By replacing rigid IVR with Voice AI, Aspire decoupled business growth from staffing costs—effectively doubling its service capacity.
In the competitive landscape of affordable insurance, the ability to scale customer service without sacrificing the personal touch is the ultimate differentiating factor. For Aspire General Insurance, a tech-forward provider servicing a diverse base of policyholders and brokers, the challenge was about meeting customers exactly where they were: on the phone, looking for immediate answers, and speaking both English and Spanish.
Aspire’s results at a glance…
- 53% automation rate for Spanish-language conversations
- 43% automation rate for English-language conversations
- 37,000+ interactions automated per month
- Doubled contact center capacity without increasing headcount
By leveraging boost.ai’s conversational AI platform, Aspire launched a voice AI Agent in 2024 that now handles the equivalent workload of a human contact center team, proving that “tech-forward” is much more a bottom-line strategy than a buzzword.
Bridging the chat-to-voice gap
Aspire’s journey into AI was largely a response to rapid, post-pandemic growth. As COVID-19 subsided, the company saw a dramatic surge in customers and incoming calls. This growth put immediate pressure on the contact center, leading to rising wait times, particularly in the Customer Service department.
The situation was further complicated when their legacy live chat system vendor went out of business. Forced to find a new solution, Aspire turned to boost.ai in 2021 to help stabilize their chat channel. While the resulting AI Agent helped manage the initial surge, the team soon realized that the real equalization needed to happen on the phone lines. The cost of hiring enough employees to keep pace with their rising customer base was becoming unsustainable.
“We were looking for ways that we could scale smartly,” explains Cedric Nicholson, Vice President of Customer Experience at Aspire. “And not just put more bodies in seats, but how can we leverage technology to help our customers? We wanted to take Aspire into the future.”
The “before” state was a common one in the insurance industry: a standard touchtone IVR that lacked the sophistication to handle complex queries. With call volumes growing and human agents bogged down by repetitive questions, such as payment statuses and policy lookups, Aspire needed a solution that could scale as quickly as their business.
A native-speaker approach to Voice AI
Building on the foundation of their successful chat agent, Aspire officially launched their voice AI Agent in 2023 to tackle the high volume on their phone lines directly. When designing the solution, they didn’t want a robotic experience; they wanted it to feel relatable to their specific demographic. This was crucial for their Spanish-speaking customers, where many AI solutions rely on “textbook” translations that fail to capture the nuances of everyday conversations.
Rather than relying on generic translation tools, Rick Magdaleno, Aspire’s Business System Analyst, and his team took a hands-on approach to training the AI via the boost.ai platform.
“We partnered with our internal native Spanish speakers and asked, ‘As a native speaker, how would you actually say this?’ I can get Google translations, but it’s going to be too formal. We wanted to relate to our clients.” – Rick Magdaleno, Business System Analyst, Aspire General Insurance
By reusing many of the 500+ intents already perfected in their chat agent, the team ensured brand consistency and a rapid rollout. They implemented a secure, read-only database integration via API calls, allowing the voice AI Agent to provide real-time policy updates and payment status directly to the caller. This allowed the agent to handle the high-volume, low-complexity questions that previously tied up the human lines.
The power of inclusivity through automation
The results were immediate. While the voice AI Agent delivers a strong 45% YTD automation rate in English, that metric has soared to 53% in Spanish interactions.
This success represents a fundamental shift in Aspire’s business operations. Currently, the voice agent handles approximately 37,000 interactions per month. When compared to the human team’s monthly volume of roughly 40,000 calls, the AI is effectively doubling the company’s capacity without a single additional hire.
“If I wanted to deflect 40% of those interactions, I would have to double my staff to do what the voice agent is doing for us. The highest cost in any business is people, and now we don’t have to scale up hiring because the technology is doing that work for us.” – Cedric Nicholson, VP of Customer Experience, Aspire General Insurance
Clearing the way for high-value work
One of the most profound outcomes of the project has been the change in day-to-day life for Aspire’s human agents. By removing the repetitive inquiries and other operational noise, customer service reps are now empowered to handle complex cases that require genuine empathy and specialized judgment.
In an industry where customer service and claims can be challenging, Aspire’s voice AI Agent acts as a buffer, ensuring that when a human enters the interaction, they are dealing with a customer who truly needs their expertise. The feedback loop reflects this: “No news is good news,” Cedric notes. Because the voice agent is friendly, accurate and provides a fail-safe to transfer to a human if things get tricky, customer frustration is minimized. Human agents are happier because their work is more meaningful, and customers are happier because they get answers in seconds, not minutes.
Jumping into the AI pool
Encouraged by their success, Aspire is now exploring deeper integrations, specifically around First Notice of Loss (FNOL). The goal is to allow customers to initiate claim submission forms directly through the voice AI agent, streamlining the most critical touchpoint in the insurance journey.
For other companies wary of AI touching their phone lines, Cedric’s advice is simple: "I would say, just jump in the pool. With boost.ai, we’ve found the flexibility to learn quickly and pivot. It’s worked marvelously for us because we know the support and documentation are there to catch us."
By combining technical agility with a human-first approach to customer service, Aspire has proven that automation is about building a smarter, more inclusive, and more scalable business.
