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O'Connor Insurance Associates provides personal and commercial coverage in North Carolina. When Michelle O'Connor, President of O'Connor Insurance, first heard about AI receptionists, she was intrigued but cautious. Her agency with 11 employees was handling over 700 calls per month, and the constant interruptions were killing productivity.
We were getting disrupted constantly (...) My team couldn't focus on insurance consultations because they were always picking up the phone just to transfer calls to someone else.
The math was sobering. With each call taking an average of 5 minutes to handle (including the distraction time of stopping work, taking the call, and refocusing), the agency was losing 58+ hours of productive time every month. At $25 per hour, that translated to $1,450 in direct costs - not counting the opportunity cost of interrupted work.
Before finding Sonant, Michelle had tested another AI phone solution that is positioned for the financial services industry. The experience was disastrous.
This experience left Michelle skeptical about AI solutions, but the pain of constant interruptions kept her searching for alternatives.
It was so bad I couldn't deploy it (...). Every time I would get it down the path where I thought I could go ahead and deploy it, then I would have a hiccup. Their customer service was "email us and we'll figure out a time to get back to you", which was typically another day.
Michelle discovered Sonant’s AI receptionist technology at an insurance conference. The voice was smooth and natural. The demo worked. And the Sonant team promised hands-on support.
Sonant delivered:
What sold me was how human the voice felt - and how responsive the Sonant team was compared to the last company.
While the financial ROI was impressive, Michelle found the operational benefits equally valuable:
Quinn provides somebody on my team that doesn't take PTO. Her kid's not sick. She doesn't have a down day. Having an employee on your team - having a way to deploy something that you have a human doing and have AI do it and not have any instability in the process or the system - is very valuable.
Initially, Michelle worried about customer reactions to an AI receptionist. The team prepared scripts to help explain the technology, and while some customers were resistant at first, the majority quickly adapted.
Her advice to other agencies considering AI receptionists? Focus on the fundamentals.
We have plenty of customers who say, "That is awesome. She sounds exactly like a human. She worked so well," (...) We equate her to being the human version of just the 'push the button' automated attendant service.
Curious how O’Connor Insurance handled customer hesitation? Read the full story on our blog.
Six months later, Michelle has become one of Sonant's biggest advocates, regularly fielding questions from other agents about the technology.
The most important thing Quinn does for us is the most simplistic thing she does for us - answer the phone and do it well. You want that experience to be consistent, reliable, and repeatable, which Quinn can provide.
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