Generali Poland: 'Leon' AI Chatbot Handles 97% of Customer Inquiries, Saves 120 Hours/Month

Title

Generali Poland: 'Leon' AI Chatbot Handles 97% of Customer Inquiries, Saves 120 Hours/Month

Content

Generali Poland deployed "Leon," an AI virtual assistant built with IBM watsonx Assistant, that now handles more than 97% of customer conversations automatically, saves around 120 consultant hours per month, and processes roughly 6,500 conversations monthly. "We were looking for a solution that would provide an innovative, but also a comprehensive way of communication. Our goal was to offer our customers genuinely useful support and a unique digital experience," said Sebastian Michałowski, User Experience Development and Innovation Director at Generali Poland. The deployment was driven by a volume problem with a quality ceiling. As customer numbers grew, Generali Poland's consultants were spending most of their time on simple, repetitive queries — straightforward claims and policy changes — leaving little room for the complex cases where human judgment added the most value. The insurer wanted a system that could answer common questions fast while letting consultants focus on nuanced work. Generali Poland partnered with consulting and technology firm TUATARA, which built the solution in a month. The chatbot — named Leon after the lion in Generali's logo — went live on the Generali Poland website and was immediately accessible 24/7. Within one month of launch, Leon was registering 2.5 times more customer interactions than the prior human-chat baseline. Technically, Leon is built with action.bot from TUATARA, which sits on top of IBM watsonx Assistant and uses IBM's deep learning, machine learning, and natural language processing models trained on data from Generali Poland's contact center. The system can automatically answer more than 120 common support scenarios and FAQs spanning claims, damages, and new policies; it also reacts to user behavior in real time — advising on different insurance products and helping customers fill in application forms. When a query exceeds its scope, Leon seamlessly hands the conversation to a human agent. At operational scale, the chatbot handles more than 97% of customer conversations without human redirection, manages around 6,500 conversations per month, and shortens consultants' working time by roughly one hour per day — freeing them from routine work to focus on more nuanced cases. Looking ahead, Generali Poland is working with TUATARA to integrate Leon with more internal systems and expand its knowledge base — adding capabilities such as checking a customer's claims status or policy number — with the longer-term aim of making Leon the single point of support for common queries across the insurer's business. "Our plans for the future are very ambitious," Michałowski said. "We strive for a fully self-service bot that will be a fast, mobile and interactive version of the customer portal."