Steele, the William Tuttle Agency Website Assistant
Named for Steele County, our home ground. Built to explain things straight and get you to a real person.
Steele is the chat button in the corner of this website. Ask it how a kind of coverage works, what a term means, what the agency does, or how to file a claim or make a payment, and it answers in plain English using the same information published on this site. Ask it something about your policy, a price, or what you should buy, and it will explain the general picture and then hand you to a licensed agent — because those answers depend on your situation. Steele is an automated assistant, not a licensed insurance agent. For anything that matters, call (507) 451-1168.
I'm an automated assistant, not a licensed agent. For coverage or pricing, talk to an agent. That line sits at the top of every Steele conversation, and every answer Steele gives ends with: "This is general information only. For accurate information about your coverage or price, talk to a licensed agent." We built it that way on purpose.
What Steele can do
Explain insurance the way this website does: what a deductible is, how Minnesota no-fault works, what a water-backup endorsement does, why roofs drive home premiums, what a landscaper's policy usually has to cover. Answer questions about the agency — hours, location, claims, payments, carriers. Point you to the page that goes deeper. And, its main job, collect a name and a good phone number so a licensed agent can call you, now or at a time you pick.
What Steele will not do
- Tell you whether you are covered. It can explain what a kind of policy typically does; whether yours does is a question for a licensed agent reading your policy.
- Give a price, quote, premium, or discount. Those come from a licensed agent after real questions, not from a chat window.
- Recommend a coverage, limit, deductible, or carrier. That is advice, and Steele is not licensed to give it.
- Decide anything about your own policy or claim. It will explain the general picture and then hand you to an agent.
- Collect sensitive information. Steele will not take Social Security numbers, license numbers, card numbers, or dates of birth, and asks you not to share them. A licensed agent collects anything needed by phone.
- Talk about anything other than insurance and this agency. It is a limited assistant by design.
How it works, plainly
When you send a message, sensitive numbers are removed first. Off-topic requests are declined. Then Steele finds the pages on this website that answer the question and writes a short reply from them — general information only. If the question is about your own situation, a price, a policy change, fault, or health, the reply explains the general picture and defers the specific to a licensed agent. Every reply is checked before it is shown: anything that reads as a decision about your coverage, a dollar figure, a recommendation, or a fault finding is replaced with a referral to an agent. Conversations are logged so the agency has a record of what was said. See our Privacy Policy.
Why we built it this way
An insurance agency is responsible for what it tells people. A chatbot that improvises coverage answers is a liability to you and to us. Steele is built to be genuinely useful about how insurance works and genuinely honest about where its usefulness ends — which is the moment the answer depends on you.