Upgrading AI proving tougher for insurers, research finds

Businesses and corporations are increasingly interested in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to their operations, but see themselves falling behind in implementing AI, according to a research survey report from Talkdesk with relevance for insurtech.

Insurance has a “heightened challenge of being able to get organizational life and culture driving towards the adoption and embracing of AI,” said Antonio Gonzalez, senior manager, industries and AI research at Talkdesk.

Nancy Roche

Talkdesk surveyed 500 customer experience professionals from the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the U.K., with about 7% of respondents from the financial services sector including insurance. 85% of these professionals said it’s important to leverage AI and automation, while 35% of these professionals said their organizations are advanced in their application of AI, down from 41% in last year’s edition of the survey. 

44% of respondents said customer experience agents have skills necessary to leverage AI technology, an increase from 37% last year. However, according to Talkdesk, respondents still report a lack of AI professionals who can build, train and maintain AI solutions. Particularly in insurance, there is more personnel turnover, according to Ilya Filipov, director of financial services industry strategy, Talkdesk.

“Insurance is a complex topic and the job is very difficult relative to the pay,” he says. “No one calls insurance companies because they're happy. Customers may be screaming on the phone about exclusions on their commercial business interruption coverage. The agent has to explain the contract to them and at the same time, calm them down. AI enables them to take the script that they've been trained to use and calm the customer, potentially even come to a resolution.” 

Insurance companies need buy-in from leadership to push AI efforts, adds Filipov. “AI is not typically managed from the bottom up,” he says. “Companies that are successful implementing AI within their digital customer experience have strong executive level sponsorship.”

The value of cloud computing resources can help get that C-level executive buy-in and get past typical stumbling blocks to AI implementation, according to Gonzalez. 

Contact center infrastructure can be a pain point for customer experience professionals looking to implement advanced AI solutions, and moving contact centers to cloud infrastructure makes leveraging AI easier, Talkdesk’s research states. 75% of survey respondents said AI technology makes customer data more secure and 50% said their current contact center architecture can only support less effective AI solutions.