Seriously? Artificial Intelligence?

I don't know about you, but when I think of artificial intelligence, I think Steven Spielberg and Arnold. That was until I saw a solution offered by Conversica, a Salesforce partner. AI is here, it's happening now and it's a lot more pervasive than you think. The rise of "robo advisers" in financial services, Ikea's "Anna" customer service rep and Alaska Airline's "Jenn" all point to the growing adoption of technology that personalizes customer experiences....at scale. One of the 5 D's of Disruption in insurance is "Dialogue." And AI is driving it. Today, in insurance, AI is used to create natural dialogue with customers, nurture those leads, prioritize them for agents and follow through as needed. Conversica, for example, gets smarter as it interacts more with customers. And, yes, it has passed the Turing test. It is particularly well-suited for B2C because the volume of interactions with prospects can be overwhelming for insurance agents. As insurers embrace omni-channel, new prospects can be created from any source, whether it be a contact center, social media or a face-to-face meeting. Not only is lead volume increasing, but it takes as many as six before an agent can get a prospect on the phone. This becomes a time and energy suck for agents; he is unable to follow through on every lead, and the quality of interactions goes down. So how are insurers and agents responding? In this webinar, Eric (Conversica) and Alex (Spring Venture Group) explain to me how AI is used to nurture and convert leads. My takeaway: AI is not just a science project. It works. It'll become more invisible to consumers. And it creates real value to both customers and employees. As Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said recently in Fortune magazine, "We’re in an AI spring. I think for every company, the revolution in data science will fundamentally change how we run our business because we’re going to have computers aiding us in how we’re interacting with our customers."