PartnersDecember 12, 2019

The digital human who wants to talk to you about your health insurance

Guest writer

Richard MacManus meets Aimee – the digital assistant with a human touch.

For years we’ve been worried about robots taking our jobs, but in fact it’s “digital humans” that are increasingly joining the workforce. At least, that seems to be the case in customer service. Southern Cross Health Society, New Zealand’s long-time and leading health insurer, is the latest business to welcome digital humans to its team.

“Aimee has just joined the team at Southern Cross, and we’re super-excited to introduce her,” reads an announcement on the Southern Cross website.

Like Siri and similar “digital assistants”, Aimee is powered by artificial intelligence and has a conversational interface. But what makes Aimee different is that she has a realistic-looking 3D human face. The idea is that you can interact with Aimee via your computer, tablet or smartphone, as if you were talking to a human customer service representative (CSR) by video chat.

But as well as having a human face, what makes Aimee different from other digital channels is her ability to respond with empathy and warmth. She represents technology that is increasingly able to recognise conversational cues and behaviours and what they mean. But to reach her potential, Aimee will need to earn the trust of Southern Cross customers.

Aimee was developed by UneeQ, a digital human platform company with offices in New Zealand, Australia and the US. They’ve previously created “digital human” CSRs for ASB, Vodafone and Noel Leeming. According to Southern Cross chief marketing officer Chris Watney, Southern Cross approached UneeQ about using its digital human technology to empower its customers to handle queries.

“It’s in order to give our members the best experience we possibly can,” Watney said. “We’ve been slowly moving more to a self-serve model for those things that our members can do themselves – and want to do themselves.”

That said, Southern Cross was also mindful that with health insurance “there is still that need for the human touch”.

Southern Cross thinks it can get the best of both worlds, self-service and customer service, with digital humans. However, this needed technology to develop some of that humanity.

“When we felt that the technology had matured to a point where it was offering a really good experience we decided to kick off a project with UneeQ – and that’s what led us to Aimee today,” said Watney.

At the moment Aimee focuses only on what a customer says, formulating her answer based on the textual content of a conversation (as opposed to what she “sees”). But unlike chatbots, Aimee’s responses include appropriate motion and expression beyond just text. Going forward, Aimee could improve these responses via supervised learning.

Digital assistants are increasingly human (Image: supplied).

For now, though, Aimee is very much in training mode – just like any junior CSR would be. Currently she is programmed to answer general questions only – for example, “what is a pre-existing condition?” She will not be able to talk about your actual pre-existing conditions, or any other sensitive information about your health. Indeed, you probably tell Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa much more private information on a regular basis than you’ll tell Aimee.

But Southern Cross plans to slowly and carefully expand what Aimee is allowed to do. In time, she may (with your permission of course) discuss your pre-existing conditions and even process a claim for you.

“The next thing we might ask Aimee to do is start giving advice to people. So starting to understand people’s needs, and then advising on what plan might be most appropriate to them,” said Watney.

Southern Cross is “feeling our way through this” and ultimately much will depend on how customers feel about dealing with a digital human. Another important consideration, Watney noted, is that Aimee doesn’t currently have any access to customer data.

While many of us have now accepted that AI is a part of our daily lives – with everything from Facebook to CCTV cameras in Auckland being at least partially run by AI – when it comes to our health data, we’re still wary of machines having access to our inner lives. How Southern Cross progresses with expanding Aimee’s functionality and integrating her into its core systems represents a new realm for AI’s involvement in our worlds.

Watney recognises this is something Southern Cross has to be careful with. But he’s confident AI will continue to evolve, not only in its technological power, but in how it’s perceived by people.

“As the technology gets better and better,” he said, “it’ll just feel intuitive. And it’ll get to a point where you’re still aware that you’re talking to a digital representation of a person – we’re never going to go down the ‘uncanny valley’ of trying to make out it’s a real person – but the conversation will be more intuitive and the accuracy will increase.”

“Plus,” he added, “as consumers we’re going to see more and more of these avatars in our everyday lives.”

This is projected to become the norm sooner than you may think. According to an ebook on UneeQ’s website, tech research and advisory company Gartner has predicted that a staggering 85% of interactions customers have with businesses will be non-human by 2020 – with AI in particular set to make up 95% of customer interactions by 2025. UneeQ’s Gavin de Steur thinks the recent success of chatbots in business has paved the way for more advanced digital human technology.

“One of the first industries we saw going down this road was banking. The banks typically adopted chatbots as a first phase in their digital strategy. But the more they interacted with customers through digital channels, the more they risked losing an emotional connection with their customers or put another way, their customers connection with their brand. So this is the opportunity for digital humans.”

That assumes you’ve picked the right human avatar to represent your business. For Watney at Southern Cross, this was one of the early challenges when developing Aimee.

“It’s actually a really interesting question, what is the visual representation – the human representation – of your brand?”

As Aimee grows more sophisticated over time, and may even one day approve and process your health insurance claims, one can’t help but wonder what will happen to the human customer service representatives at Southern Cross. Watney assured me that Aimee won’t be replacing its contact centre.

“We know that people really do sometimes want to phone us and speak to a real person when it comes to their health insurance, because you’re talking about people at a very vulnerable stage of their lives. Sometimes they need quite a lot of reassurance, so we don’t plan to use Aimee in those kinds of cases. What Aimee does is free up our call centre agents to help people when they really need it.”

So you won’t yet be talking to a digital human about your upcoming surgical procedure. At least, not until you get to know Aimee a bit better. Because like any human, she has to earn your trust first.

This content was created in paid partnership with Southern Cross. Learn more about our partnerships here.

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PartnersDecember 12, 2019

Decade in review: 10 New Zealand scandals that rocked the nation

Catherine McGregor

Contributing writer

From unpaid teachers to match fixing and rogue clamping, these are the news stories that outraged New Zealand in the 2010s.

Paul Henry

The decade in NZ scandal started out strong thanks to TV and radio host Paul Henry (for the edification of younger readers, he was like Mike Hosking, but with a louder laugh and quieter suits). In October 2010, on the subject of who should succeed departing Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand, Henry asked PM John Key “Are you going to choose a New Zealander who looks and sounds like a New Zealander this time?” The uproar was instant, and TVNZ announced it was suspending Henry for two weeks without pay. But his troubles weren’t over. When people pointed out an older clip of Henry ridiculing Indian politician Sheila Dikshit’s name, Henry was a goner. He resigned four days later.

Colin Craig

For a brief moment, it seemed like a run of the mill sex scandal. All the elements were there: the cocksure politician, the dutiful wife, the allegations of an “inappropriate relationship” with a female employee. But the Colin Craig saga turned out to be far grimmer than that. It was bad that the Conservative Party leader was alleged to have sexually harassed his press secretary Rachel MacGregor, but it might have all ended with a $17,000 settlement and a confidentiality agreement had it not been for Jordan Williams. In September 2016 the Taxpayers Union director sued Craig for defamation after Craig claimed Williams had lied about Craig being a sexual harasser, and so began an interminable series of legal claims and counter-claims. Stuck in the middle of it all: Rachel MacGregor, a blameless woman forced back into court over and over thanks to two truly ghastly men.

Novopay

Payroll isn’t something most of us give much thought to – until it goes wrong, and then it becomes life-shatteringly important. Just ask the tens of thousands of teachers and school staff whose lives were made a misery by Novopay, the Ministry of Education’s craptacular $182 million payroll system. Finally launched in 2012 after years of delays, it was clear from the start that the MoE had been sold a lemon by Australian human resources company Talent2. The problems with Novopay were no mere glitches. One teacher was overpaid $39,000, paid it back, and wasn’t paid again for two months. A principal reported that Novopay had taken $40,000 directly out of the school bank account to pay teachers who had never even worked at his college. By February 2013, over 14,000 teachers and school staff were owed nearly $12 million in backpay. The Novopay debacle took years to fix at a cost to taxpayers of $45 million. Thanks Australia!

Willy Moon & Natalia Kills

You’ll find this hard to believe, but there was a time before the name Willy Moon was synonymous with televised bullying. In the years before The X Factor, Moon was a rising music star whose song ‘Yeah Yeah’ soundtracked an international campaign for the Apple iPod, and who made musical appearances on shows like Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Later with Jools Holland. But that was the Before Times, before he and his wife Natalia Kills were hired as judges on X Factor New Zealand; before their tirade against poor, sweet-faced Invercargill singer Joe Irvine. He called Irvine “disgusting” and “creepy”, she called him a “laughing stock” who made her “sick”. And don’t forget Irvine’s worst crime: that he had copied Moon by wearing… a suit. By morning the couple were national pariahs. They were fired that afternoon, and headed to the airport soon after. In the words of an eagle-eyed Spinoff reporter, “The flash of a single camera bounced off their glasses, his like Lennon’s, hers like Kim K’s. Into the check-in lounge they went, as if it were the lobby of a fine hotel.” And neither were ever heard of again.

Roast Busters

It began with a 3 News story in November 2013 about a Facebook page where a gang calling themselves the Roast Busters posted videos of themselves having sex with intoxicated, underage girls. But the story didn’t really begin then. The police had known about the group since the first victims made complaints in 2011, it soon emerged, but repeatedly chose not to prosecute. The revelations caused widespread revulsion and prompted protests across the country. None of the Roast Busters were ever charged over the scandal. As for the victims? In an interview earlier this year, ‘Laura’ put it simply: “I’m still living it.”

Chris Cairns

Let’s state for the record that Chris Cairns denies all allegations. Which is just as well. Because if one of the finest all-rounders in history, scorer of 200 test wickets and 3000 runs for this country (and just shy of 5000 runs in ODIs), not to mention the son of a legendary cricketer – if he had been involved in fixing matches while playing for the Indian Cricket League, well that would be an indelible stain on our nation’s sporting soul. The allegations were first made in 2014 by fellow ex-Black Cap Lou Vincent, who admitted to match fixing the ICL, fingered Cairns as a co-conspirator, and was backed up by Brendon McCullum, a former Black Caps captain who said Cairns had tried to recruit him into the match-fixing ring. Then there was the libel trial and the perjury trial, both of which Cairns emerged from victorious.

Dirty Politics

How do you begin to summarise the five-alarm shitshow that was Dirty Politics? Nicky Hager’s 2014 book originated with a leaked eight gigabyte USB of emails to and from Cameron Slater, the bullshitter-in-chief of right-wing attack blog Whaleoil. Many of the worst revelations contained therein involved PM John Key’s spindoctor Jason Ede, who joined Slater in a caper involving the “access” of a Labour Party database, but there were also numerous shady dealings with then-corrections minister Judith Collins, Food & Grocery Council head Katherine Rich, and PR consultant Carrick Graham. And remember Mark Hotchin? He’s the one who secretly paid Slater to write attack posts about Adam Feely, boss of the Serious Fraud Office, which was investigating Hotchin’s company, Hanover Finance. The attacks on Feely eventually led to Judith Collins’ resignation (she was later exonerated), but many of the key players emerged relatively unscathed. In November, the nation went to the polls. National won.

Aaron Smith

The thing about the Aaron Smith scandal was that the scandal wasn’t really that the All Black had sex in a Christchurch Airport toilet cubicle, a tryst that was recorded by a couple of bystanding creepers and passed onto Stuff for publication. And neither was the scandal that the woman in the cubicle wasn’t Smith’s girlfriend at the time. Both Smith and his toilet partner were consenting adults, after all. No, the real scandal was New Zealand Rugby’s handling of the fallout from Smith’s “huge mistake”, which showed they’d learned approximately nothing from their botched response to the Chiefs stripper-party scandal just two months earlier. Also a scandal: Smith allegedly asking the woman involved to swear an affidavit stating that the two didn’t have sex, which would have been a lie, since it later emerged that the two had in fact been having an affair for two years before that fateful day.

David Farrier surrounded by Bashford relics

Bashford Antiques

OK, sure, it wasn’t the scandal of the decade, but my god, was the story of the clamp-happy Auckland antique dealers juicy. We could try to recount all the twists in David Farrier’s crazy tale which began in 2016 with a story that would become a three-year, six-part investigative saga, but we could never do it justice. The latest instalment was published just last month, and we highly recommend clicking through and reading the whole thing, start to finish. With the Bashfords having fled town, and the government announcing strict new rules for private car clampers, has this bizarre story finally drawn to a close? We wouldn’t bet on it.

Jami-Lee Ross

In October 2018, a politician stood before reporters and accused National leader Simon Bridges of being “a corrupt politician” who had committed “multiple breaches of electoral law.” Worse, it was one of Bridges’ own MPs making the accusations: list MP Jami-Lee Ross, who at the same time accused his leader of electoral law breaches that if proved, would possibly send Bridges to jail. The media standup was just the latest salvo in a war between the two politicians that began with the leaking of Bridges’ expenses, took a detour along SH1, absorbed allegations of sexual harassment, stopped while Ross was treated for a mental breakdown (which isn’t at all funny), and burst into a giant political fireball with Ross’s utterly astonishing press conference. Now that was a great New Zealand scandal.