A team of nine robots has joined the workforce at one of New Zealand’s largest companies – but the business insists no jobs will be lost.<\/p>\n
Marvin, Winston, Nida, Steve, Kastor, Jack, Jill, Boris, and Evie have started work at AA Insurance – but the company will also employ 40 humans in the next month.<\/p>\n
Brian May, Technical Operations Manager at AAI, said the Robots are “employed” to make existing staff member’s jobs easier and more enjoyable – not to replace them.<\/p>\n
“We’ll always need our people,” May said.<\/p>\n
“Our people are at the core of delivering our purpose as a business and automation frees up their time from doing mundane administrative tasks to focus on caring, helping and getting things sorted for our customers.”<\/p>\n
May said rather than walking talking robots the new teammates were pieces of robotic automation software intended to save time.<\/p>\n
The four virtual employees that started in 2020 are:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jill processes admin tasks in the claim centre.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jack allocates claims related costs to the associated claims.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Steve attaches all the documents the team needs to a claim, and leaves notes for the claim customer manager.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Evie works in finance preparing files for claims bulk receipting.<\/p>\n
Steve is the motor claims department’s “total loss” bot – a piece of automation intended to save Motor Customer Managers time and clicks when processing a total loss settlement for a customer or uninsured third party.<\/p>\n
Steve was named after a respected colleague who left AAI in mid-2020. The team honoured him by naming the claim centre bot after him.<\/p>\n
But May said one of the best examples of the value the work the bots do is Marvin.<\/p>\n
Marvin’s task was to freeze customer premiums in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
“Marvin was built and set to work reviewing nearly 35,000 renewals, removing the premium increase and reissuing notices to our customers,” May said.<\/p>\n
Because of the scale and urgency, there were eight Marvins set up to deal with the job, and the work was done within 12 days.<\/p>\n
“To provide some context, we estimate it would have taken 36 staff members to complete the work Marvin did within the same timeframe,” May said.<\/p>\n
“Without Marvin, those staff members would have been taken away from helping our customers directly during a time when they needed us most.”<\/p>\n
The bots had also provided relief to a workforce that suddenly moved to a work-from-home situation during the first lockdown.<\/p>\n
“In 2020 our bots processed 178,122 transactions that would otherwise have taken 7,722 hours for staff to complete,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was incredibly helpful to have our virtual workers take the pressure off.”<\/p>\n
May said the bots had helped streamline claims and taken care of critical behind-the-scenes tasks.<\/p>\n
“They allow us to work on the right things – the irreplaceable ‘human element’ of focusing on our customers’ needs,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We can now actively talk to customers without the time pressures of doing unnecessary admin work.”<\/p>\n
The employment of the bots had not led to any human job loss.<\/p>\n
AAI was about to employ 40 more people in Auckland and Hamilton for roles including marketing, technology, and customer service, and sales.<\/p>\n
May said the feedback from staff members about their robot teammates had been positive.<\/p>\n
“We look after our people and want them to grow, progress, and see their career develop, so repetitive tasks like data entry are now performed by our virtual workforce,” May said.<\/p>\n
“We’re actively asking our workforce for suggestions of repetitive, high-volume, and straightforward admin tasks that they’d prefer a bot to do.”<\/p>\n