What were once cutting-edge science films and stories have become anachronisms. The captain of the spaceship talking to the computer and hearing an answer, the hacker crunching numbers in an instant, these were once the distant future – and now they are old news. Old news, but their impact is being felt as automation takes its hold on the marketplace. Insurance companies in particular are watching their processes and services take jumps lightyears ahead of the past.
Reduction of Menial Tasks
Automation, or as it is more technically known, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), has very little to do with beeping and whirring droids, and is much closer to a hyper-fast calculator. By virtue of its speed and accuracy and provided all data is input correctly, RPA is freeing up insurance agents and other employees to work on more critical tasks. Menial work such as filing and looking up policies can be done automatically. Agents used to daydream about leaving all of the drudgery behind and just focusing on the things that required skill, charm and thinking. That day has arrived.
Instant Analysis and Reporting
RPA is able to help employees further by giving them information that they might not have considered before. These automated systems are not just crunching numbers, they are analyzing them, looking for patterns and printing up reports whenever needed. Vast swaths of data cannot be analyzed by one bored technician, but an RPA system does it instantly.
By allowing employees to see the big picture, they are able to recognize what is going on faster and better than any numbers expert from years ago. As employees learn to think in terms of the RPA system’s capabilities, they can partner better with it and ask the right questions in order to produce better answers.
Speed and Specificity for Clients
The insurance process has become fast and better thanks to RPA. Rather than a man or woman having to take every detail over the phone, look it up by hand, calculate it personally, consult with the appropriate parties and then get back with the next step, an automated system can do all of this in seconds. Customers can now take out policies that are perfectly tailored to their needs without ever needing to speak to a salesperson.
This allows the salesperson to focus on more complex cases and come up with creative new ideas. Claims have become a matter of inputting data and allowing the system to spit out the necessary action points. In most cases, this works perfectly, once again freeing up the human agents to step in only when the human touch is definitely needed.