Case Study
Aflac simplifies and automates email processing of 3000+ emails a week
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Completely automated email processes from intake to resolution
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Improved email response times with Natural Language Processing (NLP) and AI
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Bridged the gap between technology and business teams, eliminating lengthy manual processes for agents
“It’s no longer about working on technology-centric things, it’s about focusing on customer-centric things”
The Business Issue
Aflac is a leading supplemental insurance provider in the United States and Japan, providing financial protection to over 50 million people. With the goal of enhancing contact center operations, the insurance agency sought a modernized, multi-channel solution to improve response times, automate processes, and simplify service across popular service channels, including email.
For email alone, Aflac fielded thousands of requests every week. These requests pointed to seven separate inboxes that required manual classification and assignment of work across Aflac’s contact center. With the volume of email requests continuing to surge due to a rapidly shifting global environment, Aflac needed to improve efficiency and reduce costs while delivering exceptional service.
The Solution
In its effort to transform and reinvent the way it connects with customers, agents, and policy holders, Aflac devised its “One Digital Aflac” vision, with a distinct focus around customer-centricity. As part of this vision, Aflac leveraged AI-powered email bot technology within its Pega Customer Service™ application to improve overall email productivity, contain more inquires, and resolve customers’ issues faster.
With the help of the email bot’s built-in Natural Language Processing (NLP) that understands customer context and sentiment in each email, Aflac has dramatically accelerated response time through automation. The insurance provider now is able to automatically classify and assign emails to cases and can even use email bot to respond to less complex inquiries that don’t require an agent interaction. Since implementing the email bot, Aflac has automatically processed and responded to over 30% of incoming inquiries – without the need for a human touch. This has quickly simplified service across Aflac’s contact center, all while accelerating resolution for its customers.
The Results
Since implementing Pega’s email bot, Aflac has:
- Processed 3000+ emails per week
- Automatically processed and responded to 30% of incoming emails (straight-through) – without the need of an agent
- Accelerated response of remaining 70% of emails with AI-generated suggestions for agents