Low Code No Code (LCNC) software platforms are designed to help individuals with limited or no prior coding experience create applications and experiences through intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces (often referred to as Graphical User Interfaces, or GUI’s).

One should leverage the past to help understand the present, and to help better predict and create that future.

As the role of digital communications grows, true omnichannel capabilities become more crucial to provide a satisfying, unified customer experience.

Healthcare companies need to know their members’ and patients’ current status for social determinants of health (SDOH) or those factors will block healthcare delivery and negatively affect health (medical and behavioral) outcomes.

Ever notice how some engagement processes just seem to be littered with friction? What if you could whip up a solution, as tailored as a custom-made suit, to tackle those issues head-on?

Most of the time customers are going through the claim process after some kind of accident or emergency, whether it is personal, at their place of work, or affecting their entire community. Customers start the insurance claim process with anxiety and fear of the unknown. The insurance claims experience can add additional stress to a harrowing occurrence, or it can be something that eases a customer’s anxiety to better allow them to work through damage to their vehicle, property, or injury to themselves or an employee.

Last month, my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. I had planned a few special activities throughout the day – a massage for her, dinner at our favorite restaurant – when nature decided we should celebrate a bit differently. The day before our anniversary, a raging storm knocked out our power and kept us off the grid for nearly 48 hours. Our reservations were all canceled.

Customer Experience Automation™ (CXA) is the application of an AI-powered platform that is purpose-built to automate, scale, and remove the friction from the interactions between a company and its customers; from the beginning of a conversation through its resolution. CXA brings together knowledge work automation and conversation automation, to not only intelligently interact with customers, but also interface with backend systems to complete all necessary tasks.

In a dazzling display of innovation and excellence, the 5th IMPACT CAB event unfolded on August 9th, marking a day of inspiration, recognition, and celebration.

First Notice of Loss (FNOL) is the first step of collecting information in an initial report from policyholders who have experienced a loss, and is an important element of an insurance carrier’s relationship with their policyholders.

When an employee leaves a company, it triggers a long list of administrative duties for both the employee leaving and the company.

A few weeks back I was speaking with a colleague who had just bought a new laptop. Unsurprisingly, a lot had changed about laptops since his last purchase. They’re slimmer and faster, the screens brighter, the battery life longer. They hold more data, can connect to your wireless headphones with ease, and built-in disc drives are long gone. Most everything about a laptop purchased today is better than one purchased in 2016.

It’s not unusual that when the topic of AI comes up, so do the terms Deep Learning and Machine Learning. What’s the difference? Are they interchangeable?

Though the year has only just started, it has already been a busy one for me personally. A few long international flights to kick off the calendar year provided moments of insight and inspiration, and a lot of time to ponder them.

Conversational AI is everywhere nowadays, from your bank’s chatbot, Siri, or Google Assistant on your phone, to stores or even utility companies. Everyone is trying to maximize their service capacity and speed by beginning and managing as many conversations as possible using AI. Insurance companies have the same opportunity as providers of products and services in that building a great customer experience increasingly influences retention. But, also like other service industries, they are under constant pressure to reduce expenses and gain maximum value from their most valuable assets, their people.

Columnar data files are the dominant form used for exchanging information across industries like FMCG, Shipping, Finance, Insurance and others. The row-column format creates an understandable and recognized mechanism for sharing information which also happens to be easy-to-digest for digital processing. A lot of financial decisions and estimations are made off of information stored in rows and columns and colloquially the files are referred to as CSV’s (comma separated values). However, Microsoft Excel has quickly become the industry standard for visually processing CSV’s and it provides added user functionality like embedded tables, and the concept of “Sheets” where information can be logically partitioned.

There’s been a significant amount of buzz and excitement around generative AI and ChatGPT lately, and for good reason. Not only is it a potentially transformative technology for just about every industry under the sun, it’s one that is rapidly opening up to a grow There’s been a significant amount of buzz and excitement around

For those who are not familiar, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated system that uses technology-enabled triggers to triage customers within a phone support pipeline. The concept of IVR itself dates back to 1962, and throughout the last two decades, IVR technology has become a staple in complex professional industries like healthcare, telecoms, finance, insurance, and education.

Tucked within a busy month of business travel and board meetings, I had the opportunity to host an industry dinner in one of my favorite international cities — London. It was a shorter visit than I typically prefer to make, just three days, but I still managed to see an old friend for dinner and take in a few of the city’s historical gems. I visited the uniquely odd Lloyd’s of London building, with pipes and plumbing exposed all along the outside of its walls to ensure that no pesky leak or backup ever destroys the precious treasures within. I even got a backstage glimpse of rock n’ roll history — original accident insurance policies for all four Beatles and manager Brian Epstein were on display at the Lloyd's Lab.

Ushur and HCL group have launched a partnership to bring customer-centric solutions and automation to the insurance industry, and give carriers the customer experience capabilities their digital-native policyholders are demanding every day. Insurance companies can leverage the partnership to optimize for customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and time to value.

It’s important for carriers to be able to reach all of their customers - both personal and commercial - to alert them when their insured property and possessions are in the predicted path of a hurricane, tornado, or hailstorm. Insurance carriers already think about how to get organizationally prepared

Learn how Ushur overcame the challenges and benefits of using AI to extract information from unstructured emails developing an ontology-guided data extraction pipeline that accurately extracts and stores information from hundreds of emails.

There have been many a lively conversation between Ushur and external companies who are replacing their aging person-to-person texting solution or contemplating introducing one for the first time, and we decided to turn it into a piece on digital transformation and the channels enterprises choose to support and why.

Today, we are announcing our $50M Series C funding. Having established a great base of marquee customers in Insurance and Healthcare, built a world-class team, expanded our products portfolio and established a healthy go-to-market momentum, I can confidently say that we are well on our way to reach escape velocity

Ushur, the leading no-code digital customer experience automation platform, and Sutherland, a global innovator in bringing digital transformation to the front- and back-office, are now working in a strategic partnership.

Sutherland's digital transformation blueprint is built on a three-pronged approach it sometimes calls the “3 ‘A’s of digital transformation”: Analyze, Automate, and Augment. Sutherland helps clients analyze historic and real-time data, automate the processes best fit for reinvention, and augment the capabilities of both human and digital workers. All of this is done in a human-centric way.

People who first hear about the Ushur platform often ask what all can one do with the full suite of its capabilities. For better or for worse, people often have to deal with the answer that one can do pretty much anything. It’s a platform designed to let non-technical users build customer experiences that can be run once, twice, or a million times, and that leverage the pre-built capabilities that make those experiences cutting-edge and representative of a modern consumers experience.

Part of Ushur’s core culture as a company is a collective yearning to solve problems. We serve a core set of customers that tend to share common needs when it comes to customer engagement, but the way we’ve built and shaped our platform is rooted in a much higher level of analysis of the way people and commerce work.p

The biggest conference in Insurance is here, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Ushur is hosting many exciting events at InsureTech Connect 2022 in Las Vegas to help Insurers transform their customer experience with AI and automation.Tired of sunk costs, long timelines and digitization projects that just don’t deliver? Ushur is announcing Invisible App 2.0 - an automated, app-like experience to digitally self-service customers and partners, without the overhead of developing and maintaining traditional apps and infrastructure. Our VP of Product, Michael Fisher, is launching Invisible App 2.0 on the Expo Hall demo stage. Join us live to see its impact through demos and customer stories.

The reason the answer is so complex is that most companies simply don’t understand what the full lifecycle of customer engagement entails. The collective approach is and has long been, largely transactional. Companies look at transactional points, design and construct transactional experiences, and support all of them with transactional tools. To me, the world “interaction” itself implies a one-and-done attitude. As a result, most companies miss the mark when it comes to the holistic customer journey. It often happens in painfully obvious and avoidable ways that create a confrontational relationship between provider and consumer.

What claim experience would you design if you could build an end-to-end policyholder or claimant journey with responsive conversational abilities and the ability to deploy that workflow across any channel? Thanks to the just-announced partnership with Guidewire, you can deploy that journey with just a few clicks.

Digital transformation is something every modern company talks about, thinks about, and worries about, all of the time. The reason for that worry, largely, is that most organizations approach the task backward. 

If you’ve been reading my co-founder Simha Sadasiva’s blog lately, you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with the concept of micro-engagements already. In the backdrop of the fact that Ushur was just officially issued the patent (US20170193557A1) on micro-engagements, I thought I would talk a little bit about the underlying technological strategy that makes this approach to Customer Experience Automation both unique and possible.

Ushur is pleased to announce that it has won three 2022 awards from Comparably! The Ushur leadership and Human Resources teams take immense pride in making the company a great place for our employees, and Comparably has reaffirmed that by choosing Ushur as the winner of awards for: Best CEOs for Women, Best CEOs for Diversity, and Best Leadership Teams.

There is a school of thought that incumbent carriers, even those that are industry leaders, are at a disadvantage to be digital innovation leaders, because people with more time spent within the industry are less inclined to see the opportunities for change. Yet what I have learned from my own insurance journey, is that success and longevity in the industry requires change to be foundational in the company culture.

Intelligent Automation is the practice of using predictive machine learning technologies to automate a variety of business processes. Using intelligent automation to avoid human intervention, streamline decision-making, and offer scale in real-time can completely change operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. These technologies center around Artificial Intelligence (AI) but also Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Business Process Management (BPM). They help business leaders design solutions that altogether result in Intelligent Automation solutions across numerous industries.

The world of self-service has truly exploded over the past decade, but I would argue that to date, there has not been a customer experience that demonstrates the value of automation more clearly and universally than the one we have at the ATM.

Hurricane season is fast approaching and 2022 is predicted to be as busy as 2021, which was the 3rd most active on record. Insurance carriers are already rallying their operations to get ready for repeat waves of new claim reports that span catastrophic losses to minor damage.

Imagine automating up to 25% of business processes, and allowing human teams to shift to deeper problem-solving and customer relations tasks. Then picture reducing the operational cost to insurers by up to 20% through that automation and digitization strategy alone. Imagine reducing inbound phone calls by more than 30%, simply by providing customers with proactive status updates.

Call deflection is reducing the number of inbound calls that require human service agents (call centers, helpdesks) by offering alternative digital self-service channels. The primary goal of call deflection is to reduce the amount of time customers spend waiting for an answer to their question.

Why is customer satisfaction the most important metric to keep in mind when evaluating and designing automation solutions? To explore that question and more, Ushur invites Maureen Flemming, Program Vice President, Intelligent Process Automation at IDC to break down the current market for Customer Experience Automation.

Intelligent Process Automation is the next evolution for automation technology, where robotic process automation (RPA), natural language processing (NLP), and artificial intelligence (AI) intersect and become something better.

Ushur is attending the most influential week in healthcare and it’s taking place in Orlando, Florida (also digitally) at HIMSS22. HIMSS is finally back in person and we’re so excited to meet everyone there! While we are running a booth with excellent gifts, and also managing a must-attend event at Topgolf for select attendees, we’re most excited to connect you to our industry experts and show you our world-premiere Customer Experience Automation (CXA) platform. If you can’t make the event, we do also have a digital booth with useful content for you to view and download.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has seen tremendous growth across all sectors. A PWC survey, conducted midway through 2021, found that 86% of more than 1,000 executives said that AI would be a “mainstream technology” at their company. More than half cited the Covid pandemic as the reason for the acceleration.

This past year for Ushur was one marked by growth across every corner of the organization. Our team tripled in size, and our revenue tripled in kind. We also tripled the number of verticals we serve, as well as our execution footprint.

Channel hopping is a phenomenon common to the insurance world that is defined by the behavior of customers, claimants, or anyone else contacting a carrier, starting their interactions within one channel (e.g. SMS, email, phone, or a portal), and then leaving that channel, to “hop” into another channel mid-completion.

After having to host last year’s event virtually, ITC Vegas 2021 was filled with energy, excitement, and plenty of opportunities to share expertise about the direction that insurance is heading technologically. As a refresher, or for those who didn’t know,InsureTech Connect is the world’s largest gathering of insurance leaders and innovators and it occurs annually - this year it was hosted at Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas.

In this three-part series of blog posts, we address why open enrollment is so important to employees, their employers, and health insurance plans. Unfortunately it is also a process where employees may delay or avoid critical steps that are intended to maximize their use of their benefits for better health outcomes and lower out-of-pocket expenses. In this third post, we will discuss the ways that employees can choose and change their Primary Care Physician (PCP) and reap the benefits from working within their in-network choices for both their standard and specialized care. In the first post, we addressed the basic details of open enrollment and the differing benefits needed for different age groups, particularly people approaching 26 and 65. And in our second post, we talked about the information that is gathered during open enrollment, specifically Health Risk Assessments (HRA) and how it is used to inform employee care management for this critically important task.

In this three-part series of blog posts, we address why open enrollment is so important to employees, their employers, and health plans. And yet it is an event that many employees overlook, do not understand, and are prone to avoid for as long as possible. In this second post, we will discuss the information that is gathered during open enrollment and its importance to guide employee care management. In the first post, we addressed the basic details of open enrollment and the differing benefits needed for different age groups, particularly people approaching age 26 and 65. And in the third post, we will discuss how employees can choose and change their Primary Care Physician (PCP) and why this is a key component for them to gain the maximum value when working within their network choices.

Ushur, creator of the no-code AI-powered Customer Experience Automation™ platform that seamlessly automates policyholder, claimant, member, agent, broker, and provider interactions, announces its membership with Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry.

Health plans in the post-Affordable Care Act world know that the more people who sign up for coverage during open enrollment, the wider the risk pool is. Similarly, having more employees sign up for the group benefits offered by an employer during open enrollment spreads the cost of the insurance over a larger more diverse group of people and allows insurance premiums to balance out.

It’s one of the most often discussed yet least understood components of any successful organization. Our industry, in particular, is obsessed with the notion of culture—and not without cause. In the early days of a new company, when the greatest tool available is attitude, culture can be the difference between success and failure. It’s what allows small startups to punch way above their weight and make a name for themselves. It’s what allows them to add talent and build a team in an ultra-competitive hiring landscape.

The promise of the new era of digital communications lies in reducing customers' queries, increasing their satisfaction, and all before they ask. In fact, when customers reach out to a company, they expect a customized and responsive experience that answers their questions with minimal effort. When customers are unable to get timely and relevant outcomes, their satisfaction drops. Ushur’s Silent Listener makes sure no customer conversation gets left behind.

Automation and AI might be the two hottest technologies in the world right now. With adoption comes conversation, and lots of it. Our space is noisy, filled to the brim with intellectuality, excitement, hope, and big ideas. It can be challenging to stand out amongst the crowd. Predictably, the question founders and CEOs in our industry hear most often is, “How are you different?”

In 2018, the property and casualty industry was paid $1.6 trillion dollars in premiums. In 2020, during the heart of the pandemic accompanied by multiple environmental disasters like wildfires and flooding, insurance carriers were slammed with thousands of claims. And each progressive year promises more P&C insurance claims as environmental conditions worsen and newer risks grow, like cybersecurity. And yet, when customers are going through the trauma of these disasters, working on rebuilding their lives, the one thing that keeps them with their carrier is their satisfaction with the service.

Insurance is a service industry, and the customer’s claim experience can drive their decision to renew or change carriers, including for workers’ compensation. The customer is entrusting their insurance carrier to both take care of their injured employee and protect their company from financial harm. The challenge is that each worker’s compensation claim is both unique and multi-dimensional. A claims adjuster can sometimes feel like they are expected to be a juggler or even a magician to always keep all the goals in view.

When people think of automation, and in particular the ROI of automation, they typically think that the return part of that equation is driven primarily by savings realized by cutting costs or faster processing times.

The digital transformation of P&C insurance is crucial for its success in a world where customers are increasingly looking to their mobile, digital devices for products and services that meet their needs. Between the large numbers of new technologies that are being created and used daily and the growing number of new customers who unconsciously use these technologies in their daily lives, P&C insurance digital capabilities are growing in importance and viability. Anyone who doubts the competitive pressure just needs to look at the pace of new insurtechs and other solution providers jumping into the race.

When embarking on a digital transformation journey, insurance companies need to think, act, and expect differently than they have before, especially when we recognize the recent and ever increasing need to shift to digital. The days of choosing to create value in only one piece of the project management triangle, either customer experience, operational effectiveness, or employee engagement, are gone. Now, agility coupled with the right solution enables a carrier to improve all three critical parts of the whole.

When embarking on a digital transformation journey, insurance companies need to think, act, and expect differently than they have in the past. In this second edition of our three-part digital transformation blog series, we focus on how operational effectiveness gains are possible, while also improving customer experience and elevating employee engagement.

When embarking on a digital transformation journey, insurance companies need to think, act, and expect differently than they have in the past. Otherwise, they will find themselves literally in an insanity loop, doing the same thing over and over and yet expecting a different outcome. Gone are the days where a project management triangle mindset requires choosing where to create value – customer experience or operational effectiveness or employee engagement. Agility coupled with the right solution enables a carrier to improve all three critical dimensions at the same time. How is that possible? Read on – this is the first edition of our three-part blog series – focused on customer experience.

Health plan member expectations are changing, and members demand more. They want better communication from their health insurance payer, timely answers to their questions, and seamless engagement through digital channels. Members are consumers whose service expectations have been dramatically shifted by the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Amazon. Gone are the days of expecting members to communicate through snail mail or endure long hold times on the phone. Members expect options and self-service, and health plans can exceed those expectations with the digital customer engagement solution.

Have you ever wished that it was easier to interact with an insurance carrier? We all know that waiting on hold for what can feel like forever and scouring the Internet for answers to seemingly basic questions are major hurdles that can cause most customers to approach simple tasks, such as filing an insurance claim, with caution and dread. With Ushur’s omni-channel Virtual Customer Assistant (VCA) powered by Conversational AI, insurance carriers can automate servicing for their end users in their channel of preference. That’s why Ushur has added WhatsApp, a popular communication tool used by 2 billion people worldwide, as a communication channel.

The insurance policy is a contractual agreement that stipulates, in exchange for payment, a person or business will receive reimbursement or financial protection against losses from an insurance company. In other words, if the required premium is paid, a customer will be paid for covered damage, injury, illness or loss.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA), as a category, has been on a tear lately. Gartner, after its initial reluctance to even recognize RPA as a category, has now ranked it as the fastest growing segment of the technology sector for the past couple of years. Astronomical valuations, record-breaking funding rounds and indeed some slick marketing by leading RPA vendors have done a great job obscuring some of the cautionary tales, especially for insurance carriers to hear before they jump headfirst into implementing RPA within their organization. Carriers who fail to fully understand what RPA is and, more importantly, what RPA is not, may find themselves creating new problems of greater consequence. This includes surprises about the gaps in the perceived intelligent automation capability of RPA that can only be addressed by finding and introducing additional solutions.

No company sets out to have a boring, tedious, or worst, toxic environment. Yet we see and experience these workplaces all around us. Why? Because building a great workplace culture is hard! At Ushur, we don't claim to have cracked the code on how to build the best possible workplace culture, but we do have something special going on here. From intellectually stimulating research work at the bleeding edge of conversational AI to go-to-market campaigns that are focused on blitzscaling...and everything in between, Ushur is taking a decidedly unique approach to building a successful, high growth business where people are valued for not just their work, but also who they are.

Truth be told, the insurance customer experience has probably been in a state of transformation for as long as the insurance industry has existed. Transformation by definition is “a thorough or dramatic change”. And change is driven by – one, some or all – shifts in consumer preferences, marketplace competition, demographics, legislation, economic trends, and technology.

Software plays an important and ever increasing role in our daily lives and we do not even realize it most of the time. You may be surprised to learn that it took less code to send a person to the moon than it does to power the smartphones we use every day. Designing and writing the code that creates software is more than a discipline - it is a difficult skill that a small percentage of the population

Today is another milestone for all of us at Ushur, for our customers and for our partners. I’m thrilled to announce that just three months after our over-subscribed $25M Series B round, led by Third Point Ventures, 8VC and Pentland Ventures, we have extended our Series B investment by securing another $5M in funding. More importantly, we now have two more stalwarts of the investment world as partners in this journey of ours: Aflac Ventures joins us as a strategic investor and Iron Pillar will help us accelerate our customer and talent acquisition.

Insurance is purchased with the carrier promising to pay should a covered loss occur. Claims service is core to an insurance company keeping their promise, being there when their customers need them most. Yet ValuePenguin’s study reveals that among the top four U.S. insurance carriers, over 50% of all complaints focused on claims. This confirms that despite the steady advancement of technology intended to improve the claim process, consistently meeting customer expectations remains a challenge.

Sometimes what was thought to be old can be new again—or at least extendable and reusable. MVP can be realized by resurfacing your “legacy” POC experience. An insurance professional probably does not go through a day without digital transformation being part of a conversation, or referenced in an email or an article. While newer members of the industry might believe the importance and impact of technology on the insurance journey is more recent, it’s actually been a critical component all along. Even the Agile concept of Minimum Viable Product—or—MVP isn’t as entirely new as some might think at first glance.

Insurtech continues to be an emerging market and one investors are pouring money into, based on both its impact and potential. Across the first three quarters of 2020 there were 274 insurtech deals globally totalling $5.1B. These companies are on a mission to inject innovation and advanced technology into an industry ripe for a change from its traditional ways of doing business. Technology has been deployed into every stage of the insurance lifecycle. From getting quotes to filing claims, technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way insurance carriers, brokers, companies, and consumers do business. This blog will look into some of the ways insurance companies are using technology to add value for their customers and distribution partners, and explore some of the ways technology is set to reshape the insurance industry in 2021.

Insurance is one sector of the financial services industry which has faced challenges as it embraced the digital revolution - first by choice and then by necessity following the pandemic lockdown. Cloud computing has taken hold, but some carriers are early in exploring solutions like artificial intelligence and machine learning.Insurance companies are eager to find technologies that cannot just improve but differentiate their overall customer experience, ideally while also reducing operational expense. One specific area insurance companies are looking at closely is claims service and process automation or as Ushur likes to call it, the future of insurance.

Today when we speak about digital transformation within insurance, it can sound like it is something relatively new. In actuality, technology has been playing a pivotal role in the insurance industry for decades. I can still remember the shift from processing claims entirely on paper to using mainframe applications. Seemingly overnight we redesigned our processes, organizations, and evolved how we interacted with our customers.

Insurance companies are focused more than ever on optimizing the experience they provide to customers. And if digital interactions were not at the top of the list of capabilities needed at the beginning of 2020, it became everyone’s #1 priority when the worldwide pandemic shutdown began. As this year draws to a close, we can all see that customer expectations have permanently shifted, with an Amazon-like experience quickly becoming table stakes for the insurance industry.

I’m thrilled to share that Ushur has secured $25 million in Series B funding! Today, we welcomed new partners to our team led by Third Point Ventures, with our friends at 8VC joining as well. This new investment is more than just a vote of confidence. It’s a testament to the talented team we have assembled, the excellence of the technology platform we’ve created, and our dedication to our happy customers.

10 months into the longest year on record, and you’ve probably learned a thing or two about Zoom calls. Mute yourself so your colleagues can’t hear the tantrum your sequestered child is throwing. Unmute yourself so your two minutes of pithy analysis don’t accidentally go straight to your cat.

It’s understandable that the focus is on capabilities when evaluating an automation vendor - you need to know first and foremost if their product can truly meet your organization’s needs. The conversation usually pivots to cost - vendor software licensing, potential professional services needed, in addition to talent allocation from your own company.

In the first of this three-part series, we explore what Information Security (InfoSec) is, what it isn’t, and which questions will help enterprise customers discern responsible intelligent automation vendors from those susceptible to data piracy.

Buzzwords and jargon abound when it comes to enterprise technology. Remember synergy? How about big data? No-code automation and citizen developers may seem equally amorphous at first blush.

With a history of success introducing digitally disruptive technologies into insurance, healthcare and financial services markets around the globe, Kate Gingras, JD, joins Ushur, the customer engagement automation platform, as the Vice President of Strategic Accounts.

On August 26th, Ushur, an AI-powered automation platform, hosted its inaugural Innovation Awards ceremony, where individuals and companies were honored for their leadership in driving digital transformation initiatives in the insurance industry. Three awards went to two individuals and one company, respectively, who are “building a more compassionate world through their exemplary development and deployment of innovative AI solutions,” according to Simha Sadasiva, CEO of Ushur.

We were going to wind you up with a loooong intro. But then we figured, it’s been an interminable summer, it’s abominably hot, and even superheroes like yourselves could use a little straightforward good news. For the enterprises that have battled sky-high call volumes, hundreds of thousands of emails, heat-mad customers, and agents collapsing from fatigue in their bedroom-turned-everything, we are here with cool reinforcements.

Picture two rival health insurance providers with similar policies. There’s only one difference between them. When open enrollment season comes around, the first trots out the same old enrollment game plan: recruitment teams making cold calls, educational events, a website for prospects to register interest, and a limited post-enrollment plan. The other embraces and deploys new AI-powered software to automate outreach, appointment reminders and onboarding on an enterprise-scale, with scalable customer retention capabilities baked in.

COVID-19 turned everyday life upside down, and everyday work too. Yet work goes on. Companies need to connect with their customers as much as ever, maybe more. The question is how. We recently hosted a webinar on just this topic—how businesses are using conversational AI to engage customers during the COVID crisis, and just as importantly, why. For those who couldn’t join, here are some of the highlights.

If you groaned, you know how frustrating and demoralizing this experience can be. After getting rerouted multiple times, customers, who’ve come to expect instant service, are placed in queues that feel like an eternity with delightful Muzak, growing more irate by the minute. Harried agents are disparaged for something out of their control. It’s a recipe for losing morale and consumers.

If you work in finance, insurance, or healthcare, you likely don’t think of yourself as a technologist. This is despite the fact that half of all major capital investment since the 1980s has gone to information technology adoption. According to a 2020 report by the World Economic Forum, 85% of executives at global financial institutions are already using some form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to power their business. 77% of those surveyed expect AI will become essential to their businesses within 2 years. Healthcare and insurance see similar trends.

If you’ve ever been burned by a chatbot, we’ve got good news: just because you’ve met one doesn’t mean you’ve met them all. The truth is chatbot solutions span a wide range of functionalities and use cases. Many businesses tend to start with a bottom-of-the-barrel model to get a feel for how chatbots might benefit them. It’s a fair idea in theory. Inevitably though, they end up with disappointing ROI and write off the whole breed as unhelpful.

“Give me a place to stand, and with a lever, I will move the whole world,” the Greek scientist Archimedes supposedly said. Silicon Valley is full of Archimedeans. We love to talk about leverage. Leveraging our differentiators. Leveraging investments in technology and people. But not all levers are equal. As an executive, you have short levers that move a little. You have long ones that move a lot. And it’s harder than you might think to tell the difference.

In the shipping and logistics industry, the phrase “last mile” describes the final leg of the delivery journey: the step right before a package arrives at your door. The last mile is famously the most expensive and inefficient part of the delivery process. It’s frustrating for consumers too—if you’ve ever cursed a package for spending a week “in transit” after leaving the warehouse, or waited to sign for a delivery that never came—you’ve felt the strain of the last mile.

The SOC 2 Type 2 Certification Proves Ushur’s Airtight Security Practices. Today we’re adding another medal to the wall: our shiny new SOC 2 Type 2 certification. Ta-dah! SOC 2 reports are how service providers demonstrate that they securely store customer data, and the Type 2 assessment is one of the most stringent audits out there. Compliance isn’t the most exciting topic on the planet—we know. Still, completing this milestone definitely calls for recognition.

B2C enterprises everywhere are completely swamped with customer emails. Even the world’s most efficient support agent can’t wade through the torrent of customer emails pouring into bulk inboxes quickly enough to respond in a timely manner. All of these emails have to be reviewed and routed to the correct employee, who then must read the email again and finally write a reply. It’s no wonder agents everywhere are desperately wondering how to respond to emails faster.

Mobile customer engagement rates looking low? You might be a bad texter. We’re back with another installment in our SMS tips and bad habits series! To recap, in our last post we covered text messaging best practices around SMS compliance and writing clear, actionable copy.

Don’t launch a SMS campaign before brushing up on these text messaging best practices. Bad texters: we all know them. Maybe we are them. Bad texters write long, rambling messages. They annoy you with too many emojis or too much punctuation. Or, they’re completely toneless, leaving you wondering if they’re mad. They blow up your phone. They take days to respond… or don’t at all.

We are proud to announce that we’ve officially launched the Ushur’s Managed Package for Salesforce, now available in the Salesforce AppExchange. Now you can use Artificial Intelligence to automate customer engagements over email, web, SMS, and more, integrating directly within the Salesforce interface. This allows customer support and operations teams to deliver powerful self-service tools across the digital channels your customers are engaging on.

We get a lot of questions about whether conversational AI lives up to its promise. And we get it: on a personal level, one frustrating experience with an all-too-helpful chatbot or virtual assistant can be enough to turn you off. So it’s hard to imagine those conversational platforms in play at an enterprise level, especially if you’re dealing with sensitive customer information.

Let’s just get it out there: Customer Contact Week in Nashville is...a lot. A lot to see. A lot of people to talk to. You can’t meet with everyone. You have to prioritize. That’s why we’ve created this quick quiz to help you decide whether Ushur belongs on your shortlist of must-see vendors.

Intelligent automation is a comprehensive solution for digital transformation which combines AI, ML, and RPA technologies. The financial and strategic benefits of this technology are widely known and acclaimed, yet many companies have intelligent automation questions regarding its implementation and deployment. Keep reading to learn more about the Top 5 FAQ’s potential customers have about the Intelligent Automation adoption process and how Ushur can answer these uncertainties.

App usage is skyrocketing with 194 million global app downloads in 2018 alone. This smartphone era is distancing itself from calls and emails and shifting toward mobile solutions. Modern problem solving is designing apps and throwing them at the problem hoping for something to stick. With this surplus of apps comes a greater challenge to differentiate your business’s app, to capture the attention of the customer, and to convince them to download and utilize your app. In 2017, the average smartphone user had 80 apps on their phones and used around 40 of them a month.

Ever wonder what working at Ushur is like? Meet Ushur’s Summer 2019 Interns. This past summer, Ushur’s office nestled in a Santa Clara-based office park was illuminated by the jovial and energetic spirits of 7 fresh-faced interns. Keep reading to learn more about their meaningful work here at Ushur and their impression of the unique Ushur culture.

About 124.5 billion business emails are sent and received each day, and this number is only growing (DMR). Manual email triaging, the primary mode of email intake up until recently, is not scalable for such growth. Employees, on average, receive 121 emails per day (DMR). Spending approximately 3 minutes per email would result in 6 hours of labor just combing through emails. Moreover, employees whose jobs are dependent upon checking email (i.e. IT, helpdesk, customer service, etc.) receive mountains upon mountains of emails exceeding that of an average employee.

Business processes involve routine tasks that are getting increasingly complex with rapid technological advances. Workflow Automation can provide the relief to both the employee and the employer—to the employee opening them up for more creative and value-added work; the employer in cost savings, efficiency, and avoidance of errors.

The proliferation of Big Data has put data at the forefront of all business processes and decisions. Regardless of industry or field, generating, analyzing and interpreting data is crucial to success. However, the benefits associated with Big Data come with a fair share of threats as well.

Our CEO & Co-Founder sat down at the Global InsurTech Summit with Group Head of Artificial Intelligence of Zurich, Gero Grunkel, Global Head of Artificial Intelligence at Prudential, Michael Natusch, and CSO, Eric Sibony, of Shift, to discuss the ways Insurance companies are utilizing AI for increasing productivity and digitizing their business.

As you may have seen recently, Ushur announced its Series A funding round led by Silicon Valley’s premier firm 8VC. This is a significant milestone for us to celebrate and the entire team looks forward to expanding Ushur into a global brand.

Many IT workflows that were previously done primarily through email, would be much better suited for automated text-message conversations using conversational AI, saving time and frustration and optimizing productivity. Let’s look at a few scenarios how this can alter the digital experience for your company:

I was at the Atlassian Team Tour event recently when a panelist commented how email has become a digital space where information goes to die. It is hard to imagine how much has changed since Blackberry made email accessible just 15 years to-date. Email was the tool that allowed us to move business communications from paper and phone-based communication to the electronic form, but it feels like it is past time for email to step aside for some things. It is time for a better way to “interact”, particularly one that lends itself for the modern workforce, for the mobile workforce and for anyone wanting to get their request unstuck from the pile sitting in an Inbox. There are better ways to accomplish fast and smooth IT workflows i.e. simple text messages.

When it comes to processing claims, there are a number of potential security and compliance traps that could mean serious problems for insurance companies. Whether it’s HIPAA or TCPA, companies need to stay vigilant when it comes to insurance communications with their customers.

Insurance claim processes are notoriously lengthy and cumbersome, for both insurance companies and their customers. From long and arduous back and forth to messy, complicated paperwork, claim cycles can be a real pain for all sides involved.

AI and Chatbots are all over the news lately, with companies moving to automate their low-level, repetitive tasks in droves. With the sector relatively new however, some might remain confused as to how exactly chatbots work and whether the return on investment actually lives up to the hype. Does your company need to consider chatbots?

HR departments are in desperate need of automation. The number one complaint of HR professionals has consistently been of lost productivity due to answering repetitive employee questions, lengthy forms, and onboarding new employees. Departments across all industries would rather put the human back in human resources by connecting with employees to strategically move the company forward rather than get sucked into these repetitive tasks that deserve to be automated. And chatbots are rising to the occasion.

According to a report released by Gartner, consumers want to manage 85% of the total business interactions with banks through Fintech chatbots by 2020. These numbers show the future of banking depends on automated customer engagement, but are banks ready for their digital transformation

Gartner estimates that in 3 years 85% of companies will be using automation and AI as a part of their business strategy, meaning that those who don’t have a plan in place now, will assuredly be left behind in the wake of our fast-paced technological landscape. So how does the Insurance industry shape up in light of this statistic?

Millennials are expected to occupy 50% of the US workforce by the year 2020, just three years from now. Their purchasing power of $200B will make a significant part of the US economy. We interviewed this group to learn more on their social and consumer behavior and produced the 2017 Millennial Mobile Consumer Report.

Mobile devices are the preferred way to access the internet for the majority of the population, and while mobile apps continue to thrive, companies are struggling with creating engaging experiences with their customers as their apps get lost in a sea of social networks, games, entertainment, and news. Even when users give it a try, seven of every ten use it for less than 24 hours!

Messaging has become the most dominant and ubiquitous channel of engagement. That is probably why 4 in 5 companies want to text their customers. However, only 1 in 4 marketers use this medium to reach their customer base. Many companies are just not keeping up with changing consumer behavior, and in turn creating a digital divide. If consumer behavior has changed so dramatically, why are marketers still choosing email over instant messaging for customer outreach?

Companies with the best NPS scores power their business from making their service delivery front and center. Everything they do as a business focuses and delivers on the service experience for customers. Think of companies like Apple, Amazon, Costco which consistently rank in the top 10 for brands with the best NPS scores. These brands invest in infrastructure and technology to deliver outstanding customer experiences, and customers in turn reward these brands with their loyalty and active brand promotion.

I started dictating this article to Siri, but I gave up within a few minutes after I had to repeat my words again and again. Emerging Human Assisted Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Assistants, and Machine Learning technology has become a reality everywhere. We use them to check the status of our orders, reorder a prescription or book our trips. While chat bots enhance and optimize company function, bots assisted by humans are shown to be more effective for businesses, at least for the time being.

Mobile devices are the preferred way to access the internet for the majority of the population, and while mobile apps continue to thrive, companies are struggling with creating engaging experiences with their customers as their apps get lost in a sea of social networks, games, entertainment, and news. Even when users give it a try, seven of every ten use it for less than 24 hours!

It would come as a surprise to few these days – no one enjoys calling customer service. Millennials, a demographic that will reach 50 percent of the workforce by 2020, would rather “get their teeth cleaned” than call into a customer service line and two of every three consumers prefer to communicate via some form of instant messaging. So why do companies continue to employ these old forms of customer engagement, at an outstanding opportunity cost of $61 billion per year?

ServiceBots could be a solution to some of the current woes of the retail industry. Using instant-message-based systems, these bots can automate many of the functions of a retail operations service desk, bringing a conversational machine interface to what is a costly human-to-human interaction today, thereby reducing the need for scaling human resources, while bringing faster and friendlier support to store employees.