At this year’s Digital Workforce Summit (DWS) in New York City, users will have the opportunity to learn how AI is transforming the insurance sector and increasing the satisfaction of the insurance workforce.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) optimizes enterprise systems through automation and augmentation. This is what makes AI a perfect match for modern insurance sector workers, who must contend with executing a torrent of complex processes within a heavily regulated and increasingly competitive environment.
It’s no wonder why AI investments within insurance have boomed in recent years. According to one recent report, AI investments in the US insurance sector increased 83.3% last year and are expected to hit $2.6 billion by 2025. AI allows insurance companies to operate more efficiently while subsequently bolstering productivity. However, these systems can also directly contribute to employee satisfaction by automating rote tasks so workers can emphasize uniquely human (i.e. more rewarding) qualities like people skills, negotiation and creative problem solving.
In this post, we will review some of the ways that AI systems will complement the human insurance workforce to make them more productive and their jobs more rewarding.
Automate the Routine
Automation by machines is a centuries-old initiative, which has benefitted human workers by liberating them from arduous, repetitive and often dull physical tasks. In the modern era, automation initiatives have manifested in the form of mature AI-guided systems which execute high-volume transactional and cognitive tasks with machine efficiency.
For example, Amelia, IPsoft’s industry-leading Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA), automates user engagements at scale through her Natural Language Interface (NLI) and secure backend integrations. This benefits employees because she allows customers to resolve issues with little-to-no human intermediation. For simple resolutions, a customer need only ask Amelia, “When is my monthly premium due?” or “How much would it be to add my daughter onto my auto insurance policy?” and leave expert human agents to handle individualized customer needs.
Even when she’s not wholly automating customer engagements, Amelia can augment the work of human agents to make them more productive. She can, for example, gather information from customers before a human engagement begins (e.g., “What is your name and policy number?” or “In a few words, describe what we can help you with today.”) and sort customers to the right expert, such as an agent involved with inputting claims as opposed to one who can assist with mobile app issues. This allows human agents to avoid repetitive information-gathering tasks and helps customers resolve their issues faster.
Similarly, Amelia can work with agents as a whisper agent, such as she does currently with an major insurer's customer service division, where she assists more than 75% of call center employees, averaging more than 250,000 conversations monthly.
Automate the Complex
AI systems can provide both customer-service representatives and agents in the field with comprehensive on-demand access to relevant information and processes. This allows employees to lean on technologies to shoulder what psychologists refer to as the “cognitive load,” i.e., the brain resources dedicated to storing and processing working memory.
As stated above, the insurance industry is highly regulated. It’s asking a lot for a single employee to be completely up-to-date on all relevant company policies and procedures – not to mention the evolving patchwork of state and federal regulations. A conversational AI like Amelia or our autonomic backbone Amelia AIOps (formerly 1Desk) can provide workers with easy access to relevant information and step-by-step procedures, which also can be instantly tweaked at scale by an insurer as compliance requirements change. This augmented system allows expert agents to use their time more efficiently, and allows new hires to begin contributing starting on their first day.
The potential of AI to automate, augment and optimize processes within the insurance industry will be one of many topics discussed at this year’s Digital Workforce Summit (DWS) in New York City. DWS attendees will have the opportunity to attend industry-specific breakouts led by executives who have already used AI to transform their companies. Attendance is free, but spaces are filling up fast.