CUA improves its customer experience with Flamingo Ai

CUA is continuing to invest in customer experience (CX) and digital innovation with the extension of its virtual assistant trial in its health business.

Encouraged by the success of ‘Sam’, the virtual sales assistant for health insurance, CUA Health has signed on with Flamingo Ai to extend the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant’s use.

This follows Australia’s largest credit union also expanding the implementation of the member experience program in April. CUA piloted Confirmit’s ‘Fast Track for Contact Centres’ in CUA Direct call centres before expanding the program to include in-branch feedback.

CUA Health has been trialling Flamingo Ai’s technology live with potential health insurance customers for the past two months. Based on encouraging results, CUA Health has decided to bring forward the end of trial date and sign an extension of contract with Flamingo Ai.

Flamingo Ai is an artificial intelligence and machine learning company, providing cognitive virtual assistant technologies. ‘Sam’ guides CUA’s customers through their full health insurance purchase experience and transaction.

During the extension of the trial, CUA Health will explore opportunities to expand the health insurance pilot of Sam to new sales distribution scenarios and scope out whether there may be other future use cases for Flamingo Ai within the broader business.

Richard Martin, CUA Health national sales and marketing manager, said they have seen some excellent early results from Sam guiding members through the online purchase journey.

“Sales conversion has improved and Sam is now able to sell policies independently when appropriate to do so. A longer period of analysis, based on the extended pilot, will allow us to seek further improvements in member experience and conversion, plus test the technology in a different environment.”

Melissa Witheriff, CUA head of digital innovation, said exploration of new technologies such as AI and Machine learning are part of its digital innovation strategy.

“CUA has placed significant focus on investing in innovation and seeking out collaborative opportunities with partners. Working with the Flamingo Ai team has enabled our Health business to respond to changing consumer expectations through human centred design. By enhancing the online experience for consumers inquiring about health insurance, we’ve created an engaging digital channel to attract new members to CUA Health.”

Mark Kehoe, chief commercial officer and executive director of Flamingo, said the deployment of Flamingo’s technology, and the encouraging results they are seeing, have meant that CUA and Flamingo AI can now plan where the technology may solve problems and add value across CUA’s broader business.

“In our experience CUA have proven to be highly innovative and have their own customer’s experience being at the heart of what they do. These shared corporate values make for a strong and exciting collaboration between CUA and Flamingo Ai.”

CUA is Australia’s largest credit union, providing financial, health and insurance solutions to around 500,000 Australians.

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