How This Insurance Agency is Using AI to Capture Every Call

If your agency still relies on phone trees, overworked staff, and maybe voicemail to catch stragglers, you’re not alone. However, the failure to manage inbound calls leads to long wait times and high IVR drop-off – a technical way to say “frustrated customers who never call back.” Insurance is a market where every lead counts, and you can’t afford to let your potential new business die in the queue. 

Here’s where AI for insurance agencies can really shine. But we don’t expect you to just take our word for it. One agency testing bolt Solution’s AI receptionist let us look behind the scenes at what is needed to make the most of this technology, and most importantly, what it delivers. 

Phone Challenges Every Insurance Agency Faces

Phone systems are a persistent pain point for many agencies, and the frustrations will be very familiar to anyone managing operations or, indeed, fielding customer calls during peak hours:

• High Call Volumes, Limited Staff Availability: Even generally well-staffed agencies hit peak call volumes and multiple lines ringing. Yet your staff numbers are constant. Customer service reps are helping other customers, producers are in meetings or dealing with existing customers – in short, everyone’s busy. New callers are stuck waiting, and 60% of them never leave a message.
• Voicemail Becomes Default: If nobody can answer, voicemail takes over. While some customers leave a message, others fall out right there. Even if they do, your response time lags. After just one hour, your likelihood of connecting with a lead drops 10x. If you’re waiting days, by the time you do respond, the lead has moved on.
• IVR System Struggles: Phone trees are supposed to route calls efficiently, but often frustrate callers instead. A massive 61% believe IVRs make for a poor experience. High IVR drop-off is common, and your leads drop with it.

All this adds up to potential quotes that never get written. You’re losing business, not because of poor service or tight pricing, but because your potential customers never reached you in the first place. This was the challenge facing our case study customer. 

Solving These Challenges with AI for Insurance Agencies

But there’s good news ahead. By implementing an AI Receptionist to handle those calls and ensure no dropped connections, they reduced their IVR drop-off by 50%, and their handle times reduced twofold.

How AI Receptionists for Insurance Agencies Work

The concept behind insurance call automation is simple: AI handles the predictable intake steps, so people can put their focus elsewhere. 

When a call comes in, the AI Receptionist greets the caller immediately. No hold music, or multiple menu options. It can do this naturally and conversationally, putting the customer at ease while gathering further information. A sample greeting shared with us was, “Hello, and thank you for calling X Insurance. This call may be monitored or recorded for quality purposes. My name is Amy. May I have your first name, please?” Much more pleasant and personal than a distorted music symphony and just as you think the call has connected to a real person, the dreaded “Your call is important to us. For X, press 1…”

The AI then asks structured questions to qualify the request: Is it a new quote? Policy change? Claim? The conversation adapts based on answers, and can capture details such as:

• Coverage type
• Property address
• Vehicle information

These questions are all in insurance-appropriate language. Equipped with the full picture, the AI Receptionist routes the call onward, marking urgent matters for escalation. No unanswered calls, no lost information. It eliminates voicemail reliance, and with it, queue abandonment reduces. Agents don’t have to play phone tag or piece together information from incomplete voicemails. 

The Real Agency Story

Our partner agency turned to bolt’s AI Receptionist for all the familiar reasons: call volumes were climbing, and staff were feeling overwhelmed. Customers complained about wait times, and it was clear that a solution was needed. Hiring more people wasn’t a realistic option. 

So Amy, their AI Receptionist, was trialed on their calls, looking to reduce IVR drop-off and implement call handling automation. Initial reactions were cautious, with the agency worried about mistakes or further customer frustration, not to mention skepticism about conversational nuance, but the results spoke for themselves:

• Drop-Off Reduction: They reduced IVR drop-off by 50%.
• Faster Call Handling: Customers who previously would have abandoned the call after waiting too long were now being greeted and qualified within seconds, reducing handle times significantly.
• More Quote-Ready Leads: Call-to-bind ratios doubled.
• More Balanced Workloads:  Not only were there measurable improvements in the call cycle, but the pre-gathered quote data saved agents considerable time. 

Remember, these aren’t theoretical metrics. This was data from a real agency, with real customers, operating in production. Capturing every inbound call with AI is not only feasible, but delivers measurable results. 

Why Phones are the Best First AI Use Case for AI in Insurance

For those just starting to explore AI for insurance agencies, phone systems are a strong starting point, for several reasons:

• Low Disruption: Implementing an AI Receptionist can be compartmentalized and doesn’t impact your AMS or quote cycle. It simply layers on the existing phone system to handle intake. 
• Immediate Visibility: Phone systems generate clear, measurable data, letting you see the impact of insurance call automation clearly. 
• Fastest Value Path: Some AI tools need training data and workflow design, but an AI Receptionist can be quickly configured and deployed, generating almost immediate results.
• Helping, Not Replacing: An AI Receptionist simplifies agents’ work, rather than eliminating jobs, needing less repetitive intake time without impacting core workflows. 

How Agencies Can Pilot Call Handling Automation

If you’re keen to explore insurance call automation for your own agency, a focused pilot that can quickly showcase value is ideal.

Choose the first call types to automate. Ideally, these should be high-volume, with reasonable predictability – like new quote requests or policy inquiries. They are easy to script, and provide fast feedback. 

Then, set staff expectations, explaining how the AI works, what it is handling, and how it supports them. Address their concerns early, and keep them involved in scripting and workflows. 

Once the solution is rolled out, track early KPIs, like drop-off rates, call volumes handled, qualified leads forwarded, and customer feedback. This will help you trace whether the AI Receptionist is delivering on its promise, and where adjustments would benefit you. Review call recordings regularly, adjust prompts, add new question paths, and optimize routing rules based on actual customer interactions. 

Typically, a pilot should run 30–60 days, with enough time to gather data, adjust, and build confidence. Agencies that take this approach see rapid improvements in reducing IVR drop-off and quoting capacity.

How bolt Solutions Helps Improve the Insurance Agency Customer Experience

bolt Solutions is here to offer the technology, onboarding support, and performance visibility agencies need to deploy insurance call automation successfully. 

The bolt AI Receptionist is built specifically for insurance conversations with an agent-first design that simplifies their work without replacing them. It understands native insurance language, policy types, and common questions. You spend less time training and more time capturing value.

Configurable interviews let you customize the question flow to match your agency perfectly, while in-depth governance and call-review tools ensure total quality control. As bolt’s AI Receptionist integrates with existing phone systems, deployment is straightforward, with a low learning curve.

And, as you’ve seen, the results are proven: decreased IVR abandonment, increased quoting capacity, and an improved customer experience. 

Getting Started: Your Takeaways

Now that you know how agencies use AI to answer calls, it’s time to see what AI for insurance agencies can do for your own agency. To recap, you can get started by:

• Assessing your current missed-call rate
• Reviewing average wait times and voicemail reliance
• Identifying top inbound call types worth automating
• Setting goals for drop-off reduction and quoting volume
• Choosing a small-scope pilot for the first 30–60 days
• Tracking your weekly performance and optimizing scripts further

Capturing every call with potential customers is one of the fastest ways you can grow without adding headcount. Our partner agency’s results showcase what’s possible with insurance call automation. If you’re ready to see how bolt’s AI Receptionist can help your agency improve its responsiveness, customer satisfaction, and quoting volume, reach out to us today. We’re always here to help.