On my way home from gymnastics practice with my daughter, I got in a small fender bender that I had to report to my insurance company. I put off the phone call until the end of the night because I really hate dealing with this type of thing. Insurance companies have such long waits and then the claim process itself is long, but I knew I had to take care of the task before going to bed. My insurance company is Liberty Mutual so I had no choice but to call their claims department.
When I called, I was greeted by an automated virtual assistant who stated, "Thank you for calling the claims department at Liberty Mutual. How can we help you today? You can say existing claim or press 1. New claim or press 2. Or if you are not calling about a claim today, press 3." I responded new claim, but the system didn't seem to hear me so it repeated the list again and asked me to use my keypad to respond.
This time it received my choice, and stated, "Sure a new auto claim. Reporting an auto claim is now handled online or on your smartphone. Can I send you a one-time message to get started?" While I didn't want to wait in line, I also didn't want to try to navigate an app. I just wanted to report the accident and move on so I said no. The voice assistant tried to convince me otherwise again by saying, "No, wait times can be long. Our app offers a quick way to file a claim. Can I send you a text instead?"
I said no again, and it finally said, "Okay, I’ll get you to someone who can help." Ironically, it then told me that the current wait time was only two minutes which wasn't bad at all. I listened to a couple minutes of elevator music and then Erica answered and walked me through the process.