In the global economy today, companies create and capture information in trillions of bytes from internal operations, transactions with customers, and suppliers. Networked sensor devices, often called the Internet of Things, like smart meters, smartphones, automobiles, machines, computer sense, create, and transfer unimaginably vast amounts of information. Humans too are generating big data available today from social media sites, consumer devices (such as personalized computers), and smartphones.
It is fair to say that the insurance industry has lagged in innovating and improving on customer service, experience, and satisfaction; the digital customer finds the experience justifiably frustrating. Customers are disappointed and dissatisfied after interacting with insurance agents due to delayed responses, unsatisfactory answers, or poor service to queries. A recent study by IBM suggested that 64% of consumers want their insurers to understand them well. Additionally, 60% of insurance executives agree their organization is lacking in CX strategy. However, fast-growing technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Predictive Analytics have the power to disrupt the insurance sector. AI is playing a vital role in changing customer experience and perceptions.
Machine learning and Artificial intelligence provide immense opportunities for the insurers who adopt these technologies effectively. These technologies essentially have the capability to transform various areas such as claims, customer service, marketing, underwriting, Straight-through processing (STP) and Fraud detection.
For an industry usually perceived as slow in adopting digital technologies, the insurance industry has attempted to keep abreast of technology driven fast-paced innovations in the recent years. Technology is a dramatically evolving industry, and digital advancement in the field of insurance is accelerating. New technologies in insurance have enhanced customer interaction experience and insurer’s operational efficiencies.
Current advances in the digital world have significantly increased the amount of data being generated and processed in real-time. Manual processes cannot be employed for managing and analyzing today's data since they are just too slow and therefore create bottlenecks, costing insurers time, money and customers. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, these manual processes can be transformed into self-learning automated processes, leading to faster and more efficient support, and multichannel integration.