What's the consumer appetite for these types of technologies? This year, 56.3 million personal digital assistants will ship to homes, including Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple's new Home Pod. That's a 40 percent increase from the impressive growth of 33 million sold in 2017. Consumers are quickly changing where they shop, organize and get information. It's important that we move quickly to offer the experience customers want and need. Soon, will a machine learning algorithm serve up a choice of three benefit plans that are best for my situation? Maybe Siri or Alexa will even have a conversation with me about it. There are so many applications for health care. Here's a few that are happening or just around the corner…

“Alexa, what's left on my health plan deductible?”

“Alexa, find a provider in my network within five miles.”

“Alexa, search for Protonix pricing at my local pharmacies.”

“Alexa, how do I know if I have an ear infection?”

“Alexa, what's the difference between an HSA, FSA and HRA?”

“Alexa, find a 5-star rated health insurance broker within 20 miles.”

Making “cool” innovations in artificial intelligence or machine learning won't work if not coupled with a relentless pursuit to serve the customer. These endeavors are expensive, so spend your IT budget wisely, ensuring new innovation creates true value and is easy for the end user.

Tonia Degner, chief strategy officer, freshbenies

Targeted sales solutions

For context, I was an employee benefits broker for 14 years, the last nine of those I owned a benefits agency which was acquired last year. Now I run a marketing agency specifically for benefits brokers.

I think AI and machine learning (ML) have a lot to offer benefits brokers and their clients. While there are many day-to-day client service applications that can benefit from AI and ML, I don't see the broker or frontline account management going anywhere. In 2016, I wrote on LinkedIn “HR technology that is offering to replace a human who provides personal interaction should be scrutinized for what it is: a promise that can't deliver … I think we're all better off keeping the humans around in HR and employee benefits for a bit longer.” I stand behind those thoughts today.

As a marketer and salesperson, I'm most excited about the use of AI in sales development. In the near term, we'll see brokers with AI tools at their disposal that help them quickly define their ideal buyer, perform initial human-informed, but artificially intelligent automated outreach to those buyers, and then track those buyers for things like intent, propensity to buy and cross-sell opportunities. Then AI-supported outreach can deliver the right content (marketing message) to the right buyer at exactly the right time. While great marketers and producers are both adept at identifying all these touch points in a sales meeting or even on a phone call, AI-supported sales development can do an even better job, and do it at scale. Exciting times are ahead!

Dennis Carlson, director, strategy + action, Agency Leverage

Better medical services

The use of artificial intelligence is completely altering the front door of health care as we know it. From specific programs that aid in medical diagnostics to intelligent apps that triage remote patients, AI is making health care more efficient and accessible than ever. For example, the FDA recently approved the use of AI-powered software for the use of medical diagnostics, marking the first use of AI in this application.

A new app is taking this remote experience to the next level with artificial intelligence. The technology interacts with subscribers to help better understand medical needs and then channels requests to the appropriate doctor for evaluation. The AI-bot essentially serves as a personalized triage service, saving manual time and labor.

The bottom line? The adoption and utilization of artificial intelligence in the health care space will make health care more accessible, efficient, and affordable for everyone.

Meisha Bochicchio, Content marketing manager, PlanSource

A domino effect

Utilizing AI and robotic process automation (RPA) will improve our industry in a very dynamic and impactful way over the next decade. As we move forward, a domino effect will likely take place, creating better solutions for our clients and their employees. How will this work for our industry? It will automate labor, eliminate tedious, repeatable manual tasks, and will allow us to service our clients much more efficiently. Business intelligence will also allow us immediate insights into current trends, which helps us to determine what's next. It will also improve predictive analytics. Currently, it takes a seasoned account executive around 12 hours to complete a renewal presentation for a client. With RPA, this same task is shortened to just seconds. We believe that is just the tip of the iceberg.

RPA and AI are game-changers in our industry and will have an impact on almost everything we do moving forward. It is a very exciting time to be in our industry and on the ground floor with this transformative technology.

Mike Noyes, president, Ardent Solutions, an Alera Group Company

Streamlining processes

AI is the most in-demand emerging technology for U.S. and global businesses, according to a recent Accenture study, with 67 percent planning to invest in AI this year. The future of meaningful customer engagement will include some form of AI to deploy an effective benefit program. AI and machine learning are critical to teaching employees to be better health care consumers. Blockchain also has the potential to disrupt the industry when it comes to the administration of claims and customer data. We see these emerging technologies as a way to streamline processes, improve customer experiences, and better serve clients.

Joel Ray, CEO, New Benefits