Generative AI holds the potential to relieve CX pain points for the insurance industry. The technology can enable more proactive responses and offer more personalized claims experiences in particular, according to research by Info-Tech Research Group released Wednesday.
The essential element in any generative AI rollout is data, and insurance companies have a massive amount of data at their fingertips, according to David Tomljenovic, head of financial services industry research at Info-Tech Research Group.
This empowers the technology to solve the biggest CX pitfalls facing insurance providers.
“Typically, the insurance industry hasn't had a great reputation for innovation or customer experience,” Tomljenovic told CX Dive. “So I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit that can be solved with generative AI.”
One major focus should be responsiveness, according to Tomljenovic. Data collected by call centers and websites, from policy inquiries to claims, can be fed into AI training models to better understand how future interactions can be resolved more efficiently.
Salespeople and call center agents can also benefit from AI-powered training simulations and suggestions.
Determining the right insurance policy for a customer can be a difficult task for salespeople, but generative AI can dig into demographic information and the histories of similar customers to suggest policies that would fit that customer’s needs, Tomljenovic said.
The technology can assist call centers by routing calls to select live agents based on a caller’s emotional state, as determined by such information as search history on the insurer’s website or questions asked to a chatbot, according to Tomljenovic. This can ensure each caller reaches someone equipped to help them.
“If somebody's in a very high state of distress, you can custom train groups within your call centers to deal specifically with these customers,” Tomljenovic said. “They're used to dealing with those challenges, versus just going to a random next available call agent who may not have a lot of experience.”
The data-driven approach can be taken one step further by combining first-party data with third-party information from sources like weather reports and in-vehicle sensors to proactively reach out to customers before they file a claim, Tomljenovic said.
If there was a storm in a customer's town, insurance companies could send such a message as, “We saw that there was some really bad weather and you are located close to that. Is there anything we can do to help you?” Tomljenovic said.
“That kind of connection — your insurance company demonstrating an interest or an awareness in your circumstances and making your process easier for [you]?” Tomljenovic said. “That's all the kind of stuff that most insurance companies haven’t done.”
