“At Bank of America, we leverage data, AI and business intelligence to create individualized experiences that work for every customer, no matter where they are in their financial journey. Our capabilities enable us to go beyond providing a one-size-fits-all digital journey and instead provide a dynamic journey for each of our more than 54 million verified digital customers,” said Nikki Katz, Bank of America’s head of digital.
Katz cited the bank’s virtual assistant, Erica, as an example of its advanced delivery of personalized services. Erica provides proactive analytics based on savings and spending activity, monthly bill changes, rewards eligibility and other financial insights to customers on a personal level.
Humanization in the hiring process
“If we’re looking specifically at recruiting, we’ve noticed that recruiters often only look at the first part of the process, the application itself, when trying to make the candidate experience more human,” says Steve Martin, CTO of Harver, a volume hiring provider of hourly products for clients like McDonald’s, Chili’s Rituals and Scotch & Soda.
“They try to make the rest of the application process more instagram data human through conversational tools like chatbots, but it ends up feeling very transactional and mechanical. When the process is only partially automated, candidates can be left hanging for days or never hear back from the recruiter,” adds Martin.
And a peek at the work to come.
Martin says companies that understand that the hiring process is part of the employee experience “are updating their process so candidates can receive information about the company and virtually experience the job before submitting an application.”
Typically, this is done through “a combination of tactics, such as employer-branded videos, virtual job tests and video interviews, where candidates see a real person, rather than just interacting with a chatbot. Meanwhile, tasks that don’t require human interaction are automated, such as screening, interview scheduling and automatic candidate progression.”
Where health is in humanization efforts
“Healthcare has the unique challenge of requiring personalization from at least two perspectives: the patient and the physician. Every patient has their own care history and goals. Every physician has their own experience and way of working. To date, healthcare has struggled on both axes,” says Jonah May, chief product officer at Sirona Medical, a maker of a unified platform for radiology IT applications.
“Patients are more recently embracing human-centered digital experiences, through mental health apps, digital therapy and so on, but care providers are still using antiquated software systems,” May adds.
Most patient portals are in dire need of overhaul because the healthcare industry has “hit a wall with band-aid solutions,” according to May.
However, progress is being made on the medical side of things. After all, they are human too.
“We are starting to see more software solutions built for and by physicians that are fully cloud-based, allowing them to see and/or diagnose a larger number of patients, more efficiently, and provide better patient care,” says May.
May also reports that cloud-based AI is cutting through noisy data and creating experiences that clinicians can count on.
“Progress has also been made in unifying fragmented applications to create a cohesive and trusted experience for clinicians,” says May.
Humanizing efforts in technology
Specifically, the technology leading the way in humanization efforts: chatbots. It looks like they’re ready for a facelift and an upgrade already.
“Most virtual assistants that consumers will interact with today are pretty limited. You say, ‘I lost my password,’ and it’s more likely to give you a phone number to call or a web page to go to next. A more powerful virtual assistant could authenticate people or help them reset a password. The missed opportunity isn’t going to the next level where the virtual assistant isn’t just providing information, but actually helping people perform tasks that simplify their daily lives,” said Seth Dobrin, IBM’s director of AI.
AI clearly needs more reasoning capabilities. Researchers are working on developing this, but it’s easier said than done.
“But a newer, hybrid approach to AI is starting to fill this gap. Neurosymbolic learning (NSL) combines the strengths of neural networks and classical symbolic AI to perform complex tasks that neither method can accomplish individually,” says Dobrin.
Mapping language to data elements as chatbots do now is relatively straightforward. “However, a hybrid approach to AI like NSL is needed to inject reason into producing more complex and actionable results,” says Dobrin.
But the tech industry is also working on other aspects to humanize the digital experience.
“So far, Microsoft has made some progress with initiatives such as reducing the number of steps required to complete tasks, making interfaces easier to use, and providing more personalized experiences. Additionally, there are several startups working on solutions to make the digital experience more human-centric. Some examples include Emotion AI, which captures and analyzes emotions through facial expressions and body language,” says Morshed Alam, founder and editor of Savvy Programmer.