It is not often that thought leaders gather around a table, but that is exactly what the University of Essex and the insurance industry upset that Hood Group set out to do. Last month they brought together industry leaders to talk about cybersecurity, how we analyzed our data and waves in artificial intelligence.
And even though the best specialists from Microsoft, Filament, Profusion and Signal Media attended, the real buzzword of the day was 'chat-bot' as they discussed the implications that these practical automated teams had on everything from marketing to advertising. future of the insurance industry.
User experience
When considering the growth of Fintech and, interestingly, the increase in chat-bots, Henrik Nordmark, head of Data Science at Profusion, predicted that by 2020 more than 85% of the interactions of financial institutions will be made through chat. Although he is a bit controversial, he believes that artificial intelligence is currently in its most infantile stage, and that is a good thing.
Despite the capabilities to automate many of the customer's interactions with financial companies (for example, finding a quote, accessing details, reporting an error), he believed that we should let our AI systems solve it for themselves. and do not be so prescriptive. He said,
"With AI it is easy to give you a recipe book and you will learn all the systems from top to bottom, but with machine learning we need a bottom-up approach. Do not give many examples, instead let him learn. Exactly like a child. "
But for Filament, experts in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the more prescriptive the user experience, the easier it will be for a team to achieve KPIs. Phil Westcott is the CEO, he believes that by 2020, all call centers will have a front-end chat-bot to answer about 25% of customer queries, growing up to 75% as they learn the main consultations. He said:
At this time, our customers are measuring the success of our KPIs and the impact our system has on a growing world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whether we focus on the effectiveness of resolution or customer satisfaction, our bots can work in a wide range of disciplines to help productivity.
The chat-bots are adapted to people, after all, now you can do your banking while you are sitting on the train, why not SMS or Whatsapp? At this moment we are dealing with everything from questions about mortgages and how to get the best rate, to internal consultations of HR vacations and assistants to nightclubs that prefer to chat with emojis. With 34 specialists in Artificial Intelligence from IBM, Capgemini and the best academy, we are managing to reach our "internal" clients to develop their experience in artificial intelligence.
Retain customers, as well as attract them
Hood Group, specialist in the use of technology and data to produce personalized budgets, is the driving force of this meeting. Its Director of Business Development, Paul Firkins, agrees. He said:
Fintech gives us the ability to retain customers, not just to attract them. They can come to us with questions and it improves us as we want to find solutions.
Since we worked with the University of Essex, we also discovered that these data developments have a positive impact on our company's culture: artificial intelligence and data development help improve efficiency, such as automating pricing processes and reduce administrative tasks.
Our teams rely on data and innovation experiments to make decisions and recommendations where they could have previously relied on an individual's knowledge or specific process.
But for Hood Group CEO Simon Hood, I wanted to take it a step further. Speaking of the notion of what a "disruptor" is, he said:
In our industry, the insurance industry, my company is known as a disruptor simply because it uses the data provided by a client. We do not believe that this is an interruption, we believe that this is progress. And as long as we have the right methods to protect ourselves and our customers, then the insurance industry can finally dig out from the dark and start putting its users at the heart of it.
They say that information is key, but without someone to light the torch and follow, we simply would not know where to start. So I have to thank the people here today for having enlightened, and I hope this will allow us to continue on our way to put the customer first.