An insurance sales team in Tamil Nadu ran a Tamil AI calling campaign to about 1,500 contacts to find people interested in a policy conversation. Most connected calls ended with the person marked interested, and the team's advisors picked up from there. The campaign also taught three lessons that apply to any regional-language outreach: calls are shorter than you expect, the opening line decides everything, and retries must be on. This post shares what happened, without identifying the team.
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The setup
- List: about 1,500 contacts from the team's own sources.
- Language: Tamil, with English words where people naturally use them.
- Goal: introduce the product, ask if the person wants to speak to an advisor, and capture interest.
- Output: qualified / not interested / call back, with the recording and a summary.
What the numbers showed
Rounded, from the campaign report:
- Most connected calls were marked qualified: people who said yes to an advisor call.
- The median call lasted about 30 seconds. Fewer than one in ten went past a minute.
- Many people hung up right after the greeting. They decided in the first sentence.
- On one day, about half the calls never connected. The telephony provider's call-status updates stopped, and the list also had DND-registered numbers, invalid numbers and landlines.
Lesson 1: the opening line is the whole call
When the median call is 30 seconds, the first sentence carries the campaign. What worked better:
- Say who is calling and why in one sentence, in Tamil.
- Mention the one benefit that matters to this audience, not the product's full name.
- Ask a yes/no question within the first 10 seconds.
Weak: a long greeting, the company's full name, then the policy name. Better: "Vanakkam {{name}}, {{company}}-la irundhu oru automated call. Unga family-kku {{benefit}} pathi oru advisor kitta pesa virumbureengala?"
Lesson 2: turn retries on
In this campaign retries were off, so every contact that didn't connect on that one bad day was never called again. Numbers that are busy, switched off or unreachable at 11 am are often reachable at 6 pm. Set retries by outcome (no-answer and busy, twice, a few hours apart) as the default. See why half your campaign calls fail.
Lesson 3: clean the list before you call
- Remove landlines, obviously invalid numbers and duplicates.
- Respect DND preferences for promotional calls; see TRAI and DND rules.
- Keep the calling window to reasonable hours.
Lesson 4: short calls are fine if the handoff works
A 30-second call that ends with "yes, have an advisor call me" is a success. Make sure every "interested" contact reaches an advisor the same day, and that the advisor sees the summary and the recording. An AI outreach campaign is only as good as the follow-up.
Staying within the rules
Insurance sales calls must follow the insurer's guidelines and IRDAI's rules on solicitation. Practically:
- The AI introduces and qualifies; licensed advisors give advice and sell.
- No promises of returns or claims outcomes.
- Identify the caller and say the call is automated.
- Honour "don't call me again" immediately.
For renewals and premium reminders, which follow a different script, see voice AI for insurance premium collection.
Cost
On Edesy, calls are billed per started minute at Rs 4-6 per minute depending on your prepaid top-up, with unanswered calls free. At a 30-second median, most answered calls cost Rs 4-6.
Run your own Tamil campaign
Create a free account, write a one-sentence opening in Tamil, and test it on 50 contacts before the full list. For campaign settings, see the 10,000-contact campaign playbook.