsApp Business API, Zurich quickly built and launched a WhatsApp customer service channel. Customers can now initiate live conversations to ask about topics such as policy status and coverage rather than calling the contact center. Customer service teams respond through live chat integrated with Zurich’s existing contact center and customer systems.
Twilio’s integration expertise and easy-to-implement APIs helped Zurich move quickly. Wong says the team didn’t need to “spend a lot of time exploring” integrating WhatsApp with Zurich’s existing customer service systems; new use cases took “only weeks” to implement and deploy. That suited Zurich’s preference for focused, agile projects. “We don’t believe in multi-year IT projects anymore,” he adds.
Zurich also found value in Twilio’s support beyond the technology. Wong says Twilio helps the team work through the processes behind its customer journeys, drawing on broader experience to make them work effectively.
"You can have the best technology available, but without the right process, it doesn’t work. Twilio brings experience from other customers and geographies that helps us get that right."
Turning motor claim updates from reactive to proactive
After establishing WhatsApp for customer service, Zurich extended the channel last year to create a more proactive motor-claims experience.
Previously, customers wanting to know how vehicle repairs were progressing might have to call Zurich, contact the workshop, or wait for an update. Zurich saw an opportunity to turn the repair status information it received from workshops into timely customer updates.
Zurich created an automated process to update customers through WhatsApp whenever repair workshops notified it that a vehicle had reached a milestone, such as approval to commence repairs or completion of the work. Customers now receive relevant updates without having to repeatedly check on their claim.
The workflow also demonstrates how Zurich can use WhatsApp for more than communication. Wong describes the opportunity as turning a conversation into a workflow, enabling Zurich to customize customer journeys around specific needs. He says customers appreciate both the proactive service and having more ways to communicate.
"Calling us and waiting in the queue for someone to pick up is definitely not the future. Many people prefer a text conversation."
Meeting customers wherever they choose to engage
Zurich is considering extending WhatsApp workflows to distributors, potentially allowing brokers to submit quotation requests and receive custom quotes while meeting with customers.
The WhatsApp implementation is part of Zurich’s broader shift toward omnichannel customer engagement. The insurer is expanding its channel mix, including developing a WeChat channel for customers in mainland China. It’s also exploring how Twilio could support this broader strategy through new contact center capabilities.
Zurich is also exploring AI-powered conversations. It has already built an AI solution and is testing the accuracy and performance of including AI-powered responses within its WhatsApp customer conversations.
"AI conversations are part of our future, but we won’t focus on only one channel. We want to make all the relevant channels available."
