An innovative new colleague has arrived at Allstate Insurance, one that can be in many places at the same time. Amelia, a market-leading artificial intelligence platform created by New York-based technology company IPsoft, now assists call centre staff to improve the overall customer experience.

Allstate deployed Amelia as a test in September and, to date, has used the platform in more than 3 million customer conversations. With an instant message interface, Amelia leads call center employees through step-by-step procedures to help answer a variety of customer questions, including policy and policyholder information.

“Amelia is quickly becoming an important component of our customer service strategy,” said Allstate Senior Vice President Carla Zuniga. “She provides our call center personnel with the information and procedures they need to address our customers’ questions and concerns.”

Amelia’s machine learning capability allows her to improve her ability to answer customer questions by “listening” to interactions she doesn’t understand and with Allstate experts’ help quickly expanding her knowledge.

This AI colleague knows more than 40 industry-specific topics and, because of access to Amelia, newer representatives need less time for training. Amelia can also help keep all employees in compliance with industry regulations. For instance, call centre reps are not allowed to process address changes for policyholders in certain states. In this situation, Amelia can provide the information on the proper procedure, and the employee can quickly hand off the session to a licensed colleague.

“We congratulate Allstate for their pioneering use of AI with their first Amelia deployment,” said IPsoft’s CEO Chetan Dube. “Customer service is a strategic imperative for Allstate, and Amelia possesses intelligent and interactive capabilities that are helping the company achieve its support goals. We look forward to our continued partnership and even greater successes.”