What Changed When AI Answered 90 Percent of This Insurance Agency’s Calls

Your phone system is the “front door” to new business and retention. But in reality, many agencies are juggling thousands of inbound calls each month, often with limited staff capacity. IVR menus, transfers, and voicemail act as the overflow valve, catching what they can’t handle.

While this may seem to be working, it creates IVR drop-off, while inconsistent routing irritates customers, and the constant intake burden keeps staff away from advising and quoting. What results is slower response times, less consistent follow-up, and missed opportunities that never even reach your pipeline. So, how can you create lower drop-off, reduced agent talk time, and improved call-to-bind conversions, without adding staff headcount?

For one agency working with bolt Solution’s AI Receptionist for insurance agencies, that’s exactly what happened when AI was handling around 90% of their calls. Here’s how their journey went.

Traditional Insurance Agency Call Handling: The “Before” Workflow

To handle its call volume, this agency had a very traditional setup, with an IVR menu being the customer’s first point of contact. As the agency leaders put it in our recent webinar, where they discussed their implementation journey:

“When people went into our IVR, it was: press one for this, press two for that. I think everybody is going to recognize that that’s not the best customer experience.”

And the agency leader is certainly correct. While this system gives the illusion of stronger customer service, the reality is often different:

• Callers abandon their attempts to connect, with 75% of consumers seeing long waiting times as a major customer service lapse. 
• Calls were frequently bounced to the wrong team.
• Agents needed to re-ask the same questions at every touchpoint, wasting their time, despite 87% of agents already facing increasing workloads.
• Follow-ups became inconsistent, as new phone calls interrupted work.
• Voicemail became the default for the backlog, though up to 85% of voicemail calls are never returned, costing business. 

Luckily, implementing an AI receptionist for insurance agencies gave them a path to more efficient, productive insurance agency call handling. 

AI Receptionist Call Handling: The “After” Workflow

As this agency leader noted, “A lot of the time was spent on repeating things, sending people to the right department, or re-transferring calls.” Eliminating that bottleneck is critical. 

The agency saw call routing automation for insurance agencies as the obvious solution to their rising problem. This addressed most of their problems in a simple, routine AI Receptionist workflow, as you can see in the table below.

Insurance Agency Call Handling: Before and After an AI Receptionist

Routing With Context

In traditional call handling, agents start from scratch when they pick up the phone. Routing with context means that the agent no longer blind-answers a call. Before transfer, the AI captures key information, such as:

• Why they are calling
• What policy or issue is involved
• How urgent the request is  

This information is passed along with the call, letting agents start the conversation informed and aligned.

The Metrics That Changed With Automated Insurance Agency Call Handling

For insurance agencies trying to reduce transfers and voicemail backlog, tracking the results is key to any AI implementation. This agency saw some notable ones, including:

• 32% lower IVR drop off, meaning fewer people exited when confronted with an IVR system.
• 36% reduced human talk time, showing that agents could act efficiently, resolve customer problems faster, reduce intake admin burden, and free up capacity for licensed work.
• More bound policies over six months, showing a tangible increase in call handling efficiency and results.

Inbound call conversion at this independent agency also improved considerably, with their call-to-bind conversion doubling. Paired with the increase in bound policies, this shows better conversion outcomes, showing calls reached the right person with meaningful context, and follow-ups were more consistent. 

How to Measure This in Your Own Agency

When implementing a solution like an AI Receptionist for insurance agencies, visibility into these improvements is essential, so establish your initial baseline before making changes. This typically means tracking:

• IVR or call drop-off rate
• Average handling time 
• Human transfer rate
• Volume of calls sent to voicemail during business hours
• Repeat calls for the same issue

To properly measure impact, you need to track how these figures change over time and set a review cadence – weekly in the first month, then monthly or quarterly. When intent is captured early and routing is consistent, the numbers move quickly, and operational gains are easier to quantify. 

Human Impact and Agency Capacity

Our agency leader’s pain point for their agents is likely highly relatable:

“Salespeople would get service calls, and they’d try to help, but that keeps them away from what they’re supposed to do best: generating sales.”

As they elaborate further, “A lot of the time was spent on repeating things, sending people to the right department, or re-transferring calls. We were asking questions again and again, and sometimes it was, ‘Oh, you’ve got the wrong department.’”

That’s a poor experience for both the agents and the callers. You need agents to spend more time advising and quoting, building the relationships that drive success. Call routing automation gives them back that time, and aligns them with why they became agents. Paired with more “first-ring” answers for customers, agents face fewer interruptions and cleaner handoffs, improving their daily work experience as well.

The Lessons Learned in Call Routing Automation for Insurance Agencies

While an AI Receptionist for insurance agencies can help improve call-to-bind conversion and reduce insurance agency voicemail backlog, there’s always a learning curve involved in any new implementation. Here are the key lessons our agency leader has to share:

• Start with one clear phone line or call type, to keep scope small and any implementation snags controlled.
• Map call intents before configuring AI, to properly understand your agency’s common patterns and get better results.
• Define success metrics before going live to ensure you have full visibility into improvements.
• Schedule listening sessions and tune prompts to keep iteratively improving your results.
• Set clear escalation rules to ensure edge cases don’t fall through automated cracks.
• Involve frontline staff early to get them excited about the project, and show how AI will support them.
• Expand scope only after metrics improve versus baseline, as small, steady improvement will always outweigh fast, erratic implementations.

This is what they had to say about taking their first steps with AI for agency operations using this phased implementation approach:

“We focused on starting small, testing it, and refining along the way. Ten out of ten times, it was directionally what we wanted, there were just minor tweaks as we learned. There was never any real risk. If something didn’t work perfectly, the customer still reached our team and we could listen, learn, and adjust. The first time you flip the switch, you’re nervous. By the second, third, and fourth time, that nervousness is gone, because the confidence builds quickly. I probably overthought it at first. My advice is simple: get involved, start small, and go for it. It’s not as daunting as people think.”

Let bolt Solutions Support You in Implementing AI for Agency Operations

Given bolt Solutions also has its own agency arm, we understand that general tools rarely perform well in the unique insurance environment. That’s why we created bolt AI for Agencies, with an AI Receptionist that’s purpose-built for agency call handling automation.

That’s why we support this measurable pilot approach, which lets agencies expand over time and see clear results. It’s not about perfection; it’s about visibility and continuous improvement. If you’re keen to see how you can improve inbound call conversion as an independent agency, this easy checklist will help you get started:

• Track your baseline drop-off, talk time, transfer rate, and call-to-bind metrics
• Pick a pilot line or call type
• Map call intents and define routing destinations
• Define the information you need to capture before transferring calls
• Set escalation guardrails and call maps
• Run weekly listening sessions for further improvement
• Decide on expansion criteria before adding more lines or hours

When you have AI to handle your first call experience at scale, you can return capacity to your agents and improve the caller experience, seeing better conversion outcomes and boost agency productivity. You can make the shift to AI practical and results-focused when you start small and expand safely. And bolt Solutions is here to help you every step of the way.
If you’re ready to see what AI for agency operations can do for you, book an AI Receptionist walkthrough for your agency today.