USAA - Customer Service Success

Company: USAA, San Antonio, TX
Company Description: The USAA family of companies provides insurance, banking, investments, retirement products and advice to more than 12.6 million current and former members of the U.S. military and their families. Founded in 1922, USAA is known for its legendary commitment to its members, USAA is consistently recognized for outstanding service, employee well-being and financial strength.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Awards Success Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Success - Financial Service Industries

Nomination Title: USAA’s Virtual Agent (Nuance-Powered Virtual Agent)

USAA provides insurance, banking, and other financial services to more than 13 million current and former members of the U.S. military and their families. Because its members reside worldwide and 90% of its total member base is digitally active, USAA needed a solution to handle their inquiries 24/7 in a convenient, cost-effective manner in the members’ channel of choice.

USAA worked with Nuance to develop an enterprise-grade Virtual Agent (VA) capable of doing more than just searching and finding answers. USAA wanted a VA capable of understanding context and making predictions. The VA needed to be knowledgeable within USAA’s product portfolio. In addition, USAA wanted a VA capable of efficiently handling member inquiries and seamlessly connect them to the accurate contact center where appropriate.

As a result, USAA’s Nuance-powered voice-and-text VA was launched in 2012. In the past eight years, USAA and Nuance have continued to update the VA to maintain the highest levels of customer care and satisfaction. And each year, the VA continues to deliver for USAA and its members. In addition to helping USAA members perform simple tasks like providing an account balance or providing personalized auto insurance coverage details on the web or through an app, the VA is quick to add dialog during the moments that matter greatly to our members – wherever they are with whatever they need.

In 2020 during the global COVID-19 pandemic, USAA’s VA assisted thousands of members with topics about USAA’s assistance during the pandemic. This included insurance premium credits, payment protection plans, stimulus check updates and more. During the hyperactive 2020 Atlantic hurricane season with 25 named storms, including nine hurricanes, thousands of members turned to the VA for help during great times of need while they were fleeing the storms with their families. For natural disaster support, the VA recognizes the intent and navigates members to where they can file a claim or get assistance.

Nuance’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, Natural Language Understanding (NLU), and other capabilities are the foundation to the VA’s intelligence and ability to naturally converse with USAA members – through both verbal and text interactions. The VA also draws knowledge from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), creative writers, and others to keep learning and growing to continue to maintain the highest levels of customer care.

As a result of its continual updates and enhancements, in the past eight months the VA has achieved an array of performance milestones. For starters, the VA has become a mainstay for USAA members, member engagement with the VA has greatly improved and the VA digitally contains a majority of all member inquires. The VA is also capable of interacting with USAA members via both voice and text, and having contextual, intelligent natural dialog with them, including the ability to recognize multiple concepts and respond to changing intent – areas where consumer-grade virtual agents often fail. In addition, all content now lives in a single database so USAA can leverage that build to deploy across many end points beyond web and mobile where the VA is today. USAA is consistently recognized for outstanding service and uses AI to bring its traditional, human-centric customer service into the digital experience. USAA’s VA has become an integral part of USAA’s member engagement strategy and is the epitome of an ultimate Innovation in Customer Service.

Supporting Files and Web Addresses

https://content.usaa.com/mcontent/static_assets/Media/USAA_Fact_Sheet_By_the_numbers.pdf?cacheid=1627376398_p

https://www.wsj.com/articles/digital-assistants-start-to-get-more-human-1525053901

https://dallasinnovates.com/booting-up-an-immersive-experience-at-plano-usaa-campus/

https://www.nuance.com/omni-channel-customer-engagement/digital/virtual-assistant/nina.html