ChatGPT is the “technology of the moment” – slated to bring the AI revolution to education, medicine, sales, journalism, and many more areas. And the new advanced technology has a role to play in the insurance business, too, as part of industry efforts to automate the claims process, saving companies time and money – not just on the process, but on the huge amounts companies invest in hiring and training, a result of the enormous agent turnover rate in the insurance industry.
That turnover rate – statistics show that 30% of agents quit their jobs within three months of starting, while a whopping 83% leave within three years – is, or should be, one of the prime motivators for efforts by the industry to automate the claims process. Using twin AI-based technologies – ChatGPT and AI-based image analysis – companies could significantly reduce the burden on agents, giving them more time to “breathe,” and reducing their levels of frustration, one of the main reasons agents quit, according to industry experts.
Here’s how automation using those technologies can help. ChatGPT technology could conduct an initial interview with a customer, providing them with policy suggestions. And if a customer needs to make a claim, the ChatGPT system could ask relevant questions, and write up a report that agents could use in determining how much to pay out.
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While ChatGPT is generally used with text inputs – making it perfect for claims made through an app or a website – plugins enable users to speak to ChatGPT, with the system transcribing the conversation into text. ChatGPT can then do its thing: taking the text it has been given and, using its AI magic, writing it up according to the protocol provided by the company. Once completed, the system transfers the report to an agent, who can check it, ensuring that it makes sense; ChatGPT may be intelligent, but experience shows that it needs human supervision.
Along with automatically-generated ChatGPT claim reports, customers can use company apps to upload images of their claim. Those images will be analyzed by AI-based systems that will examine them for accuracy, and determine the amount of money the claim is worth. The system, trained on the company’s specific policies and user profiles, can then compare details in the report to the images, seeking out inconsistencies or data that doesn’t match the claim – thus reducing the possibility of fraud, as well.
Working together, ChatGPT and AI-based image analysis can significantly reduce the burden on agents, who otherwise would have to manually take reports and conduct in-person inspections. Agents can then take on a “supervisory” role – checking the results of the automated claims process, and vetting the results against their experience and knowledge. By itself, that redefinition of agents’ jobs – giving them more authority and autonomy in decision-making – will help them feel better about their jobs, research shows, thus ensuring a better work experience for agents, and hopefully encouraging them to stay on the job longer.
With such a high rate of turnover, training new agents is a major expense – and financial pain point – in the insurance business. Industry surveys show that three quarters of insurance businesses “have experienced serious issues as a consequence of the time and cost required to train and support new junior and graduate hires in their workforce.” Nearly a third have had to turn away business because they didn’t have the needed staff, while one in five said that training costs were negatively impacting their cash flow.
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Automation of the claims process can, of course, make claims much more efficient for customers as well. By automating reports (via ChatGPT) and claims (via AI-based image analysis) companies can process claims much faster, and deliver settlements much more quickly than they would have with the long, drawn-out manual process of sending an agent down to take the claim, evaluating images without AI, and weeding out fraudulent claims – increasing customer satisfaction, and thus customer loyalty.
But perhaps as important for insurance companies – and the industry – is ensuring that it can attract, and keep, the talent needed to run their businesses. ChatGPT, along with AI-based image analysis, can be important factors in both those efforts.
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[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]
