Amazon’s futuristic Go stores caught the world by storm with a new vision for advanced shopping customer experiences. In fact, 7-Eleven felt the heat and recently announced their plans to build intelligent cashless stores. The IoT, AI and computer vision technologies that are serving as the foundation for these stores are the same solutions that can do more for consumers across multiple industries than simply creating an expedited shopping experience.
Executive Summary
While insurance was ahead of other industries in using behavioral economics offline, insurance is a mainly reactive service, writes Andy Clapson, data science lead of Slice Labs. In the second article of a three-part series, he notes that "break this and get paid" coverages remain important but paints a picture of a brighter future of proactive insurance made possible by combining signals and sensors with AI and behavioral science. The article builds upon Clapson's first article, in which he argued that the insurance industry has been capturing behavioral insights from customer interactions—offline—for many decades before technology simplified managing customer relationships. The industry should begin looking at the pairing of AI with behavioral science to better manage this process, he believes.What can insurers learn from Amazon, Walmart, 7-Eleven and other companies building these types of sensors- and signals-based customer experiences?
Like these billion-dollar retailers, what is required for senior insurance professionals to operate in a “smart” world is for insurers to realize that there is no way for an insurance agent to keep up with every customer movement and insurance need of their clients in today’s digital world without some help. For the most part, today’s insurance industry executive or senior insurance agent started their career in a world that was just becoming “smart.” This meant it was much easier to predict and anticipate the behaviors of the insured in a less technologically integrated world. Upskilling is a topic for another series, but it does not mean everyone is replaced by robots and AI.
Now, nearly every aspect of the B2B and B2C customer experience has a level of intelligence that has created a wealth of data about customer activity, behavior and preference. From smart speakers to smart watches, phones, appliances, outlets—you name it—sensors and signals are everywhere and, with customer permission, are measuring nearly every aspect of our lives.
