We attended the Claims Tech Conference on Thursday 19^th September at the QE11, Westminster and had a great day listening to UK Claims Directors share their wisdom and provide insight into the current situation and future for the claims industry.

The Conference provided some valuable insight into how technology will play a big part in our future, however a big part that came from the day was that we still need to focus on the human element of service we provide to our customer as there will always be a use and a need for the human touch.

BT employ Dr Nicola Millard as their head of customer insight and futures. She is a qualified psychologist and her role is the development of technology with their customer communications team but also keeping the customer touch as human as possible. She used the example of live chat which is a massive want from customers now when communicating with businesses (usage growth of 45% in 2015 to 65% in 2017). Businesses are trying to automate this, however live chat ‘robots’ cannot understand such things as British sarcasm! Trying to teach technology to detect this level of language is why humans will always be needed.

Currently, insurers are beginning to look more towards technology to triage claims without any human interface. LV believe by the end of 2019 80% of their total loss claims can be identified and settled at FNOL stage via the use of technology. Chat bots are currently still in testing period and we have a lot to learn about them. Badly designed chat bots may leave customers stranded and at a dead end with no avenue to a real person, or a problem being solved. This then leads to poor customer service and a bad reputation such as, “Thanks, I didn’t quite get that. Please say 1 for yes and 2 for no”, god forbid.

An interesting fact of the day: it is believed that people who are born in 2018 or after may never need to learn to drive due to driver-less cars! What?! It’s on its way, we’re living it people!

A big take home of the day was that despite all of the talk about technology, businesses also need to focus on the human element of service provided to the customer.

This is no new news to us; we will always be ‘People Made, Service Driven’