Covéa powers chatbots and insurance-as-a-service with headless CMS

Covéa Insurance needed a content solution that could help consolidate multiple CMSes, integrate with their intelligent chatbot, and support the launch of their insurance-as-a-service platform.

Previously, Covéa was working with multiple content management systems (CMSes) to manage the company’s digital touchpoints. “When you have multiple CMSes, it means there’s not a single, unified way to handle content,” says Vygantas Valys, Consulting Technical Principal at Covéa Insurance. “Content managers needed to be skilled in each one of them to be able to edit the content, so there was definitely a desire to move to a single solution.”

Instead of migrating content from the existing CMSes with a major replatforming effort, Covéa’s approach is to build any new projects in Contenstack and gradually step off and retire the old CMSes. “When I introduced Contentstack to the teams, they first thought that it was just another system, another CMS to learn,” says Vygantas. “But within a week, needing very little guidance, they were already putting in code that was using Contentstack, showing just how easy it is to get started.”

To provide the instantly reactive experience their customers expect, Covéa is using a single-page application (SPA) approach.

“With a SPA, you get the data through APIs, which is either impossible or very inconvenient with a non-headless CMS,” explains Vygantas. “If you look at the older CMSes in the industry, they’ve all started upping their headless proposition. They recognize that unless they do that, they’re going to become extinct like the dinosaurs.”

Having been built with APIs from the ground up, Contentstack headless CMS is optimal for an SPA approach. As Vygantas puts it, “Using a CMS that is freshly built to be headless is more intuitive than trying to retrofit a CMS that wasn’t built for that intent.”

To provide instant answers to common customer questions, and reduce the cost of call center services, Covéa offers an intelligent chatbot on their site.

“The chatbot uses IBM Watson to respond to natural language,” says Vygantas. ”The machine learning algorithm can infer that the customer has a certain intent and can match that intent with a specific answer in Contentstack.

“We have business-users who know insurance better than any developer in the company, who can provide the answer to those queries. With Contentstack, they can go in and edit or add answers to specific questions without needing the help of a developer.”

“My experience with other CMSes is that you build a site to be perfect at launch, but once users start adding content and uploading massive pictures, the site slows down and performance goes out the window,” says Vygantas.

With Contentstack’s Image Delivery API, the Covéa team could specify parameters for any image request, he explained, “Regardless of how an image was uploaded, it’s quality or it’s format, we can manipulate it so that it’s delivered in the right way.”

With Contentstack’s Image Delivery API, the Covéa team could specify parameters for any image request, he explained, “Regardless of how an image was uploaded, it’s quality or it’s format, we can manipulate it so that it’s delivered in the right way.”

Covéa products are often provided as white-label solutions that other high-street insurance brands sell commercially. To facilitate this, Covéa is currently building an insurance-as-a-service platform.

“There is a lot of customization with white-label solutions,” says Vygantas. “You might need different logos or wording for customers, and that’s exactly where Contentstack comes in. “Some brands aim at a younger audience and might use trendy language, while others are more conservative and use more official language.

The intent is to use Contentstack to customize all the messages, fields, and inputs for each individual client without having to change the underlying Covéa platform.”

Contentstack headless CMS now powers the customer experience across channels. Including single-page applications (SPAs), chatbot, and the insurance-as-a-service platform.