Improve Customer Engagement by Injecting AI into the Insurance Buying Journey

February 15, 2020
Improve Customer Engagement by Injecting AI into the Insurance Buying Journey

The insurance industry is subject to high rates of churn. Customers are constantly hunting for the companies and policies that offer the best prices and value. This puts pressure on companies to find ways to save cost and maintain or increase revenue.

Companies have turned to automation to work out more efficient, cost-effective processes. However, there’s traditionally been a certain amount of human intervention into these automated processes; a human’s knowledge and understanding are required to accomplish what automation can’t. Plus, there’s still a need to understand the customer’s journey and the pain points along that path in order to help reduce churn.

Enter AI. By putting AI and machine learning to work, insurers can better understand how customers feel about their interactions, then take the right steps to ensure their satisfaction and keep their business.

Putting Innovation in the Conversation
At the Prolifics Innovation Center, we have developed an AI-assisted workflow solution. It leverages sentiment analysis to determine how satisfied a customer is with their insurance experience and, in turn, how likely they may be to seek out other options. Insurers can combine this intelligence with other information, such as where the customer lives, their income level, and their policy terms, to create a 360-degree customer view.

The solution ingests a customer’s phone conversation or text conversation with a chatbot. The AI processes this data and performs sentiment analysis. Using these data points, the workflow rates the emotional content of the interaction in real time. Is it positive, neutral, or negative? While some words may seem positive or negative in a vacuum, it takes real, nuanced understanding of how humans communicate to understand the true emotional content. (Ever heard of sarcasm?) That’s what AI and machine learning can do.

This deep insight into the customer helps guide a workflow that dictates what measures a live agent can take to retain their business.

But the solution doesn’t stop there. The AI can assist humans in decision-making just as much as humans assist automation. When a customer interaction with a chatbot is rated poorly in terms of emotional sentiment, the AI can bring a live agent into the conversation, rather than requiring human observation to identify when to step in. This helps make better use of live agents’ time and effort. Insurers can apply their people power in more value-adding ways.

In short, the solution brings humans and automation together to do what they do best. As a result, the customer benefits from the best possible experience, and the company retains their business.

Power AI with the Right Data and the Right Expertise
The success rate of any artificial intelligence technology depends on the quality of the data that fuels it. The Prolifics Innovation Center’s expertise across the data spectrum means that we can help ensure that data quality and governance drive accurate, meaningful interactions in AI and machine learning solutions. We also understand all the other pillars that support an automation solution, like robotic process automation, APIs, and the cloud. This knowledge helps us create powerful and successful AI solutions that take all the right factors into account.

Where much of the focus in AI-assisted technologies is on building products, the industry needs to look at its business processes as a whole to see how and where technology can help it improve value. Success comes when comprehensive solutions solve problems from end to end.

While insurance is one of the first use cases we’re tackling with the AI-assisted workflow solution, our goal is to expand the solution to other industries, with a special eye on financial services and healthcare.

About the Prolifics Innovation Center
The Prolifics Innovation Center leverages our decades of experience to build next-generation solutions like our AI-assisted workflow.

We strive to provide the leadership and vision that keep organizations competitive. Our experts work closely with our customers to incorporate feedback and tailor our solutions to real-world business needs.

If you would like to learn more about our AI-assisted workflow solution or become part of our Innovation Center, please email us at solutions@prolificsdev.wpengine.com.