AI in Insurance: Innovations Transforming Customer Experience

By Emad Fahmy, Systems Engineering Manager Middle East at NETSCOUT

Insurance customers typically require easy-to-use online services and fast solutions. For the most part, they expect instant insurance quotes, prompt processing of claims and 24/7 customer support. To meet this demand, insurance companies are increasingly developing personalized digital services that simplify customer interactions. A superior customer experience can be achieved with data analysis, which is often powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and supported by modern, cloud-based insurance applications.

How Data Analytics is Transforming Insurance and Unlocking Customer Insights?

High-quality, curated data is key to providing high levels of service to customers. Today, the insurance sector is experiencing a paradigm shift driven by the adoption of data analytics to better understand customer behaviour, preferences, and risks. Advanced algorithms are adept at extracting information from diverse sources like social media, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and various communication platforms including mobile, thus enabling the creation of tailored insurance products and services that seamlessly transition between online and offline interactions.

For instance, usage-based insurance (UBI) applications use data analysis from telematics, usually collected via mobile devices. This data offers an understanding of specific driving behaviours, enabling insurers to tailor auto insurance policies according to these patterns. The UBI app on the customer’s smartphone analyses comprehensive telematics data, covering aspects such as vehicle speed, acceleration, breaking behaviours and location, for precise risk assessment.

Without easy access to high-quality, comprehensible data, insurers run the risk of creating “black boxes” from which they cannot gain insight.

A Quick Tour of AI in the Insurance Industry

A study by McKinsey projects that AI will revolutionize every aspect of the insurance industry by 2030. However, the use of artificial intelligence in insurers’ applications is not necessarily new, as these examples show:

• Geico’s virtual assistant, Kate: In 2017, Geico introduced an AI-powered virtual assistant named Kate. Kate assists customers with filing claims and answering policy-related questions, significantly improving customer satisfaction, and reducing processing times.
• AXA’s AI-powered chatbots: AXA is an insurer that has implemented AI-powered chatbots since 2018 to enhance customer support and streamline policy inquiries. These chatbots can handle a wide range of customer queries, improving response times and reducing the workload on human agents.

By integrating AI-based applications, insurance companies can automate repetitive functions and provide quicker, more efficient services, such as claims processing and policy management. This technological integration reduces manual inaccuracies and has the potential to enrich customer satisfaction, monitor it through automated learning mechanisms, and bolster customer loyalty.

Modernizing Insurance for the Digital Age

Established insurance companies looking to enhance customer experience must modernize their legacy applications for cloud environments, ensuring scalability and flexibility. This is critical for custom and legacy applications to effectively manage peak loads without compromising performance during high-traffic periods. Rearchitecting applications to leverage microservices architecture, for example, can improve customer experience by making applications more modular, scalable, and resilient, ultimately improving application functionality. By leveraging cloud-native services like serverless computing and containerization, insurers can boost application performance and reliability, thereby optimizing customer experience.

Despite implementing robust strategies and cutting-edge technology, insurers may still encounter challenges related to application performance and service interruptions. Understanding the availability and performance of applications, as well as having efficient troubleshooting capabilities within the IT organization, is critical to improve the customer experience.

NETSCOUT nGenius Enterprise Performance Management offers real-time visibility and comprehensive insights derived from packet-level data, enhancing network performance and digital services. This approach transforms the way insurance companies plan, deliver, integrate, test and deploy their services and applications. Ultimately, safeguarding service performance and availability is the key to enhancing customer experience for insurance companies.