The elements of the AI chatbot solution that particularly impressed the Visionary Award jury were its targeted deployment, collaborative co-creation process, instant customer support, and measurable positive results. ‘This Visionary Award is given in recognition of the inspiration and pioneering work in the insurance industry,’ read the jury’s statement at the Microsoft Visionary Award ceremony.

The AI chatbot addresses a very clear need: reducing the time and effort sales employees invest in responding to questions on tariffs and insurance benefits. Currently, it takes an average of five to ten minutes to deal with each query. The company wants to outsource this time-consuming and error-prone aspect of daily operations to an AI solution. In a joint pilot project, Zühlke and UNIQA developed an AI chatbot that excels in the laborious task of searching through documents. Using a chat interface with natural language processing, it quickly finds the correct answers in the tariff documents and highlights relevant sections, allowing employees to verify the accuracy of provided information.
 
The result? Depending on the chat model used, a response time of just two seconds was achieved, with a minimal error rate. 80% of pilot users found the chatbot helpful and would recommend it to their colleagues. Following the successful pilot phase, planning is currently underway for implementation at UNIQA. For the jury, this best-practice example was considered worthy of the coveted Visionary Award.

The Microsoft Visionary Award has been given in recognition of outstanding innovation in digitalisation since 2022.

Photo-Copyright: (c) Rainer Fehringer