Our bots are just flowcharts, they're not going to try to take over the world, says AA Ireland's Louise McCormack

Insurance companies have no choice but to automate so they'd better start learning how

For the insurance industry, automation is not an option, said customer lifecycle manager at AA Ireland Louise McCormack during her address to Computing's IT Leaders Summit in London on Wednesday.

"Banks thought they were sitting comfortably then companies like Revolut started taking business away from them."

Ignore a technological sea change like mobile internet or online streaming video and it can be very hard to catch up, she said, pointing to the rapid demise of the likes of household names Blockbuster and Nokia, and it's the same with automation. AA Ireland's proud 110-year history means nothing in the face of technological change, she went on: "It's a matter of get with it or get eaten up."

In August, Computing covered McCormack's success in overcoming management scepticism to introduce not just customer service chatbots but also sales bots, which are much less common and potentially more impactful. The rollout quickly proved itself, resulting in an increased quote-to-sale conversion rates and a 40 per cent decrease in agent-assisted call time in the contact centres. In addition, the web team at AA Ireland has grown as more communications are handled online.

The company has ambitions to roll out more bots and venture into more proactive RPA, where the bots can make policy changes without human intervention and also handle objections like a human salesperson, but, says McCormack, there was still a residual fear of what the technology might mean or if it might go rogue.

Part of her job is to demystify what a bot does, which is to step through a fixed process in essentially the same way as a call centre operative does when following a script. It takes information from the quote and suggests add-ons a customer might want as well as ways to reduce the initially quoted price in a way that is proven to increase sales.

"It's just a decision tree," she said. "If this, then this. The bot's not going to sit there making racist comments or trying to take over the world. It's literally just a flowchart."