by JESSICA ROGERS, Atlas World Group
It’s Monday morning and your inbox is full, phone is ringing, and you have a meeting that starts in 5…4…3…2…1… We’ve all been there. If only the photos attached to those emails could name and categorize themselves, and if technology could guide the customer in taking usable photos. And if our systems were intelligent—artificially intelligent, these tasks would take seconds, and not hours.
This concept isn’t an if, it’s when. These things are possible now. We’ve all seen sci-fi movies about robots conquering the world, but this is different. Because in everyday use cases, like claims management, AI can give our repair firms and claims teams the time to focus on the fine details, the human elements, that can’t be automated. Like calling a customer to listen and truly understand their frustrations. To uncover why they are so protective about their dining room table, the table we discovered was built by their great-grandfather.
AI isn’t so daunting when we think about how its tools can be programmed to expedite repetitive, clerical tasks or quickly analyze data to provide meaningful insights about past results. Results that could range from the average costs of materials and labor to repair a dining room table to the average amount paid on a table lamp. It can help everyone in our membership make data-driven decisions about how to get the most value from our resources like time, knowledge and expertise, and the rising costs of materials. Now, I can’t promise that data analysis is as exciting as the sci-fi movie about robots, but if we can save time and money while creating a better customer experience, we’re positioning ourselves for success.
AI doesn’t end with the automation of internal processes. It can facilitate basic communications. In a very rudimentary form, it’s currently used in one of our claims management tools to automatically send communications when a claim is submitted and received. And if it can recognize a claim submission and send a designated reply, what else can it recognize and respond to? Can AI send messages outlining what types of photos are helpful and give guidelines to the customer before they take and send them? These are very basic examples, as I’m not yet an expert. But hopefully, this helps illustrate the importance of adopting new technology when it is available and provides value. We all remember the set of encyclopedias that sat at the bottom of a bookshelf, usually gifted by an aunt or grandparent. Next, remember how quickly they became outdated. We couldn’t just add pages in them as the world changed and we gained more knowledge. Instead, we started using faster and more accurate resources, like Google.
Learning how we can integrate AI into our processes, and figuring out how to get there isn’t quite as easy as clicking the Google “search” button. But learning about this new technology and how it can help us in meeting today’s challenges in cargo claims management is a good first step. We will all benefit if we work together to navigate these uncharted waters.
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